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From Executive to Legislative Federalism? The Transformation of the Political System in Canada and India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Douglas V. Verney
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Extract

Canada and India have hybrid systems of government. Both experienced constitutional crises in the 1970's. These crises have usually been treated as sui generis. It is the hypothesis of this article that the crises raise fundamental questions regarding the very nature of such systems, which are based on “parliamentary federalism,” a political system invented in Canada to provide strong central government. This hybrid system combines two classical models: British tradition, based on parliamentary supremacy and conventions, and American principles, which require a written constitution, the separation of powers and judicial review. The two models are contradictory, since parliamentary supremacy and constitutional supremacy are incompatible.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , Spring 1989 , pp. 241 - 263
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1989

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References

The research on which this article is based has been supported by the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, the South Asia: Ontario Consortium, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and York University. I am indebted to my research assistant Eswaran Sridharan, and to the anonymous referees of the Review, for their useful criticisms.

Alice Jacob, Kuldip Nayar and M. P. Singh made helpful comments on a second draft of the paper, delivered at the 1988 IPSA Congress. A first draft was presented to the Canada-India Opportunities Conference ‘88 in Calgary, Alberta. I am indebted to John Wood, Bhagwan Dua, Iqbal Narain and Randhir B. Jain for their comments on that occasion.

1. Those chief ministers who speak to one another in Hindi at Centre-state meetings are said to cause resentment among their non-Hindi-speaking colleagues (who usually prefer English).

2. See the Constituent Assembly Debates VIII, 459–60Google Scholar and the white paper on the office of the governor presented by the Government of Karnataka in 1983 to the Commission on Centre-state Relations, reproduced in its 1988 report, Part II, 260–72. For Canada's experience, see well, John T. Say, The Office of Lieutenant-Governor (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1986), p. 112.Google Scholar For a comparative study see Verney, Douglas V., “The Role of the Governor in India's ‘Administrative Federalism’: A Comparative Perspective,” Indian Journal of Public Administration 31 (1985): 1243–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Since the passage of the sixteenth amendment, a candidate for election has to swear: “that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India as by law established, and that I will uphold the sovereignty and integrity of India” (Third Schedule).

4. “The formation of non-Congress governments in a number of States does not by itself threaten unity of the country. … as long as the Central Government remains stable and effective” (Komarov, E. N., “Factors for a Parliamentary Democracy in India” [Moscow: Nauka and Central Department of Oriental Literature, p. 22]; Presented as a paper at the IPSA Congress, 1988).Google Scholar It may have been a mistake for the Congress leadership to brand all opposition parties as “antinational.” They are no doubt antinational in the sense that they have a regional base, but they are not antinational in the sense that they want to destabilize India. They do however reject the assumption that the Congress party alone represents India and that all other parties are ipso facto antinational (because they want to destabilize the Congress party).

5. For Canada see the Report of the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada, 3 vols. (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services, 1985).Google Scholar Together the three volumes are over 2000 pages in length. Volume three deals with political institutions, federalism, and the constitution. The popular title is “The MacDonald Commission Report.” For India see the Report of the Commission on Centre-State Relations (Nasik: Government of India Press, 1988), part 1, 594 pp; part 2, 986 pp.Google Scholar) Its popular title is “The Sarkaria Commission Report.”

6. For the suggestion that the Westminster model of parliamentary government in its traditional form exists only in New Zealand, see Lijphart, Arend, Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-one Countries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 16–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Janet Ajzenstat has written extensively on the significance of the older doctrine of the balanced constitution. See her “Modern Mixed Government: A Liberal Defense of Inequality,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 18 (1985): 119–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. See The Report of the Royal Commission on the Constitution (London: HMSO, Cmnd. 5460, 1973).Google Scholar

9. Scholars from federal states are frequently surprised to discover that scholars in unitary states take it for granted that a unitary state is superior to any form of federalism and find federalism difficult to comprehend.

10. See Article 263.

11. Report of the Commission on Centre-State Relations, part 1, chap. 9, “Inter-Governmental Council—Article 263.”

12. S. M. Lipset suggested long ago that the clash between a dominant national party and regional parties (characteristic of both Canada and India) was the result of “the failure of the British parliamentary system to work in a society with complex internal divisions” (see his review of Macpherson's, C. B.Democracy in Alberta in Canadian Forum 34 (1954–1955): 198Google Scholar).

13. During the Trudeau era of executive federalism Canada was treated to the extraordinary spectacle of two very different sets of representatives from the province of Quebec. The Liberal MP's elected to Ottawa were “federalist” supporters of Pierre Trudeau, while the members elected to the Quebec National Assembly were “provincialists.” Even those who were Liberals and opposed to the Parti Québecois were “provincialist” enough to reject the Constitution Act of 1982. Who really spoke for sentiment in Quebec?

14. “The Cabinet has, in fact, taken over the allotted role of the Senate as the protector of the rights of the provinces, and it has done an incomparably better job” (Ward, Norman, Dawsoris Government of Canada, 6th ed. [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987], p. 204Google Scholar).

15. Hardgrave, Robert L. and Kochanek, Stanley A., India: Government and Politics of a Developing Nation, 4th ed. (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), pp. 329–30.Google Scholar

16. See Report of the Commission on Centre-State Relations, part 1, chap. 10, “Financial Relations,” section 8, “Role of the Finance Commission,” pp. 281–91.Google Scholar

17. Simeon, Richard, Federal-Provincial Diplomacy: The Making of Public Policy in Canada, rev. ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982).Google Scholar

18. Such a proposal was endorsed by Ghiz, Joe, premier of Prince Edward Island, in an address to Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto, 5 10 1988.Google Scholar

19. Dawson, R. MacGregor, The Government of Canada, rev. ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1957), p. 209.Google Scholar

20. “Its power does not stem from its being a states' house, but from its party composition linked with the manner of its election” (Rydon, Joan, “Bicameralism in Federations with special reference to the Australian Senate” [IPSA, 1988, mimeo], p. 15).Google Scholar

21. The most famous proposal for a powerful president was one that was circulated anonymously during the Emergency.

22. See Sen, S. R., “Centre-State Relations in India” Economic and Political Weekly, 6 August 1988, 1637–41.Google Scholar

23. See Verney, Douglas V. and Frankel, Francine R., “India: Has the Trend Towards Federalism Implications for the Management of Foreign Policy? A Comparative Perspective,” International Journal 41 (1986): 572–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar