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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].
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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

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References

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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).

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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).

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

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