Conclusion

Federal institutional design affects public security, as do a plethora of other endogenous effects whose impact on the performance of a federal polity's strategy and capacity to generate public security cannot always be disentan­gled.

Public security tends to be more centralized in heterogeneous countries than in homogeneous ones. However, particular legal histories continue to influence current constitutional and legal frameworks. The findings confirm that federations are prone to centralize public security when confronted with looming internal or external security threats. The centralization of security measures in many countries in the aftermath of 9/11 resulted in a recalibration of self-rule in favour of shared rule with respect to public security.

The division of powers in the constitution may not reflect the potentially overbearing security capacity of the federal level. At the same time, their more limited constitutional competencies notwithstanding, sub-state, and espe­cially municipal, levels seem to fill some of the void when federal will or capac­ity are found wanting. In homogeneous countries, the principle of subsidiarity seems to prevail.

The decentralization of security and prospective inequitable capacity give rise to concerns about asymmetry in public security outcomes across constituent units, including inequitable human rights outcomes. Conversely, equity in public security outcomes emerges as a litmus test for the maturity of public security in a federal polity. However, equity does not necessarily imply symmetry. On the contrary, in deeply diverse asymmetric societies, the deliv­ery of public security may actually be a precondition for equitable outcomes because of extensive variation in values, interests and priorities across sub­state units. Irrespective of the degree of asymmetry, however, decentralization emerges as a key determinant of the legitimacy and efficacy of public security and the intergovernmental relations that institutionalize it. The institutional logic that informs this finding is a function of territorial differentiation of secu­rity priorities, values and interests across constituent units on the one hand, and subsidiarity on the other.

The impact of the degree to which intergovernmental relations are polit­icized has a bearing on vertical and horizontal coordination only absent a concomitant level of maturity and trust among politicians and bureaucrats at various levels of government.

Where institutional capacity and legitimacy are low, whom citizens tend to trust with matters of public security depends on the level of government more closely associated with their interests: while minorities may tend to mis­trust the federal government when they reside in a sub-state unit where they comprise the majority, they may place greater trust in the federal government when they are in the minority in their sub-state unit. However, low levels of accountability and transparency need not necessarily occasion mistrust as long as public security outcomes are adequate.

Federal governance is never easy; but without effective institutions and processes to respond to diverse local values, interests and priorities for free­dom and security, neither federalism nor governance, let alone democracy, are likely to succeed. As in other policy areas, the greater the variance among pri­orities, interests and values, the greater the incentive for decentralization and asymmetry to reconcile unity in diversity.

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