Linking Democracy and Intergovernmental Politics

Before discussing these linkages in greater detail and exploring how to cope with the dichotomy between autonomy and interdependence, one aspect needs to be underlined. More often than not, intergovernmental relations emerge in public administration and concern administrative tasks, like harmonizing the implementation of law.

We can categorize the different types of linkages using the concept of cou­pling (Benz 2019). In system theory and theories of organization, this concept describes the intensity of linkages between sub-systems or subunits. In fed­eral democracies, it refers to the linkage of politics in the democratic arena and in the arena of intergovernmental relations. They can be tightly coupled if processes in one arena determine actors' behaviour and policy making in the other, and if these effects change the logics of politics in intergovernmental relations. They are decoupled if politics in both arenas operate separately and according to their own logic without influencing each other. With loose cou­pling, we can describe different varieties of linkages which allow for mutual influence and adjustment of policies in the democratic and intergovernmental processes, without one dominating the other.

Tightly coupled structures exist if executives share powers and need to negotiate intergovernmental policies, and if they are committed to the will of their party in parliament or have to consider competition with opposition parties.

Decoupling is rare, although the US is an example. Its federal constitu­tion separates not only executive and legislative powers, with both operating according to distinct modes of democracy, but also the powers of federal and state governments. In this institutional context, the federal government does not need the assent of state governments to legislation. The latter can only try to make their voice heard in federal politics via intergovernmental lobbying. State and local interests are expressed by members of Congress, more so in the House of Representatives than in the Senate. But these legislative institutions do not provide a venue for managing interdependence between levels of gov­ernment.

However, the contrasting cases of Germany and the US do not prove that interdependence can only be coped with at the cost of autonomy or that the management of interdependence is obstructed by autonomy, or—to put it in another way—that democracy and federalism cannot be linked in an appropriate way. Other federations reveal loosely coupled structures: for instance, the highly decentralized Swiss federation, where parties in parlia­ments, as well as federal and cantonal governments, negotiate agreements in order to prevent or, in cases of constitutional amendments, to influence the outcome of a referendum (Vatter 2018). In Australia, the need to negoti­ate among majority and opposition parties in the bicameral legislatures, and intense intergovernmental cooperation, seems to render the system prone to deadlocks caused by multiple veto points. In reality, vetoes are avoided by pragmatic interplay between legislative and intergovernmental policy making (Hollander and Patapan 2007), and the plurality of party politics reduces the probability of confrontation within both arenas.

Loose coupling means that structures do not determine politics and that arenas of politics are linked by processes (Benz 2019). Even parliamentary democracies do not necessarily link governments to parliament so tightly that party competition determines governmental decisions. In general, the idea of representation does not require office-holders to carry out mandates of their electorate or a parliament, but allows them latitude to decide on their own under the condition that, ex post, they maintain the support of a majority of citizens or of parliaments (Scharpf 2019). Moreover, representatives and repre­sented are linked by public communication. It is not parliamentary democracy, then, which causes tight coupling, but party polarization, whereas a pluralist party system can increase a government's flexibility. On the other hand, it is not consensus democracy which provides for loose coupling, but patterns where consensus has to be continuously renewed. For this reason, coalition govern­ments which commit an executive to implement a coalition treaty, reduces discretion in intergovernmental relations, whereas minority governments can seek issue-specific support and gain discretion in a strategic ‘two-level game' (Putnam 1988) between intergovernmental and democratic politics.

However, patterns of democracy are difficult to change, since they are partly entrenched in constitutions, partly based on emergent norms, and partly shaped by the party system which reflects changes in society. Instead, pat­terns of intergovernmental policy making are more appropriate for creating loosely coupled structures in a federal democracy. In general, governments should avoid mandatory intergovernmental agreements. Hence constitutional rules requiring joint decisions are problematic (Scharpf 1988).

Democratic and federal politics can also be linked by committees or inter­governmental councils (Behnke and Mueller 2017), which establish a kind of ongoing communication, cross-cutting the institutional divides between exec­utive and legislative actors and between levels of government. If these coun­cils develop a differentiated structure with political and administrative tiers of interaction, and if they include committees of experts or representatives of civil society, several benefits follow. They can avoid political bargaining dom­inating negotiations; they reduce the impact of party confrontation in inter­governmental policy making; and they increase the probability that outcomes of multi-level governance find acceptance in parliaments and with the public. Moreover, such differentiated structures allow dealing with conflicts in a policy sequence and in arenas where bargaining and confrontation can be balanced by arguing and problem-solving (Benz 2016, pp.

These are no theoretical ideas, but patterns of linking federalism and democ­racy that can be observed in practice. Unfortunately, they are often discussed as exceptions to the rule, as practices not in accordance with the principles of federalism or democracy, even as developments contradicting constitutional law or undermining the constitution. Quite the contrary is true. Patterns of loosely coupled federalism and democracy are a condition sine qua non for a democratic federation. They are a way to accommodate the autonomy of governments and to manage the independence of their policies. If these pat­terns contradict a constitution, then an overregulated constitutional law is to blame, rather than the pragmatism of policy makers who have to deal with the tensions between autonomy and federalism. And if our scientific concepts of federalism are not in accordance with these patterns which emerge in practice, we need first and foremost to review these concepts.

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