Types of Federalism: Achieving Self-Governing Capabilities in Societies with Federal Potentials

Abstract

The chapter advances several arguments. First, it explores why people turn to federalist ideas in crafting or recrafting their constitutional and legal systems. This discussion sheds some light on why political systems form the way they do. Second, the chapter highlights the principal challenges people face. The main issue is not which federalism understood as design blueprint applies but rather what design criteria ought to apply. This does not mean that people in designing their own system cannot learn from existing federal systems. It just means that transplanting blueprints of institutions from one country to another, or presuming to construct political arrangements for others, usually does not work. Third, the successful application of federal principles of organization is not automatic but contingent on all sorts of existing conditions, including initial setting and political forces. What these are need to be carefully surveyed. Moving from one system of governance to another is seldom easy and requires a long-time span that may not always be available to people aspiring to be self-governing or to create a larger union. How to extend principles of self-government to large populations and territories — that is, how to bring together, and allow to work separately and jointly, micro-and macro-institutional arrangements — remains problematic.