Regional States

What are the differences between federal and regional states? Intuitively, a regional state is something more than a unitary state, but something less than a pure federation, meaning that only some—but not all—the federal features sketched above are present.

Returning to the distinction between federal and regional models, we observed that federal constitutions usually entrench a division of legislative powers between the centre and the periphery. This element is present also in regional states: see, for example, article 117 of the Italian constitution.

As for an umpire settling conflicts of attribution between central and peripheral governments, regional states may have this feature too. In Italy, arti­cle 134 of the constitution, for example, indicates that the icc shall pass judg­ments on ‘conflicts arising from allocation of powers of the State and those powers allocated to State and Regions, and between Regions'.^[22] Financial and fiscal autonomy of constituent units may also be present in regional states. In Italy, article 119(1) grants autonomy of revenues and expenses to all local sub-units, while article 119(2) dictates that the sub-units enjoy independent financial resources and may levy taxes and collect revenues. Furthermore, arti­cle 119(5) mandates that local sub-units have their own properties, while arti­cles 119(3) and (4) contain provisions on equalization funds for territories with lower per-capita taxable capacity.

Another element characterizing classic federations is the degree of involve­ment of territorial entities in the constitutional revision process. In regional states like Italy, regions play no major role in the constitutional amendment process, but article 138 permits regions, in certain circumstances, to request a referendum on bills proposing constitutional modification. Indeed, although the power of regions cannot be equivalent to that of federated entities, in some federal states constitutional amendment procedures can be so complex that regional powers in this area—although they exist—are rarely or never exercised.

Whereas federated entities may operate autonomous regional courts, regional systems often have access to only a single national judicial system. But there are pure federations where the jurisdiction of regional courts is very limited, provincial judges of general jurisdiction are appointed by the federal government and are all part of a centralized system leading up to the Supreme Court (for example, Canada).

A federal constitution is usually construed as a covenant, thus distinguish­ing it from constitutions of unitary systems where it would simply be a law. In classic federations, federated entities enjoy constitution-making powers and can draft their own constitutions, although this is not true of all federal states: Canadian provinces, for example, lack a formal document that qualifies as ‘provincial constitution', and the same is true for Belgium. In regional states like Italy, the national constitution is the only constitution, one that has not emerged from a covenant and is not competing with other constitutions within the constituent units (Bin and Falcon 2012, p. 62). However, Italian regions can adopt documents (statut'i) that, while not sub-national constitutions, nonethe­less present interesting features: among other things, their scope is to lay down the ‘form of government' and the ‘basic principles for the organization of the Region and the conduct of its business' (article 123).

Finally, most classic federations have emerged from the merger of formerly independent states, while regional states have usually followed a ‘devolution- ary' path, progressively decentralizing from a unitary system. Yet this state­formation rationale is not entirely flawless; while Italian and Spanish region­alism emerged from a process of decentralization of a once unitary state, the opposite can also be true, since decentralization can lead to the formation of a fully-fledged federation, as was the case with Belgium. Similarly, not all feder­ations have materialized from the merger of formerly independent states: for example, not all the 50 states in the US were independent at the time they joined the Union.

While the common features of a pure federation are a good clue to distin­guishing federal from unitary states, they are not equally helpful in differen­tiating federal from regional systems. In the next subsection, I shall consider another, more substantial, feature: the difference between concepts of sover­eignty and autonomy of constituent units.

2.3