Federal Democracies

Michael Burgess, Alain-G. Gagnon, Michael Burgess, Alain-G. Gagnon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415555487
• eBook ISBN: 9781135158101
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Federal Democracies examines the evolution of the relationship between federalism and democracy. Taking the late 18th century US Federal Experience as its starting-point, the book uses the contributions of Calhoun, Bryce and Proudhon as 19th century conceptual prisms through which we can witness the challenges and changes made to the meaning of this relationship. The book then goes on to provide a series of case studies to examine contemporary examples of federalism and includes chapters on Canada, USA, Russia, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland and the emerging European Union. It features two further case studies on Minority Nations and a Federal Europe, and concludes with two chapters providing comparative empirical and theoretical perspectives, and comparative reflections on federalism and democracy.

Bringing together international experts in the field this book will be vital reading for students and scholars of federalism, comparative politics and government.

1
Introduction

Federalism and democracy

Michael Burgess and Alain-G.Gagnon

For those scholars and students who are interested in comparative federalism, it may come as a surprise to learn that in the contemporary mainstream literature not very much detailed attention has been paid to the relationship between federalism and democracy. Up until quite recently it appears to be one of those relationships in political science that we simply take for granted. When we look at the world, we do not examine the lenses through which we look at it but which nevertheless shape our understanding of what we see—or think we see. The reason for this complacency might be explained by reference to what Ivo Duchacek noted over 30 years ago when he addressed the meaning of federalism. ‘Federalism’, he claimed, had become ‘one of those good echo words that evoke a positive response but that may mean all things to all men, like democracy, socialism, progress, constitution, justice, or peace’.¹ His observation underlined the essentially elastic nature of these terms that could be stretched to furnish several different meanings.

Since then scholarly research has made great analytical strides in the fields of federalism and democracy. Today we are able to make clear conceptual distinctions between federalism, federation and confederation and we have recourse to a variety of democratic theories, models and typologies that lend themselves to comparative analysis. The subjects remain as discrete, if linked, fields of study but there has been an increasing tendency for scholars of federal studies to equate genuine federations with authentic liberal democracy. One major implication of this equation has been the rejection of previous constitutional claims for federation, such as the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, where there was very little evidence of a functioning liberal democracy. It is true that historically there is no necessary connection between federalism and democracy, but the evolution of both the theory and practice of liberal democracy and federalism in the twentieth century have effectively fused the two together for all practical purposes. Consequently any traces or imprint of federalism that we might detect—or might be claimed—in cases like the Soviet Union, for example, must be treated with great scepticism and suspicion for the simple reason that their constitutional claims were counterfeit; these political systems operated in practice as centralised, authoritarian single-party dictatorships.²

This Introduction is divided into three parts. The first part establishes the foundation of the relationship between federalism and democracy and looks briefly at how previous scholars have construed it, while also taking the opportunity to address some of the key issues that continue to surround this relationship. The second part addresses federalism and contemporary democratic theory with the principal purpose of pointing up some of the major theoretical discussions and controversies that continue to characterise the intellectual debate. Finally, the third part concentrates upon the normative empirical and theoretical aspects of the relationship, as expressed in the chapters in the book, that have increasingly come to dominate the intellectual discourse in response to practical problems in the contemporary world.

Federalism, democracy and federal democracy

The nature of the relationship between federalism and democracy is both complex and fascinating, and it requires first that we briefly clarify and explore the conceptual background to each of these fundamental terms about which we seem to be so complacent. As we will demonstrate, there was originally no necessary connection between them. Conceptually they evolved as discrete historical phenomena dating back to the Greeks, Romans and to biblical times, and only gradually came together as a result of changes in the structure of power relations among empires, dynasties, alliances and princely kingdoms. The emergence in the sixteenth century of the modern state in Europe and the relentless religious strife wrought by theological disputes that culminated in the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation served in the seventeenth century to forge the basis for a radical intellectual rethinking of the nature of political authority, obligation and legitimacy. Johannes Althusius, a German Calvinist magistrate, whose Politica Methodice Digesta (known as the Politics) first appeared in 1603, is widely acknowledged to be the intellectual founding father of the federal idea as a form of social and political association in the Continental European tradition of federalism.³

The intellectual framework and the practical political circumstances conducive to the emergence of the federal idea as part of the larger process of the evolution of democracy can be traced back to the seventeenth century in the major works of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, James Harrington and Algernon Sydney in England and a string of philosophical writings in eighteenth century Europe, including Baron de Montesquieu and Jean Jacques Rousseau in France, Hugo Grotius in the Netherlands and Immanuel Kant and Samuel Pufendorf in Germany. But it was the dawning of the age of mass politics symbolised by the American (1776) and French (1789) Revolutions at the end of the eighteenth century that unleashed powerful political forces, which transformed the federal idea from a species of international law and order—a formula for forging peace between states—into a form of national political organisation. As we shall see in Chapter 2, in its original incarnation in early American republican thought about political liberty, order, consent and obligation, federalism was not associated with democracy at all. Indeed, as integral to a republican form of government, it was firmly contradistinguished from democracy, which was equated with mob rule, popular tyranny and the ignorance of the masses.

Nonetheless, it is important to recognise that perceptions of federalism changed concomitantly in the nineteenth century with the uneven development of liberal democracy in the United Kingdom (UK), parts of Continental Europe and Latin America and the United States of America (USA). In comparative terms, the imperial federation that constituted Imperial Germany in 1871 sat uncomfortably with the constitutional metamorphosis of Switzerland in 1848 into a new federation, the Canadian Westminster model of parliamentary federation in 1867 and the post-bellum USA but they were different types of federal models that practised different kinds of limited liberal representative democracy. Not surprisingly, it was the USA that became the dominant federal model of emulation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for aspiring liberal democracies wishing to utilise federal principles for different purposes. As the USA progressed so impressively in socio-economic and technological terms in the late nineteenth century so did the reputation of federalism not only as an innovative means of state and nation building but also as the archetype of a new form of territorial state and government whose philosophical foundations were anchored in the concept of civitas or res publica. The new republic gradually came to symbolise the ideal of liberal democratic constitutional government with popular sovereignty vested in the written constitution.

No better example of the high esteem in which the US federal model was held can be demonstrated than the famous statement made by one of the leading scholars of federalism in the early period after the end of the Second World War. In 1946 Kenneth Wheare’s Federal Government was published and in the course of introducing his definition of the federal principle he confirmed the status of the model in the following terms:

Many consider it the most important and the most successful example. Any definition of federal government which failed to include the United States would be…condemned as unreal….(For) the federal principle has come to mean what it does because the United States has come to be what it is…. I believe, the government of the United States is the most successful federal government in the world.⁴

This was a particular interpretation of federal government but in the attention that he clearly paid to the structure and design of the federation itself it was also about the nature of the state. In addition, Wheare’s view of the modern USA was one that fused federalism and liberal democracy. There was never any doubt about this in his mind. He rejected outright those autocracies and dictatorships that might use the federal label to describe their states and governments. Whether in the federal government itself or in the governments of the constituent units, Wheare believed that sooner or later they would ‘destroy that equality of status and that independence with its one-party government and its denial of free election’, that was clearly ‘incompatible with the working of the federal principle’. Federalism clearly demanded forms of government that had ‘the characteristics usually associated with democracy or free government’ and while there was ‘a wide variety in the forms which each government may take’, the main essentials were ‘free election and a party system, with its guarantee of a responsible opposition’.⁵

In hindsight, Wheare’s references to ‘democracy’ appear conceptually to be somewhat limited and outdated but there can be no doubt that his understanding of federal government in the federal state was predicated firmly upon liberal democratic assumptions. These included a belief in the rule of law, free and regular elections by secret ballot, a competitive political party system, an independent judiciary, a free media, the protection of individual freedoms and human rights, and the legitimacy of government opposition. Today we would construe Wheare’s condemnation of authoritarian single-party governments in federations candidly to mean a basic contradiction in terms. Their constitutional claims were simply fraudulent. Where they exist or have existed, they are impostors.

In the great intellectual debate during the post-war years about the meaning of federalism in the mainstream Anglo-American literature, William Livingston’s Federalism and Constitutional Change appeared in 1956 and in its principal advocacy of the ‘sociology of federalism’ it nonetheless gave unequivocal approval to the liberal democratic credentials required of federal states.⁶ Livingston put it thus:

Federal government is suitable only to those polities that are organised upon a democratic or republican foundation. By this is meant merely that it is incompatible with any form of dictatorship or absolutism. Federal government presupposes a desire and an ability to secure the component units against encroachment by the central government. If the latter is an authoritarian dictatorship, it is difficult to see how the safeguards of the federal structure can be worth much; the states would continue perhaps to exercise their functions, but only on the sufferance of the central government…so far as the scheme itself is concerned it would be at the mercy of the dictator. Logically the two are not incompatible, but practically one would contradict the other.⁷

Looking in particular at Latin America and the Soviet Union, Livingston confirmed that the central governments of federal states had effectively ‘reduced the federal elements of the constitutions to nullities’.⁸ In such states the central governments had put placemen or stooges in the constituent state governments who were subservient to the regime. The constituent units had in consequence become mere ‘agencies of the ruling group in the central government’ so that ‘the independent and coordinate status’ which characterised federal-state relations ‘in a true federation’ had become in practice ‘meaningless’.⁹ With concluding assurance, he declared that ‘Dictatorship and democracy seem clearly incompatible in a federal scheme of government’.¹⁰

Our third major scholar of federalism, William Riker, established his reputation in this field with the publication in 1964 of his Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance and occupies a somewhat curious position in relation to federalism and democracy discussed in this chapter.¹¹ Indeed, for such an important contributor to the intellectual debate about federalism, it comes as something of a surprise to learn that as a political scientist he added very little to the subject of federal democracy, apart from his infamous statement about the equation of federalism with the local repression of slavery and racism in the American South.¹² In retrospect, it beggars belief to recall that he included both the Soviet Union and Argentina in the category of fede...

Table of contents

• Routledge series in federal studies (formerly the Cass series in regional and federal studies) ISSN 1363–5670
• Contents
• Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• Part I Historical perspectives
• Part II Case studies
• Part III Comparative perspectives
• Index