Pick your favorite federalism

Take inspiration from history: When saying “federalism”, we are looking to emulate not principles but real success stories. And by adding an –ism, we express our belief that these stories are transferable from one historic situation and country to another. So, where does a separation of state powers between local and federal levels of government come in handy?

As a first, there is defense cooperation, or in today’s words, foreign policy. The invention of federalism resulted from the need of the 13 New England states to organize a strong military force against the British Empire despite their wish for independence. And if we believe the political theorists who famously advocated this ad-hoc compromise (in the classic Federalist Papers), the real benefit from this separation of powers is to avoid corruption of democracy. They believed that democracy would degenerate into populism and power-grabbing unless institutional barriers prevented one party to take all power at once.

Federalism, ..., is what you want out of it

This horizontal separation of powers is not only good for bringing a country together; it has equally helped to keep a country from falling apart. Indeed, most recently established federalist regimes seem to operate on this basis, beginning with Switzerland whose federal constitution is a result of a very short (one day) civil war. One could argue, that India can only be a state if it is federal; and the same may be true for Belgium. An extreme case of this is Iraq’s new federal constitution. Call it diversity management.

Although we would maybe not call it federal, staunchly centralist countries such as France and Italy have in recent years made changes to their political structure to allow for more local autonomy. Take the creation of “regions” in France under Mitterrand and their subsequent development, as well as a similar trend in Italy. In the UK and Spain, decentralization seems rather to be driven by persisting cultural differences, but with an aspect of greater government efficiency. The logic here is mostly utilitarian: local units are expected to be more efficient in regional development, distributing funds etc.

Assuming for the moment, that the separation of powers has proved somewhat successful in these cases (or will in Iraq…), this leaves us historically with four tricks federalism can do: strong foreign policy, democratic governance, cultural diversity, and economic efficiency. I want to argue that these are four different things with different requirements – no such thing as one -ism fits all.

Let’s run through the list quickly. For a common defense, security and in consequence, foreign policy, we would need a radically more powerful European government with the authority to go to war and have the means to it. Indeed, this goes far beyond the European Constitution. As far as cultural issues are concerned, on the other side, we should be wary of Europeanism since we may otherwise produce a backlash (already to be seen). And there is some truth regarding concerns about a European super-state, too remote for citizen participation and/or democratic control. This would be a case against ballooning of EU-budgets with subsidies and expensive programs in all ways of life. In economic terms, it is tricky: we may need a stronger enforcement of the common market, but people, for fear of globalization, are not convinced it will be to their benefit. In this key area, Barroso’s strategy of delivering with the current institutions may be a good choice for the moment.

Federalism, to sum up this simplified picture, is what you want out of it. But unless you believe that Europe can only defend its security and economic well-being by a ruthlessly robust foreign policy, you should be wary of advocating a further transfer of powers to the European level. And keep this in mind: “Europe united” is a peace song.