Conclusion: Intergovernmental Relations, Decentralization, and Federalism in a Fragmented Polity

Abstract

A federation is composed of multiple centers of power, overlapping responsibilities, several routes for influencing or vetoing policies, all in constant change according to the federation’s political and economic momentum. This apparently confusing feature provides the basis for the exercise of different forms of intergovernmental relations, for different weights of the decentralization-centralization continuum and for adaptations and changes within the federation. This framework was the basis of this study and has guided the development of its main argument. This study has argued that since the political opening there has been an enduring tension between national and subnational interests, with the prevalence of the latter without the relinquishment of the former. This tension has created a ‘peripheralized federalism’ in which subnational interests prevail over national ones, and a ‘paralyzed competitive arena’, in which decisions and players cancel each other out. Nevertheless, national issues polarize the political agenda, and policy results at the subnational level are generally ignored by scholarly works and by the political actors.