Understanding Federalism and Federation

Alain-G. Gagnon, Soeren Keil

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781472433893
• eBook ISBN: 9781317004950
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Saggi su politica e relazioni internazionali

Based on a variety of contemporary debates on federal theory Understanding Federalism and Federation honours Michael Burgess' contribution to the study of these topics through a selection of approaches, theories, debates and interpretations. Gathering contributors from diverse subfields to synthesize current debates it offers a snapshot of the immense range of current research on federalism and federation. Leading authors debate key issues such as American federalism, Canada and the role of Quebec, the latest insights into comparative federalism and federation, the European Union as a federal project and the analysis of constitutional courts in federal systems. Different theoretical and empirical fields and perspectives are brought together, synthesizing major findings and addressing emerging issues and these topics are analysed through multiple lenses to provide new insights, original approaches and much-needed theoretical and empirical data on federalism and federation.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Alain-G. Gagnon, Soeren Keil and Sean Mueller

The aim of this book is first and foremost to honour Michael Burgess’s contribution to the study of federalism and federation through a selection of approaches, theories, debates and interpretations in the area of federal studies. The overall theme we have chosen for the book is Understanding Federalism and Federation, because we believe this distinction to be Michael’s most valuable contribution to the academic literature. He has, throughout his career, contributed to our understanding of both federalism as a political theory and ideology and federation in the form of a federal state. Based on a variety of contemporary debates on federal theory and the most commonly adduced empirical cases (including the European Union), this book aims to offer a snapshot of the immense range of research done on federalism and federation. To do so, we have gathered authors from diverse subfields and invited them to synthesize current debates and latest developments in their respective areas. Authors have been asked to analyse different topics through multiple lenses and provide, whenever possible, new insights emerging from their domains of study and expertise. While all chapter authors were asked to discuss the role of Michael Burgess’s œuvre and its contribution to their specific fields, we have also asked them to provide updates and new theoretical and empirical insights into their specific topics wherever possible.

Michael Burgess and the Study of Federalism

Michael David Burgess is one of the foremost contemporary federal scholars whose work deserves to be situated alongside the contributions of Daniel Elazar, Richard Simeon, Ronald Watts and Alan Tarr. We are extremely fortunate that three of these authors were in a position to contribute a chapter to this Festschrift, although one of them, Richard Simeon, passed away toward the end of the process.

The word ‘scholar’ is, in fact, particularly fitting to depict Michael’s œuvre, since he has contributed in the most diverse ways to the study of federalism. The quality of his scholarship is outstanding as he figures among those experts whose research has also had – and continues to have – an impact in adjacent fields such as comparative politics, international relations, European studies, and Canadian and Quebec politics. He has, most particularly, contributed greatly to our understanding of the European integration process, having been one of the first to advocate – or as he would probably say: ‘demonstrate’ – that European integration can be understood as a process of continuous federalization driven by political visions, goals, ideals and ideas. Finally, it is equally important to highlight that he has also written extensively about numerous federal states and their operation, including Germany, Russia and more recently Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq and Ethiopia.

His authority and influence in the field of comparative federalism and federation is not least reflected in his activities on behalf of the International Association of Centers for Federal Studies, the Centre international de formation européenne in Nice, the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations in Kingston, the Canada Research Chair in Quebec and Canadian Studies in Montreal and the Forum of Federations in Ottawa. He possesses a well-established international reputation that is reflective of both the quality and scope of his research. In addition, Michael’s work is characterized by a high level of interdisciplinarity, drawing us into the sociological depths of political culture, the fascinating world of (not only but mainly) economic centre–periphery relations, historical efforts directed at state-building, or the supposed anarchy of international relations, to name but a few domains. That history is too important to be left to historians is one of his favourite quotes.

Alongside the breadth of his enquiries, Michael Burgess has also acquired a well-deserved reputation for the originality and depth of his work. He has identified and developed new pathways of research into federal theory, constitutional politics and federal democracies, and all that at sub-national as well as national and supra-national levels. This is most evident in his contributions on ‘new theoretical and empirical perspectives in comparative federalism’ and ‘state formation’, both of which have enabled him to situate the constitutional and political circumstances of the European Union as well as federal and federalizing states in a larger international context. Also, much of his work has enabled both Canadian and international relations scholars to reconsider and reappraise their established perceptions of familiar problems in the light of his research. Let us briefly review some of his key publications.

Federalism and European Union, published in 1989 by Routledge, epitomizes the idealistic – read: federalist – dimension of the European integration project as Michael not only depicted it, but as he illustrated it empirically. In that book, he analyses at great length the ‘political ideas, influences and strategies in the European Community’ from the period of 1972 until 1987. Michael’s second major monograph, The British Tradition of Federalism (Leicester University Press, 1995), was adapted from his PhD dissertation written under the supervision of Murray Forsyth, who in turn wrote the preface to this volume. From Michael we know that although often afraid of the ‘f-word’, Britain is in fact the foremost exporter of federal political structures, suffice it to name the United States, Canada, Australia, India and South Africa as notable examples. With Federalism and European Union: The Building of Europe, 1950–2000, published by Routledge in 2000, Michael then widens the European Union’s scope of analysis both temporally – covering the period stretching from the founding period to the post-Maastricht decade – and conceptually: it is ‘Europe’ tout court that is now seen as being built. This is currently Michael’s most often cited book, with 412 citations counted by Google Scholar (May 2015). It remains of central importance until today, 15 years after its publication, and many students who are introduced to European integration theory will come across and indeed read the work by Michael Burgess on this topic.

But if the European Union and the United Kingdom, usually conceived of as two very different and yet similar types of political unions, delineate the initial areas of Michael’s prolific research output, they merely contributed to lay the groundwork for a much ‘wider and deeper’ (to borrow again from the European Union studies terminology) research activity. In 2006, Michael published what many consider to be his masterpiece: Comparative Federalism: Theory and Practice (Routledge). This study meticulously combines conceptual rigueur with theoretical width and empirical breadth. This is Michael’s second-most popular book, according to Google Scholar (286 citations). But higher and, one is tempted to say almost spiritual, levels have been attained by his most recent single-authored publication, In Search of the Federal Spirit (Oxford University Press, 2012a). And even if this was not enough, there is more to come: his Footprints of Federalism: Periodic Revivals of the Federal Idea in World Politics (planned for 2015–16) promises an even broader review of federalism in its normative and practical manifestations.

Sprinkled in-between these monographs have appeared seven (co-)edited volumes on Federalism and Federation (1986), Canadian Federalism (1990), Comparative Federalism and Federation (with Alain-G. Gagnon, 1993), State Territoriality and European Integration (with Hans Vollaard, 2006), Multinational Federations (with John Pinder, 2007), Federal Democracies (with Alain-G. Gagnon, 2010) and Constitutional Sub-National Autonomy in Federal States (with Alan Tarr, 2012), next to 21 articles, 43 book chapters and 73 conference papers (as of March 2013). The variety of neighbouring (sub-)disciplines into which this federal quest has carried Michael is immense: from multinationalism to sub-national comparative politics, and from state territoriality to the most diverse examples of ‘flawed’ (e.g. Ethiopia or Nigeria), ‘incomplete’ (e.g. India or South Africa), ‘emergent’ (Iraq), ‘transitional’ (e.g. Bosnia-Herzegovina or Nepal) or ‘aspiring’ federal democracies (e.g. Somalia or Afghanistan) (Burgess, 2012a: 274).

Nevertheless, situating Michael Burgess’s work in the larger area of federal studies is not an easy task, mainly because this area has grown so much over the past few decades to include regional studies, fiscal federalism and territorial party politics; conflict analysis and multi- or pluri-nationalism; and even a growing literature on political autonomy as well as disintegration of nation-states and secession. At the core of all that, however, remains one fundamental insight: the distinction between federalism and federation as one between idealistic ambition and empirical reality. It is here that Michael Burgess has contributed most (see the conclusion to this volume by Michael Burgess for his own interpretation of this account) to advance the field of federal studies through a necessary disentanglement between two concepts that had been used interchangeably by many authors. We will turn our attention to this point below.

Clearly, the study of federalism and federation(s) has seen an increase in theoretical and empirical output since the end of the Cold War. Empirically, many single-case studies of older, ‘classic’ federations have been published, and so have books and collections on so-called ‘new models’ of federalism and federation. Furthermore, the theoretical literature has equally seen a significant increase, including works combining federalism and rational choice theory and others focusing on the normative dimension of federalism. Federalism, that is a certain degree of ideological predisposition towards a federal framework, and federation, which refers to a given set of institutions combining shared-rule with self-rule, have however remained at the core of this area of political science, even if not always explicitly. Inspired by the work of Preston King (1982), Michael Burgess has thus provided students of federalism with many new insights, as this volume illustrates.

Structure and Content of the Book

This book is structured into three parts. Part I is entitled ‘Evolving Federal Traditions and Federal Systems’ and begins with a comparative chapter by Ronald Watts. Watts elaborates on what he considers to be the five most useful bases of empirical comparison highlighted by Michael Burgess (2006): (1) the structure of federations (size, number of sub-units, vertical power distribution and asymmetry); (2) their sociological basis (mono- or multilingual, for example); (3) their political economy (regional differences in wealth and vertical transfers); (4) political parties (organization and discipline); and (5) evolutionary patterns as affected by constitutional reform and judicial review (aggregation v. devolution and common law v. civil law). Updating his extensive work on comparative federations, Watts shows how these five categories help us understand, compare and contrast federal political systems. He thereby provides an important link between the theoretical discussion on comparative federalism and its influence on the functioning of federal systems.

In Chapter 3, Frédéric Lépine provides the reader with an ideological history of federalism in which he traces the roots of federalism from being ‘about “in-between” configurations of authority’ to considering federalism ‘a phenomenology, a collection of empirical observations connected to each other through a general framework, which may lead to further abstraction, conceptualization and theorization’. He then identifies ‘non-centralization’ as the core element of the federal school of thought and analyses Michael Burgess’s ‘federal ethics of responsibility’, before contrasting a ‘thin’ and a ‘thick’ definition of federalism as ideology. Indeed, it is his classification of federalism as an ideology, with a precise definition and core elements, which makes his chapter an important contribution to the wider discussion on federalism.

In Part II, dealing with ‘Charting Federalism and Federations’, we have assembled a series of single-country studies, which continue to constitute the core domain of federal studies. Given the most influential role exercised by the US model, we invited two American scholars to focus their discussion precisely on US federalism. In Chapter 4, John Kincaid discusses the presidency of George W. Bush and the ‘unprecedented federal abridgements of state and local powers through regulations attached to federal aid, mandates, pre-emptions and other devices intended to align states and localities with federal policy preferences’. Applying his previously developed concept of coercive federalism, Kincaid illustrates how the Bush Jr. era has contributed to a stronger role of the federal government in the American political system.

Chapter 5 by G. Alan Tarr focuses on the role of the Rehnquist and Roberts US Supreme Courts in safeguarding existing federal arrangements, deploring the absence of consensus that a vivid scholarly engagement has produced. Tarr (along with Erk in Chapter 6) highlights the importance of courts in federal political systems. In Tarr’s case he does not only discuss how the Supreme Court is an important arbitrator in the system, but also that the court itself is a significant player in the game about federal balance, and so by no means neutral.

Jan Erk, in Chapter 6, also examines the US Supreme Court, although not so much as an independent actor but rather as the executor of a socially desired unity. In connection with Michael’s latest book (2012a), Erk stresses that ‘without a federal society of territorially based diversity, a principled commitment to the federal spirit is difficult to sustain’. He demonstrates how the US Supreme Court has been a key player in upholding this federal spirit and the role it plays in political interactions that aim to provide some form of unity in a society that is diverse.

These analyses of the embodiment of the notions of federalism and federation in the US are followed by a chapter on the second-oldest federation, Switzerland, in which Sean Mueller takes issue with the fact that Burgess (1993a, 2006), and Preston King (1982) before him, have neglected the existence of federalism-as-balance (Chapter 7). Both King and Burgess see federalism as either pulling away from a centre or towards it: a field whose end-points Riker (1964) had respectively dubbed ‘centralized federalism’ and ‘peripheralized federalism’. Mueller argues instead that the Swiss society, precisely because of its historically bi-confessional, quadri-lingual, multi-cantonal structure, values balance and compromise above all other things. The essence of Swiss federalism, therefore, is the eternal quest for the middle road along the two opposing principles, trying to reconcile both unity and diversity, not to achieve one or the other. By doing so, Mueller makes an important contribution not only to the understanding of Swiss federalism and its drive for balance, but also to our theoretical understanding of federal theory. We may have to re-think our focus on unity and diversity in light of Mueller’s theoretical contribution and accept that some federal political systems favour harmony over disharmony, compromise over conflict and balance over centralization/decentralization in their federal political systems.

A discussion of federal systems, however, would not be satisfying without also examining the Canadian case, since it has become a growing reference for many experts in the field over the last three decades, and a case of special interest to Michael Burgess as well. Chapters 8 and 9 shed light on Canadian federalism, in general, and federal diplomacy and the identity of Quebec, in particular. The first is a co-authored piece by Luc Turgeon and the late Richard Simeon (another giant in the field of federalism), while the second is written by Alain-G. Gagnon. In these contributions, the authors are keen to discuss empirical and normative dimensions that nourish the federal order and advance constructive options that would provide added incentives for the fostering of a federal spirit so often neglected by Canada’s political actors.

The starting point of Turgeon and Simeon’s chapter on the evolution of Canadian and Australian federalism is Michael Burgess’s assertion that federations are fundamentally rooted in capitalism. In his work on Canadian federalism, Burgess (1993b: 37) argued that there ‘is a significant linkage between the structure of provincial economies and their constitutional demands and responses’. In other more theoretical work, Burgess also stressed the influence of political parties and party systems on the evolution of federations. In their chapter, Turgeon and Simeon connect those two dimensions, political economy and political parties, to account for the contrasting evolution of Canadian and Australian federalism. By specifically focusing on political economy in both countries, they shed additional light on the combination of societal, economic and political diversity and its management through federal provisions in the two countries under examination.

Alain-G. Gagnon’s chapter, on the other hand, examines Michael Burgess’s focus on constitutionalism and the recognition of diversity. By focusing on Quebec, Gagnon demonstrates how it is important to move beyond the idea of recognition and instead stress the notion of empowerment. This is where he identifies the greatest possibilities for multinational federalism, as conceptualized in the work of Michael Burgess. His major contribution lies in a re-thinking of majority–minority relations in Canada through the prism of empowerment, and its links to multinational federalism and political institutions that would allow for such an approach to take hold in complex political settings. Gagnon’s work is particularly useful here as it questions some of Michael Burgess’s uneasiness with the concept of multinational federalism (Burgess, 2012b).

The following two contributions written by Ferrran Requejo (Chapter 10) and Michael Keating (Chapter 11) respectively assess the lack of federal practices in the Spanish State of Autonomies and the absence of a federal discourse in the United Kingdom. Although these countries cannot be considered federations – in the classic Whearean sense – their societal components make them federal and, as these authors suggest, there is a need to act in accordance with a constitutional morality that takes into account deep diversity in their day-to-day activities. Requejo does this by looking at the normative dimension within plurinational federations, while Michael Keating highlights the ‘very’ B...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• PART I EVOLVING FEDERAL TRADITIONS AND FEDERAL SYSTEMS
• PART II CHARTING FEDERALISM AND FEDERATIONS
• PART III THE EUROPEAN UNION
• Index