Outline of the Book

The first section of the book is primarily concerned with advancing theory. What stands out here in particular is an emerging consensus around repurpos­ing the goals of federalism towards ‘managing interdependence' and separat­ing the concept of de jure ‘sovereignty' from de facto ‘autonomy' in our appli­cations.

The book is not organized by region, but rather by themes. Section 2 pro­vides empirical evidence, drawn from different cases, regions and perspectives. Chapters 5-7 introduce actors and institutions that either promote effective sub-unit autonomy or constrain it. Section 3 looks at challenges to the ide­alized autonomy of federal sub-units via specific policy areas. Section 4 is a standalone chapter on local government specifically, distinguishing it from the regional or state/provincial level in Africa.

The purpose of the book is not to redefine what autonomy means in federal theory, or ought to be, but to suggest the preservation of autonomy is not the central organizing principle of 21st century federations. While we acknowl­edge this is problematic for multinational federations, we contend that for the majority of the participating authors of this collection, it is not. Autonomy, however precisely defined, in a federal democracy, remains to be negotiated among two or more constituent units. We do not assume in either the theoret­ical or, the empirical section that these negotiations even in a multinational federation occur among independent, greedy, self-interested levels of govern­ments in a zero-sum Rikerian game.

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