Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T09:53:10.089Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Federalism in Europe and Latin America: Conceptualization, Causes, and Consequences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Kent Eaton
Kent Eaton
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Cruz, [email protected].
Get access

Abstract

Recent events in Europe and Latin America have triggered serious debate over federalism. In response, political scientists have turned to the new institutionalism literature in the attempt to understand both the causes and the consequences of federal institutions. Continuing a long tradition in the scholarship on federalism, each of the books under review defines the term differently, reflecting a lack of conceptual agreement that may complicate the development of more robust theories.

Despite these conceptual differences, and their focus on very different time periods, the four books under review are alike in the emphasis they place on bargaining between national and subnational politicians. While this interest in bargaining clearly demonstrates the continuing impact of William Riker's work, much of the new research challenges parts of the Rikerian framework. As a measure of their quality, these four books will significantly shape the course of the emerging literature on comparative federalism, but future work should pay greater attention to interests, ideas, and international factors.

Type
Review Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 60 , Issue 4 , July 2008 , pp. 665 - 698
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Bunce, Valerie, Subversive Institutions: The Design and Destruction of Socialism and the State (New York:Cambridge University Press, 1999CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

2 Diamond, Larry, ed., Developing Democracy (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999Google Scholar).

3 Gibson, Edward L., “Boundary Control: Subnational Authoritarianism in Democratic Countries,” World Politics 58 (October 2005CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

4 Montinola, Gabriella, Qian, Yingyi, and Weingast, Barry R., “Federalism, Chinese Style: The Political Basis for Economic Success in China,” World Politics 48 (October 1995CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

5 Rodden, Jonathan, Hamilton's Paradox: The Promise and Peril of Fiscal Federalism (New York:Cambridge University Press, 2006Google Scholar); Treisman, Daniel, The Architecture of Government: Rethinking Political Decentralization (New York:Cambridge University Press, 2007CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

6 For a cross-regional survey of decentralization, see Oxhorn, Philip, Tulchin, Joseph, and Selee, Andrew, eds., Decentralization, Democratic Governance and Civil Society in Comparative Perspective: Africa, Asia and Latin America (Washington, D.C.:Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2004Google Scholar). On Latin America, see Montero, Alfred and Samuels, David, eds., Decentralization and Democracy in Latin America (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004Google Scholar).

7 For the argument that federalism and regional autonomy can help promote stability, see Bermeo, Nancy, “The Import of Institutions,” Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2 (2002), 96–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lake, David and Rothchild, Donald, “Containing Fear: The Origins and Management of Ethnic Conflict,” International Security 21, no. 2 (1996CrossRefGoogle Scholar); and Walter, Barbara, “Designing Transitions from Civil War: Demobilization, Democratization and Commitments to Peace,” International Security 24, no. 1 (1999CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

8 For more pessimistic views about federalism and conflict, see Brubaker, Rogers, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Snyder, Jack, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000Google Scholar); and Roeder, Philip and Rothchild, Donald, eds., Sustainable Peace: Power and Democracy after Civil Wars (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005Google Scholar). On nation-state crises in segmented states, see Roeder, Philip, Where Nation-States Come From: Institutional Change in the Age Nationalism (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 2007Google Scholar).

9 On Europe, see Bartolini, Stefano, “Old and New Peripheries in the Processes of European Territorial Integration,” in Ansell, Christopher and Palma, Guiseppe di, eds., Restructuring Territorially: Europe and the United States Compared (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004Google Scholar). On state formation in Latin America, see Centeno, Miguel, Blood and Debt (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2002Google Scholar); and Lopez-Alves, Fernando, State Formation and Democracy in Latin America, 1810–1900 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000Google Scholar).

10 Sergio Fabbrini, “The European Union in American Perspective: The Transformation of Territorial Sovereignty in Europe and the United States,” in Ansell and di Palma (fn. 9).

11 Federalism has also begun to receive greater attention in the literature on India and Nigeria. On India and a special edition on Indian federalism, see Publius 33 (Fall 2003). On Nigeria, see Suberu, Rotimi and Diamond, Larry, “Institutional Design, Ethnic Conflict Management and Democracy in Nigeria,” in Reynolds, Andrew, ed., The Architecture of Democracy (New York:Oxford University Press, 2002Google Scholar).

12 In addition to these four single-authored books, this review also draws on three important edited volumes that have recently been published on federalism: Ugo Amoretti and Nancy Bermeo, eds., Federalism and Territorial Cleavages (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004Google Scholar); Gibson, Edward, ed., Federalism and Democracy in Latin America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004Google Scholar); and Ansell and di Palma (fn. 9).

13 Riker, William, Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance (Boston: Little Brown, 1964Google Scholar).

14 Alfred Stepan, “Toward a New Comparative Politics of Federalism, Multinationalism and Democracy: Beyond Rikerian Federalism,” in Gibson (fn. 12) See also Gibsons introductory chapter in this volume.

15 Montinola, Qian, and Weingast (fn. 4) make a similar point.

16 Like Ziblatt and Wibbels, Kelemen's empirical work focuses on subnational participation in the national government, but he shows that this participation does not have to take place in the national legislature. He does this by exploring the importance of new arenas for intergovernmental decision making, such as the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment and the U.S. Environmental Council of the States.

17 Thus, in their different views on the need for elections, Ziblatt, Diaz-Cayeros, and Wibbels appear to replay earlier disagreements about whether federalism requires democracy. For example, whereas Robert Dahl, Juan Linz, and Alfred Stepan have all argued that only a democracy can be a federal system, William Riker believed that democracy did not necessarily constitute part of the definition of federalism. For a review of this debate, see Stepan (fn. 14), 31–33.

18 See, for example, Ugo Amoretti, “Federalism and Territorial Cleavages,” in Amoretti and Bermeo (fn. 12), 9–10.

19 See Kent Eaton, “The Downside of Decentralization: Armed Clientelism in Colombia,” Security Studies 15 (October-December 2006).

20 Constitution Politica de la Repiiblica de Colombia, Articles 300 and 133.

21 David Collier and Steven Levitsky, “Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research,” World Politics 49 (April 1997).

22 These adjectives can be found in the previously cited works by Amoretti and Bermeo, Gibson, Rodden, Stepan, Wibbels, and Ziblatt.

23 Wibbels, Federalism and the Market, 61.

24 On the question of change in federalism over time, see also Filippov, Mikhail, Ordeshook, Peter, and Shvetsova, Olga, Designing Federalism: A Theory of Self-Sustainable Federal Institutions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

25 For another study that uses infrastructural capacity as a window onto federalism, see Stoner-Weiss, Kathryn, Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 77–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Similar to Ziblatt, Edward Gibson and Tulia Falleti argue that “interregional” dynamics between more and less developed subnational regions are critical factors in the origins of Argentine federalism. See Gibson and Falleti, “Unity by the Stick: Regional Conflict and the Origins of Argentine Federalism, in Gibson (fn. 12).

27 For a pioneering application of ambition theory to federalism, see Samuels, David, Ambition, Federalism, and Legislative Politics in Brazil (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

28 Chhibber, Pradeep and Kollman, Ken, The Formation of National Party Systems: Federalism and Party Competition in Canada, Great Britain, India and the U. S. (New York: Princeton University Press, 2004Google Scholar). Like Diaz-Cayeros, I have argued elsewhere in a study of decentralization and regime change that internal features of political parties drive the degree of fiscal decentralization. Specifically, decentralized political parties explain why successive democratic transitions in Argentina and Brazil have consistently produced episodes of fiscal decentralization, in contrast to Chile and Uruguay, where centralized parties account for the failure of democratization to produce equivalent acts of fiscal decentralization. See Eaton, Kent, Politics beyond the Capital: The Design of Subnational Institutions in South America (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004Google Scholar). For related arguments that are centered on political parties and decentralization, see O'Neill, Kathleen, Decentralizing the State: Elections, Parties and Local Power in the Andes (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005CrossRefGoogle Scholar); and Willis, Eliza, Garman, Christopher, and Haggard, Stephan, “Decentralization in Latin America,” Latin American Research Review 34, no. 1 (1999Google Scholar).

29 Stepan, Alfred, Arguing Comparative Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 315Google Scholar; and Bermeo (fn. 7), 108.

30 See Valerie Bunce, “Federalism, Nationalism and Secession: The Communist and Postcommu-nist Experience,” in Amoretti and Bermeo (fn. 12), 436. The Amoretti and Bermeo volume is one of the most comprehensive studies to date on federalism and stability, and it concludes that consensual forms of federalism are better than majoritarian forms at accommodating territorial cleavages. See Amoretti and Bermeo (fn. 12).

31 Montinola, Qian, and Weingast (fn. 4).

32 For an alternative view, that it was local protection in China that facilitated the transition to markets, see Wedeman, Andrew, From Mao to Market: Rent Seeking, Local Protectionism and Marketization in China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003CrossRefGoogle Scholar). For the argument that local governments in China have been unable to imitate market-friendly institutional arrangements, see Thun, Eric, “Keeping Up with the Jones': Decentralization, Policy Imitation and Industrial Development in China,” World Development 18, no. 2 (2004Google Scholar).

33 Rose-Ackerman, Susan and Rodden, Jonathan, “Does Federalism Preserve Markets?” Virginia Law Review 83, no. 7 (1997Google Scholar), 1524.

34 For a study of subnational executive-legislative relations within federal systems, see Cameron, Maxwell and Falleti, Tulia, “Federalism and the Subnational Separation of Powers,” Publius 35, no. 2 (Spring 2005CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

35 Fox, Jonathan, “The Difficult Transition from Clientelism to Citizenship: Lessons from Mexico,” World Politics 46 (January 1994CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Rebecca Weitz-Shapiro argues that the impact of political competition on clientelism is mediated by poverty; where competition and poverty are high, the incentives to use clientelism are significant. See Weitz-Shapiro, “Choosing Clientelism: Political Competition, Poverty and Social Welfare Policy in Argentina” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2008).

36 Eaton, Kent, “Menem and the Governors: Intergovernmental Relations in the 1990s,” in Levitsky, Steven and Murillo, M. Victoria, eds., Argentine Democracy: The Politics of lnstitutional Weakness (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2005Google Scholar).

37 Eaton, Kent, Politicians and Economic Reform in New Democracies (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2002), 225Google Scholar–30.

38 Pierson, Paul, “The Path to European Integration: A Historical Instirutionalist Analysis,” Comparative Political Studies 29, no. 2 (1996CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

39 Doner, Richard and Hershberg, Eric, “Flexible Production and Political Decentralization in the Developing World: Elective Affinities in the Pursuit of Competitiveness?” Studies in Comparative International Development 34, no. 1 (1999CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

40 O'Neill (fn. 28).

41 Falleti, Tulia, “A Sequential Theory of Decentralization: Latin American Cases in Comparative Perspective,” American Political Science Review 99, no. 3 (2005CrossRefGoogle Scholar)

42 For a comparison of how racial and regional cleavages shape taxation in unitary and federal cases, see Lieberman, Evan, Race and Regionalism in the Politics of Taxation in Brazil and South Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

43 Samuels, David, “Reinventing Local Government?: Municipalities and Inter-governmental Relations in Democratic Brazil,” in Kingstone, Peter and Power, Timothy, eds., Democratic Brazil (Pitts burgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000Google Scholar); Dickovick, Tyler, “Municipalization as Central Government Strategy: Central-Regional-Local Politics in Peru, Brazil and South Africa,” Publius (Winter 2007Google Scholar); and Eaton (fn. 28), chaps. 3, 6.

44 Eaton, Kent, “Backlash in Bolivia: Regional Autonomy as a Reaction against Indigenous Mobilization,” Politics and Society 35 (March 2007CrossRefGoogle Scholar).