Federalism as an institutional doctrine

Abstract

Federalism is often viewed as being of administrative, rather than genuinely philosophical, interest. This is understandable: many theories thereof are insensitive to empirical developments. It is also unfortunate: federalism implicates basic philosophical issues (e.g., sovereignty, distributive justice) and philosophy can help further empirical studies. This work thus provides conceptual analysis of federalism. More specifically, it argues for adopting ‘institutional’ approaches to federalism on which federalism is understood as a doctrine advocating for the adoption of federations to allocate decision-making authority within governance units (e.g., countries). Such approaches were once-dominant in literature but purportedly fail to address developments in comparative federalism. To address such empirical data, many scholars now instead adopt ‘ideological’ approaches to federalism promoting political organizations that combine “shared- and self-rule.” However, philosophical strictures and practical realities demand a more circumscribed approach. The dominant ideological approach is either too broad to be a distinct normative doctrine or too narrow to apply to many paradigmatic federal bodies, undermining the purported explanatory value that led to its development. Variants do not fulfill several other criteria for plausible philosophies of federalism. Institutional approaches, by contrast, provide a distinct, action-guiding approach to authority allocation and thus play a unique normative role. They also do not raise as many empirical worries as many claim.

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ORCID for Michael Da Silva: orcid.org/0000-0002-7021-9847

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