Introduction
Federalism is a system of government that sits uneasily between a
unitary government with administrative decentralization
and a confederacy composed of independent states that choose to
coordinate their activity in some realms, such as defense
or trade. The comparative study of federations is broad, ranging
from internal fiscal arrangements to economic performance
to political representation and identity. Uniting these diverse
fields is a common interest in federalism as a system of government,
adopted for a purpose, and failing or meeting aspirations. Federal
systems vary widely in construction, in purpose, and in
practice. The system effects are complex and often unexpected.
Hence, adopting the federal form is an important constitutional
decision with significant—and sometimes surprising—consequences.
In this article, we concentrate on two aspects of the literature
on comparative federalism: the postulated benefits of federalism
and theories to explain its inconsistent performance.
General Overviews
As a field, political science has been working on (and arguing about) an understanding of what federalism might achieve and
under what conditions it might be successful since Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and especially James Madison wrote under
the pseudonym Publius (
Publius 1787–1788).
Political scientists and those in closely related disciplines,
particularly economics and law, continue to search for an
understanding of optimal constitutional design and the dynamics of
federal systems in practice. The study of federalism is
both normative and positive, often within the same work. Positive
analyses characterize the federal system, make predictions
about what the system might achieve, formulate hypotheses about
what causes a federal system to perform well or poorly, and
measure empirical outcomes (e.g.,
Wheare 1946;
Riker 1964;
Filippov, et al. 2004;
Ostrom 2008;
Bednar 2009).
Positive political theory also captures the effect of federalism on
other political or economic activities, such as the
production of policy, the extent of citizens’ political
participation, or the shape of the party system. The study of federalism
is also normative: as seen in
Ostrom 2008,
Elazar 1987, and
Burgess 2006, the theories characterize the relationship between the people and their government, and the way that federalism builds and
accommodates diverse values and identities.
Hueglin and Fenna 2006 and
Elazar 1987 capture well the philosophy of thought that underpins the concept of federalism. This article focuses primarily on the positive
literature.
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Bednar, Jenna. The Robust Federation: Principles of Design. Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
A general theory of federalism that is based on the
incentives that the federal structure creates for the component parts.
Defiance of constitutional boundaries is to be expected,
and no single institutional safeguard is sufficient to ensure
compliance.
A system of redundant and complementary safeguards is
necessary for a federation that is robust and adaptive.
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Burgess, Michael. Comparative Federalism: Theory and Practice. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Burgess’s text treats federalism and federations broadly,
from intellectual and empirical origins, to close studies of several
federations in operation, to analysis of federal-system
failure and success. Rather than accept a single, general theory of
federalism’s origins, Burgess proposes a theory of
circumstantial causation of federations that embraces a wide variety of
internal and external factors. Federations are diverse in
form, purpose, and practice.
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Elazar, Daniel J. Exploring Federalism. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1987.
Elazar provides a comprehensive account of the origins of
federalism and describes different structural forms of federalism;
this comparative work describes how federalism satisfies
diverse populations. Elazar emphasizes that the essence of federalism
is not the formal structure but the relationships between
the units.
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Filippov, Mikhail, Peter C. Ordeshook, and Olga Shvetsova. Designing Federalism: A Theory of Self-Sustainable Federal Institutions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
This book links the rise of federally integrated
political parties to increased opportunities for good policymaking. When
parties are not integrated across subnational and
national levels of government, policymaking can be myopic and beholden
to
constituency desires. When parties are integrated across
subnational and national levels, however, politicians are motivated
partly by party constraints and push for less-myopic
policymaking.
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Hueglin, Thomas O., and Alan Fenna. Comparative Federalism: A Systematic Inquiry. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2006.
Hueglin and Fenna draw upon differences in constitutional
traditions and institutional design to identify four main models
of federalism, as practiced in the United States, Canada,
Germany, and the European Union. They highlight the importance of
judicial review in stabilizing and changing the federal
system.
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Ostrom, Vincent. The Political Theory of a Compound Republic: Designing the American Experiment. 3d ed. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008.
Ostrom applies his influential theory of polycentric
governance—where decision-making authority is dispersed among actors
and agencies, and democracy emerges from the bottom up—to
the American federal system. Ostrom presents the federal principle
of overlapping, polycentric decision points as prior and
necessary for democracy to thrive.
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Publius. The Federalist Papers. 1787–1788.
James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay make the case for replacing the early US Articles of Confederation government
with a federal model. The authors construct the basic intellectual framework of federalism. Accessible online via the US Library of Congress website.
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Riker, William H. Federalism: Origin, Operation, and Significance. Basic Studies in Politics. Boston: Little, Brown, 1964.
Riker hypothesizes that federalism emerges due to
military necessity or expansionist drive. He categorizes countries by
type
of federal government. The party system and citizen
loyalty maintain the distribution of authority between levels of
government.
Riker concludes with a condemnation of federalism because
it enables racist political enclaves to persist.
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Wheare, K. C. Federal Government. London: Oxford University Press, 1946.
A classic study of federalism, updated regularly throughout the 1900s, Wheare describes the “federal principle” of divided
government, where authority is distributed between two levels of government.
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