Introduction
If we take common concepts of federalism seriously, they all seem to be inherently contradictory. A federal system should balance unity and diversity, integration and differentiation, or centralization and decentralization.
Criteria that have been suggested to find an adequate balance, like cost and benefits, efficiency, equality, or subsidiarity turn out to be empty signifiers when decisions have to be made on divergent principles (Treisman 2007). All efforts to determine an optimal or satisficing allocation of power or distribution of fiscal resources are therefore futile.Accordingly, scholars have suggested considering federalism as a process of continuous balancing of contrasting values (Bednar 2009; Filippov, Ordeshook and Shvetsova 2004; Friedrich 1968; Riker 1964). In a similar vein, Thomas O. Hueglin (2013) has reformulated subsidiarity into a negotiation principle. These approaches indicate ways of coping with the conflicts between principles and power, not the least the centralization-decentralization problem, as the distribution of power can indeed be balanced in processes of negotiations and mutual adjustment induced by countervailing forces or institutional safeguards. In reality, these contradictory requirements are met by political compromises and ongoing processes of allocating and reallocating power and resources.
There is, however, a more fundamental conflict built into a federal system, at least if it is organized as a federal democracy. From a normative point of view, many scholars have taken federalism and democracy as two corresponding concepts (e.g., Burgess 2012; Elazar 1987; Watts 2008). In reality, they constitute incompatible institutions and cause divergent processes of politics and policy making. Although normative theories claim that both principles of a political order are essential, balancing them is highly problematic.
Democracy as a way to govern by the people and for the people requires that those holding power in government are accountable for their decisions. The principle of accountability implies that governments are autonomous and, accordingly, fully responsible for their decisions. As long as federalism, like democracy, is presumed to imply autonomy of governments at their different levels, there is no conflict inherent in a federal democracy. Yet, not only is this concept of a dual federalism and a constitution separating powers into ‘watertight departments' unrealistic, it has never been an accurate notion of federalism. Federalism's goal has always been, as Alfred Stepan (1999) put it, a ‘coming-together' or ‘holding-together' of constituent units. In modern society, governance in a federation is mainly about managing interdependence.Autonomy and interdependence are conditions which are difficult to balance. On the one hand, the meaning of autonomy and the causes and consequences of interdependence are not clearly demarcated. On the other hand, there is no obvious trade-off between these contradictory requirements, as they are rooted in different institutions and arenas of policy making. Setting a workable constellation between federalism and democracy is much more difficult than balancing unity and diversity, integration and differentiation or centralization and decentralization. The challenge inherent in the concept of a federal democracy is comparable to the classical mathematical problem of squaring the circle with ruler and compass. In theory, it cannot be solved; there might, however, be pragmatic ways to cope with the dilemma at hand.
Yet, in contrast to the mathematical problem of turning a circle into a square, the comparable task for a theory of federalism and for political practice in a federation is not well defined. For a long time, scholars took the US and the Swiss federations as models to explain why federalism supports democracy and the other way around.
They identified a federal democracy with separation of powers and mutual checks and balance. Thus, they ignored the increasing interdependence between levels of government and the basic mechanisms of representative democracy and party competition. In federations with parliamentary democracies, the conflict between autonomy and interdependence is obvious and has long been discussed. However, the conditions under which it materializes and how it can be resolved is less apparent.In order to outline the basic challenge for federal democracies, I will start by exploring the fundamental conflict between the autonomy of accountable governments within a federation and the requirement for intergovernmental coordination entailed by the interdependence of their policies. The contradiction surfaces when we clarify why autonomy is a condition for democracy and how interdependence between jurisdictions is managed in a federation. Next I suggest a conceptualization of linkage between federalism and democracy, which should allow us to identify how they actually interact in different federal systems. I then suggest that a comparative approach on the autonomy-interdependence problem might ultimately help us to establish guidelines for practical solutions.
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