Federalism beyond Federations

Asymmetry and Processes of Resymmetrisation in Europe

Ferran Requejo, Nagel Klaus-Jürgen, Ferran Requejo, Nagel Klaus-Jürgen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138260894
• eBook ISBN: 9781317136118
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Since the end of the Second World War, a set of democratic European countries have established a decentralized system of government based on federal or regional patterns. Some of these systems initially displayed an asymmetrical trend, however, some democracies have implemented a subsequent process of re-symmetrization that changes the structure and the legitimization of the previous political agreements. Charting the evolution of decentralization processes and asymmetries implemented in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Ukraine and the United Kingdom, leading international scholars illustrate which countries have evolved more symmetrically, why this is so and what the role of political actors in these processes have been. In doing so, each case study: - Examines the causes of the legal and constitutional asymmetries and the main political cleavages. - Analyses the main institutions, actors and factors that influence the political dynamics of the territorial debate. - Questions whether there is such a process of re-symmetrization - Presents the main actors in favour of the process of re-symmetrization and of maintaining the constitutional and legal asymmetries Written accessibly and contributing to key debates on federalism and asymmetry, Federalism beyond Federations appeals to academics, politicians, decision-makers and all those interested in the political problems facing modern democracies.

Chapter 1
Decentralisation and Federal and Regional Asymmetries in Comparative Politics

Ferran Requejo

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, to speak of federalism and regionalism is to speak of democracy in a context that is characterised by cultural (and sometimes national) pluralism, as well as economic, political and technological globalisation. This new context is encouraging a theoretical revision and an institutional reformulation of key concepts involved in the liberal-democratic legitimisation of politically decentralised states and the practical processes of collective decision-making within them. Above all, this affects multilevel democracies or those that display specific territorial phenomena, such as insularity. Among the elements included in this revision, one could mention the evolution of political systems towards an increase in the decentralisation or centralisation of decision-making, the mutual influence between the de facto territorial asymmetries of democracies and constitutional rules, the collective right to self-government of minority national, ethnic, or linguistic groups, and the emergence of transnational agreements like the European Union.

On the other hand, empirical analyses of federal and regional systems carried out over the last two decades have usually focused on the study of specific cases and, to a lesser extent, on comparative studies. Broadly speaking, current analyses of states that display a clear territorial division of federal or regional powers can be situated along five basic axes, depending on the research questions that one is attempting to answer:

1. The uninational–multinational axis;

2. The unitarianism–federalism axis;

3. The centralisation–decentralisation axis;

4. The symmetry–asymmetry axis; or

5. The competitiveness–cooperation axis.

This book focuses on the key concepts of decentralisation, the symmetry/ asymmetry pairing and their mutual relationships in multilevel states which began their division of power asymmetrically. Its content is therefore located at the intersection of axes three and four.

The book focuses on European political systems which display a significant degree of decentralisation and which began decentralisation through asymmetric processes. The objective is to discover when and why there was a later process of resymmetrisation of the territorial model (see the section entitled ‘About This Volume’ in this chapter).

Until the 1980s, research into composite states, especially those of a federal nature, were not very concerned with the notion of asymmetry. C. Tarlton’s historic article (1965) introduced this concept by mentioning the specific behaviour of the actors in federated units with regard to their relations with the central power of the federation. Traditionally, the asymmetry of the units of federal systems had usually been analysed as a problem, as it was associated with the dangerous possibility of disunity or even of the separation of the federated units. However, more recent research, above all since the end of the 1990s (including Agranoff, Watts, Stepan, McRoberts, Requejo, Norman), has re-evaluated the experience of asymmetric federal systems, both regarding their moral and normative aspects in relation to multinational democracies, and regarding the institutional and functional aspects of federations in general. These analyses have further developed the concept of asymmetry itself, differentiating between different types of asymmetry and between the diverse values and objectives with which they are related. These studies have helped to refine the concepts and models involved in the analysis of asymmetric territorial systems of present-day democracies.

According to a classic liberal principle of American origin, federalism protects the individual against ‘tyranny’ by means of the territorial division of powers. However, this is an argument that can be used in favour of or against asymmetric institutional solutions of federal (or regional) systems. If used in their favour, it is customary to emphasise the greater responsiveness that asymmetric systems foster, as they are better adapted to the structural differences present in some contexts. Breaking the periphery’s dependence on the centre, for example, would represent a boost for democracy. It is also common to stress the possibilities offered by asymmetry for better accommodating societies that display significant degrees of national and cultural pluralism. If, as Montesquieu claims, the federative republic combines the advantages of being large (stronger) and small (more democratic), better still if it adapts to the existence of national and linguistic communities, as this will favour congruity between a society and its democratic system.

In this regard, it is not so much a matter of preserving cultures, but of recognising them and accommodating them politically in order to improve the quality of the democracy in which they are situated, without necessarily paying any attention to the collectivity’s history or the existence of any previous agreements. Furthermore, according to the functional principle defended by Wheare (Federal Government) and other classic authors of contemporary federalism, the governments of small units have a better understanding of people’s needs and ensure that federal systems function better than non-federal systems. Let us consider, for example, states with significant island entities. In accordance with this principle, if diverse collectivities exist, giving them specific constitutional treatment may also result in an improvement in the way the political system as a whole functions. In this way, it is claimed, it would be possible to avoid the costs associated with the hostility and permanent conflict that characterise societies that display significant cleavages of a national, cultural, or territorial nature. In this sense, asymmetric federalism may be a more suitable model than a uniform division of powers, or it may be preferable to the permanent tensions that exist when institutional plans of a homogeneous or symmetrical nature are applied to realities characterised by strong components of different kinds of pluralism.

It is obvious that all the arguments that are based on values and objectives of a liberal and democratic nature, and on national, cultural and territorial pluralism, contrast with counter-arguments put forward by the proponents of a symmetric kind of federal or regional institutionalisation. The latter appeal to other political values which they consider to be equally legitimate, such as certain interpretations of political equality between territories or between the citizens of the same polity, or certain versions of solidarity between these two types of elements.

In principle, the traditional universalist normativity which first appears with classic political liberalism provides a good basis both for the legitimacy of the decisions of the central power of a federation, and for those of the powers of the federated units, each one in its own sphere of responsibility. However, in the event of conflict between the two levels, it is a normativity that offers more advantages to the federation, especially following the ‘democratisation’ of liberal systems, since it presents its decisions impregnated with ‘common democratic values’, such as the ‘absence of discrimination based on territory’ for all the citizens of the federation. Demands for recognition or greater self-government by federated units may then be presented by the federation as representing the ‘particular interest’ of the latter, in contrast to the ‘general interest’ of the federation. Thus, from the perspective of traditional democratic federalism, the federated units of a multinational federal democracy, for example, have difficulty explaining to the citizens of the other territories of the federation that their recognition and political accommodation in the federation – that is, the respect for and guarantee of their national collective specificity – are not in contradiction to equality of citizenship, but only to those traditional interpretations that associate citizenship with a uniformist version of the concept of political equality.

This second line of argument is more difficult to sustain, above all when ‘mass-media’ democracies encourage concise or simplified kinds of discourse. It is also difficult for units that differ from the federation to explain that the lack of recognition of multinationality or of their own cultural or geographical characteristics within the framework of the federation constitutes a form of discrimination that favours the particular national characteristics of the majority, which hide behind a supposedly universalist language. In other words, in the standard conceptual framework of federal democracies, the sophisticated nature of the perspective that it is precisely the uniform or common treatment of different realities which violates equity and equality among citizens and collectives displaying diverse national, cultural, or geographical identities which makes it difficult to integrate this perspective into everyday political debate.

On the other hand, in the debate that began in the 1980s between the liberal and communitarian perspectives and, subsequently, from the beginning of the 1990s onwards, between so-called ‘Liberalism 1’ and ‘Liberalism 2’, the importance that empirical cultural and national collectivities have for the self-understanding and self-esteem of individuals has been highlighted. These collectivities are groups that do not always coincide with the group that comprises the state political collectivity which defines citizenship. This debate has also revealed the inability of the liberal, democratic and social rights included in constitutions to regulate an egalitarian and equitable treatment of individuals with regard to a specific citizenship. Moreover, it has revealed the fact that it is impossible for states to play a culturally neutral role similar to that which they can establish regarding other phenomena, such as religion. Consequently, in many cases, national and cultural groups have an important moral role to play in not exhausting the individual components and dimensions of the basic values of liberty and political equality.

In order to carry out an analysis of the cases included in this volume, it is necessary to clarify a number of conceptual points that are dealt with in the chapters that follow.

Decentralisation

As many analysts (Elazar, Exploring Federalism; Watts, Comparing Federal Systems; McRoberts, Misconceiving Canada, etc.) have pointed out, when one questions the legitimacy of federal agreements, there are at least two different perspectives that should be approached separately: the perspective of non-centralisation and the perspective of decentralisation. This distinction has practical consequences which go far beyond their apparently academic character, above all when we are dealing with complex national, cultural and territorial realities.

In the liberal tradition, the basic nucleus of federations is linked with the principle of the territorial division of powers. This principle, which was originally associated with a constitutional agreement of centralisation and non-centralisation of certain specific political functions, is clearly different from organisational principles that are also present in federal democracies, such as the principles of participation, equity, or efficiency. It is true that in spheres such as education, public health, the social services, and so on, the central governments of some federations have been taking on functions that until then had been the responsibility of the federated states (the member states of the federation). The increase in the number of concurrent powers in some federations is well known, especially following the appearance of the European welfare states after the Second World War. However, despite the tendencies displayed by some federal states to move towards ‘cooperative’ models, liberal federations continue to hold the view that, regardless of the way that powers are divided among the constituent units and the federation, the general accord cannot be rescinded without a mutual agreement between the two levels of government (which is not normally possible in the case of regional states).

Decentralisation consists of the dispersion of power from a political centre to other centres. Obviously, decentralisation supposes the existence of a previously more centralised structure. The main analytical problem consists in measuring the degree of decentralisation of a political system, regardless of whether it is federal or not. This is one of the most difficult methodological questions to solve when one is seeking results of a comparative nature. Authors such as A. Lijphart, R. Watts, or B. Baldi have put forward methodological solutions aimed at reducing the internal complexity of decentralisation through the use of different measurement indices. These are useful proposals, although they display a number of shortcomings, either because they fail to take into account facts that are important for decentralisation, or because they include significant analytic and normative biases in the indices they propose. I have suggested an alternative way to measure the degree of decentralisation of political systems, using more complex indices than those mentioned above, in a comparative study of 19 decentralised (federal or regional) states (Requejo 2010). In this volume, we will use a more general notion of decentralisation to investigate only the qualitative character of the ten European political systems that began a decentralisation process, taking the asymmetric division of territorial powers as their starting-point.

Symmetry/Asymmetry

As mentioned above, the concept of federal asymmetry has provoked renewed interest by analysts since the middle of the 1980s. Moreover, it is not surprising that this has occurred in countries that display considerable national and/or cultural differences in the composition of their population (Canada, India, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Spain). Currently, most analysts consider that it may be advisable to introduce asymmetric elements into the territorial organisation of the state when political and constitutional recognition of the de facto asymmetries that occur in these contexts is established. At this point, it is helpful to make two comments in order to clarify the notion of territorial asymmetry in federal and regional states.

First, all federations and all regional states include de facto differences among their federated units. For this reason, it is necessary to distinguish, from the beginning, between political asymmetry and constitutional asymmetry. In all federations, there are differences between the federated units with regard to such elements as their population, territory, economic resources, natural resources, and so on. These de facto differences may be significant with regard to political asymmetry, which is also de facto, as they affect the relative importance of each federated part of the federation – for example, the more populated federated states may exert more influence on the federation than states with few inhabitants. On the other hand, constitutional asymmetries or de jure asymmetries are not present in all federations. Broadly speaking, these asymmetries refer to the differences of status or self-government of each federated entity, as well as the kind of relations they have with the central power and the federation as a whole. This means that the principle of territorial division of powers in the federation was established in a non-uniform way for all the federated units. The reasons for this kind of de jure asymmetric regulations vary according to the context. They may be due to geographical, demographic, national, or cultural circumstances, among others, but always reflect de facto asymmetries that exist in the federation. We can find examples of constitutional asymmetries in the Canadian federation, where the province of Quebec enjoys a number of additional powers which are not held by the other federated units (provinces) in the area, such as immigration policy. Another example is the fiscal agreement that two Spanish ‘autonomous communities’ – the Basque Country and Navarre – have established with the central government, in contrast with the financing agreements of the other communities. Another, much more general, example which makes it possible to describe this state as a federation with asymmetric features is the case of Belgium, especially following the 1993 constitutional reform that established the federation, and despite the way this state has subsequently evolved.

Secondly, another aspect to bear in mind with regard to asymmetry is the distinction between constitutional asymmetries and asymmetries which are produced through the exercise of self-government. The federal or regional guarantee of enjoying a level of self-government is, in itself, a potential generator of diversity among the federated units of any federation or regional state, regardless of whether it is symmetric or asymmetric. However, this should not be confused with constitutional asymmetry, which is a legal form of diversity established in the ‘entrance mechanisms’ of the federal or regional system – that is, in the rules of the game of the federation or the regional state – and not only in the system’s ‘exit mechanisms’ – that is, in the different results produced by the exercise of self-government by the federated entities or the regions endowed with self-government. These differences based on the exercise of power exist in all federations, and in all regional states. Thus, if the federated units include, for example, environmental policy or research policy, among their political powers, it is clear that the policies of these units with regard to these spheres may differ markedly from one to another, regardless of whether there are constitutional asymmetries in the federation or in the regional state.

Decentralisation and Constitutional Asymmetries

It is common in political analyses to associate, on the one hand, the notion of asymmetry with the notion of decentralisation and, on the other, the notion of centralisation with that of symmetry. According to this perspective, the more asymmetric the division of powers of a political system, the more decentralised the latter is likely to be, at least in those entities that display de jure asymmetries.

As we shall see, questioning this dual association of concepts is a fundamental part of the results that we present in this volume. We might ask ourselves if this association is an empirical reality, and we would see that, broadly speaking, this is not the case. Instead, the development of a number of federal and regional systems shows that the conceptual associations are more likely to pair processes of (re)symmetrisation with an increase in the degree of decentralisation. But asymmetry is not associated with less decentralisation. And we might ask ourselves why this is so. These are the main themes of this book.

Federalism/Regionalism and Multinational States

The fundamental challenge facing multinational federations and multinational regional states nowadays can be synthesised as a liberal, democratic and national/cultural challenge of polity-building. The main question, in essence, is whether it is possible to combine, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Decentralisation and Federal and Regional Asymmetries in Comparative Politics
• 2 Why is Belgian Federalism Not More Asymmetrical?
• 3 Political and Administrative Asymmetries in a Devolving United Kingdom
• 4 Italy: Increasing Decentralisation, Decreasing Asymmetry
• 5 The Erosion of Regional Powers in the Spanish ‘State of Autonomies’
• 6 Devolution in the North Atlantic: The Case of the Faroe Islands
• 7 The Åland Islands as a Continued Asymmetrical Feature of Finnish Governance – With Some Convoluted Tendencies of Resymmetrisation
• 8 Devolution and Asymmetry in Russia
• 9 The Crimean Conundrum
• 10 Decentralisation and Asymmetries in Portugal
• 11 The End of the Corsican Question?
• 12 Conclusions: Asymmetries and Decentralisation Processes – Comparative Comments
• Index