Federalism in Asia

Harihar Bhattacharyya

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781134376421
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book analyzes the successes and failures of various federal measures adopted in India, Pakistan and Malaysia for the political accommodation of diversity. Bhattacharyya then assesses their comparative significance for other countries in Asia. In particular, he examines growing tensions between nation and state-building in ethnically plural societies; modes of federation-building in Asia; persistent ethno-nationalist tensions in federations, and the relationship between federalism and democracy; and federalism and decentralization. Since ethno-nationalist conflict remains unresolved in most countries of Asia, this book should of interest to those seeking long-term solutions of problems of order and stability in ethnically diverse countries in Asia.

1
The concept of federalism and its relevance

Introduction

Federalism appears to be the political principle of the current era, a time that is marked simultaneously by globalization and localization, ‘diminished state sovereignty’, the urge to live with differences, and decentralization. This principle seems to inform many institutional arrangements that the states nowadays are adopting for accommodating various ethno-regional differences and identities both within their ‘boundaries’ and outside of them in transnational modes. The deep-seated Anglo-French preoccupation with the unitary nation-state and the idea of its sovereignty, and the resultant suspicion of federalism and decentralization are passé (John Pinder 2007:1). Pinder has convincingly argued how the British and the French since the twentieth century have slowly worked towards the institutions and processes that have prepared a basis for considering federal arrangements as desirable for the sake of unity and cohesion in the same countries (Pinder 2007:1–3). The rise of the European Union as a viable political association is a case in point (Pinder 2007:3).

This post-Cold War globalizing era, in other words, has, as it were, turned increasingly federal. A kind of federal revolution has been sweeping the world over the past few decades. From one estimate, some 40 per cent (about two billion) people globally live under some kind of federation (numbering 24). The post-Soviet renaissance in federalism may not be as surprising, since the Soviet model of the so-called ‘socialist’ federations in the former USSR and Eastern Europe was emptied of the real content of federalism, being highly centralist and undemocratic, and mostly rhetorical: lacking in any real motive for powersharing and hence real autonomy. The Soviet model ultimately failed to offer any durable space for accommodation of ethno-national diversity. The nineteenth century, as Walter Bagehot said (Hobsbawm 1990). was an era of nationbuilding when nations were born by nation-uniting, i.e. disparate elements were united for building national unity in a manner which came to be eulogized the world over as ‘unity-in-diversity’. Federations, or quasi-federations, wherever so adopted, provided one very important mode of nation-building by nation-uniting. The rebirth of many (post-Soviet) nations by splitting from the former Soviet Union, and the fragmentation of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, apparently legitimized a negative principle of nationhood, and were a pointer to the grotesque failure of socialist federations. But the failure of the so-called ‘socialist’ federations did not signify the failure of federalism as such, but the particular design adopted in a fundamentally different, and somewhat inhospitable, political environment. Marxism’s unease with the issues of federalism, identity and difference is well-known (Bhattacharyya 2001a: 41–61). Paradoxical though it may seem, the ‘socialist’ failure in federalism and the resultant state crisis has offered a lesson or two for the rest of the world for rethinking the modes of accommodation of ethno-national identities for state unity.

Globalization and the resurgence of federalism

Globalization has added to the current relevance of the federal idea. The failure of socialism apart, it is globalization, and its attendant effects on the nation-state, that has cleared the space for the resurgence of federalism today. As we have indicated above, a world marked by centralized nation-states and national sovereignty is not hospitable for federalism. The French Jacobins considered federalism to be counter-revolutionary. Paradoxical though it may seem, in the heyday of the unitary nation-states, Switzerland was the only country in Europe in the whole of the nineteenth century to adopt a federation in 1848! Federalism as a European dream was realized outside of Europe! Globalization has weakened the basis of these unitary centralized nation-states so much that the sovereignty of the nation-state is much diminished today. Globalization has encouraged an awareness of ethnic identity and conflicts whose resolution has called for a federal solution. Samuel Huntington has drawn our attention to the ‘global identity crisis’. ‘Debates over national identity’, he says, ‘are a pervasive characteristic of our times’. In his own words:

Modernization, economic development, urbanization, and globalization have led people to rethink their identities and to redefine them in narrower, more intimate, communal terms. Subnational cultural and regional identities are taking precedence over broader national identities. People identify with those who are most like themselves and with whom they share a perceived common ethnicity, religion, traditions, and myths of common descent and common history.

(Huntington 2004:12–13)

The above has resulted, argues Huntington, in fragmentation of national identity worldwide, most vividly in the US itself, where multiculturalism, racial, ethnic and gender consciousness are challengers to national identity (Huntington 2004: 13). The same has equally been a challenge to the authority of the nation-state so far taken to be the sole repository of people’s loyalty, and embodiment of people’s identity. In the age of fragmentation of both national identity and the nation-state, the role of federalism, however, becomes critical. Rebuilding ‘national identity’ amidst weakening of the nation state in multi-ethnic societies is difficult indeed and intertwined with appropriate federation-building. This is particularly significant when the state gradually withdraws itself from social welfare and intervention, giving way to the full play of the market. Global scholarship on federalism tends to re-search for genuine federalist solutions to problems facing the ethnic-conflict-ridden world. Ronald L. Watts (1998) very aptly summed up the global concern with federalism:

A major factor in the surge of interest in federalism … is that the world is paradoxically exhibiting simultaneously increasing pressures for integration and for disintegration. Because federalism combines a shared government (for specific purposes) with autonomous action by the constituent units of government that maintain their identity and distinctiveness, more and more peoples have come to see some form of federalism as the closest institutional approximation to the multinational reality of the contemporary world.

(Watts 1998:118)

Federalist solutions are also contemplated for long-drawn-out ethno-national conflicts in various parts of the world, for post-colonial, post-Communist, as well as post-conquest, Sri Lanka; Burundi; Myanmar (Burma); the countries of the former USSR and Yugoslavia; Afghanistan; and even Iraq. Two historical factors that have propelled the federal idea to a central place today, according to Graham Smith, are thus the resurgence of ethno-nationalist tensions and the search for how best to organize national and ethno-national communities so that they can live with differences (Smith 1995:1).

The most significant area of impact of globalization has, however, been the nation-state, so much so that scholars have already expressed concern about the prospects of the nation-state. The ‘end of the nation-state’, the ‘decline of the nation-state’, the ‘crisis of the nation-state’, etc. are already quite familiar titles in the growing literature on the nation-state. The extent of the impact of globalization on the nation-state is a subject of some debates among scholars, but both the sceptical and the transformation hypotheses, despite some differences, have concurred on the continuing relevance of the nation-state in the vastly changed context. Anthony Giddens, taking the side of the transformation hypothesis, argues that the nation-state still remains the principal actor within the global political order, although its power, functions and authority are being recast by globalization (Guibernau and Hutchinson 2001). David Held has located the impact of globalization on the nation-state in the emergence of a ‘new sovereignty regime’ that displaces the traditional ideas of ‘statehood as an absolute, indivisible, territorially exclusive and zero-sum form of public power’ (Held 1998:11–56; 214–243). As a result, a post-classical nation-state, it is being argued, has been taking shape with considerably limited state sovereignty; with less concern for homogeneity (over-emphasized in the heyday of the classical nation-state!) and greater concern for diversity and difference; and more prone ‘to devolve power and provide legitimacy to regional institutions created within its territory’. This post-classical nation-state with ‘diminished state sovereignty’ provides the congenial context for the more adequate operation of federalism in which the constituent units of the federation enjoy more autonomy of action. Not the end of the nation-state, but the gradual emergence of a post-classical posttraditional nation-state (Guibernau and Hutchinson 2001:242–269) that has provided for the congenial atmosphere for federalism to take shape.

Origin and development of the concept

Federalism is an ancient idea. The Israelite tribes, some 3,200 years ago, were thought to have established the first ‘federal’ (to be exact, confederal) system in the world (Watts 1996:2). Such ancient confederacies were also found among the many tribes in Africa, North America, Greece, and Asia too. The Roman Republic was also a kind of confederal arrangement (Watts 1996:2).¹ In medieval Europe, self-governing cities were linked to each other by some kind of loose confederations for trade and commerce, and defence purposes. The Swiss confederation of 1291 was a powerful illustration of the above (Watts 1996:2). Even as late as 1781, the newly independent states, after the American Revolution, established a confederation, although very soon its deficiencies led to its transformation into the first modern federation in 1787 (Watts 1996:3).

Etymologically, the term ‘federal’ is derived from the Latin foedus, which means a covenant. The federal idea originates from the Bible, and the original usage of the idea was theological, referring to partnership between humans and God (Elazar 1987:5). The federal idea, in its original form, was theo-political. With the biblical covenantal root, the federal idea came to mean – politically and subsequently – partnership relationships between individuals and families, leading to the formation of body politic; and between bodies politic, leading to the formation of a compound polity (Elazar 1987:5). It was not until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that the federal idea became secularized through such compact thinkers as Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, and finally by Montesquieu and Madison who transformed the federal idea into a ‘fully secular political principle and technique’ (Elazar 1987:115; Karmis and Norman (eds) 2005). Elazar defines the federal arrangement that follows the federal idea, as:

In essence, a federal arrangement is one of partnership, established and regulated by a covenant, whose internal relationships reflect the special kind of sharing that must prevail among the partners, based on a mutual recognition of the integrity of each partner and the attempt to foster a special unity among them.

(Elazar 1987:5)

Two intertwined principles are involved in the federal idea: self-rule and sharedrule. According to Elazar (1987), federalism, on the basis of the combination of those two principles, is able to link ‘individuals, groups and polities in lasting but limited union in such a way as to provide for the energetic pursuit of common ends while maintaining the respective integrities of all parties’ (Elazar 1987:115). Federalism then, as a political principle, refers to constitutional diffusion of powers among the constituent elements in a way that fulfils the desire for unity for some common purposes and autonomy for some other purposes. For Elazar then, federalism, politically speaking, has served as one of the three forms (the other two are conquest, and organic) that polities have been historically organized (Elazar 1987:2). In the sense that federalism is covenantal, it is thought to involve choice on the part of the covenanting parties.

Although the idea of federalism gained popularity particularly among the countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa after the Second World War, in Europe, due to the heavy impact of the French Revolution and the idea of the nation-state (which turned out to be the predominant form of political organization), federalism did not have much sway. Bereciartu (1994) sees federalism as a European dream but realized outside of Europe (Bereciatru 1994:166). Riker rightly says that federations were rare before the nineteenth century.

The real proliferation of federations took place in the post-Second World War period mostly in the former colonies in Asia and Africa, but also in Europe, with the overriding need to unite multicultural societies. But such experiments were fraught with a host of problems, and as Ronald L. Watts, the world-famous authority on federalism has shown, many of such experiments were cancelled or suspended (Watts 1966:9). Again, of the three federations in Asia (India, Pakistan and Malaysia) India has achieved greater successes in uniting a vast and ethno-linguistically diverse country, although Malaysia and Pakistan have not experienced further disintegration after 1965 and 1971 respectively. By the 1980s, the limitations of such experiments were clear. Watts wrote: ‘These experiences suggested that, even when undertaken with the best of motives there are limits to the appropriateness of federal solutions or particular federal forms in certain circumstances’ (Watts 1966:9).

In the wake of the end of the Cold War, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and the reorganization of Europe under the leadership of the European Union, the federal idea gained considerable momentum in the 1990s. The federal idea is taken up once again for political solutions to problems and as a ‘liberating and positive form of political organization (Elazar 1987:2). Belgium and South Africa became federations in 1993 and 1996 respectively. Spain has been moving towards such an idea since 1978, and in Italy there are strong pressures for establishing a federation. The federal idea is also mooted at the level of the European Union. We are truly in the period of the resurgence of federalism. Daniel Elazar believes that the federal idea is resurfacing as a significant political force in humanity’s transition from the modern to the post-modern epoch (Elazar 1987:2).

Since federalism has taken many forms in diverse contexts, defining federalism has not been found to be easy. The scholarly debate about the definition of federalism is too big to be taken up here even in a cursory form. The issues involved in defining federalism are varied and often complex: non-native vs. descriptive aspects; the distinction between federalism, federation and federal political systems; a whole array of such federal arrangements as a ‘union’, and ‘quasi-federations’; and also the complex application of some of the federal principles in political systems which are not formally federal. Finally, there is also the issue of federalism as a structure, and as a process, as well as a cluster of institutions.

According to Riker (1996), federalism as a ‘constitutionally determined tierstructure’, a form of government which implies arrangement of tiers of government ‘in a permanent agreement’ that ensures that governments at the constituent and central tiers always exist and retain their assigned duties. For him, the agreement or covenant in federalism is of a special character, since the Latin word foedus from which the term ‘federalism’ has been derived also means fides or trust. From this, he has concluded that even though federation is a bargain about government, this bargain is not based on an enforcement procedure, but ‘on simple trust itself’ (Elazar 1989:5).

Noticing the wide array of closely related terms such as ‘federalism’, ‘federation’, and ‘federal political system’, and their often interchangeable uses, and the ambiguous meanings attributed to them, in the scholarly discourse, since the time of The Federalist (1788), Ronald L. Watts (Watts 1996, 1998) has distinguished between the three terms for more clarity in the use of those terms. According to Watts, normatively, federalism may involve one of two general approaches. First, it may advocate a ‘pragmatic balancing of citizen preferences for (a) joint action for certain purposes, and (b) self-government of the constituent units for other purposes’ (Watts 2008:8–9). Second, ideologically, and philosophically, it often refers to a utopian system espoused by thinkers and movements. In the recent times, it has been conceptualized in the European tradition of federalism, in terms of the principle of subsidiarity (Watts 2008:6).

Federal political system is a descriptive term which refers to the genus of political organization marked by the combination of shared-rule and self-rule (Watts 2008:8). But this may mean a whole lot of complex political arrangements. Watts says that this may include ‘hybrids because the statesmen are often more interested in pragmatic political solutions than in theoretical purity’ (Watts 2008:8).

‘Federation’, according to Watts, is a species within the genus of federal political systems. He defines it as:

a compound polity combining constituent units and a general government, each possessing...