Federalism, Democracy and Political Parties

Abstract

Multi-level governance has become a trendy catchword in the social sciences. It signals the assumed transformation from hierarchical government by state institutions to a more flexible system of coordination and bargaining among interconnected state and non-state actors at supranational, state and substate levels. However, its focal point, ‘the dispersion of authoritative decision-making across multiple territorial levels’ (Hooghe and Marks 2001, xi), is a rather old phenomenon in confederal arrangements. Federalism is thus a perfect starting point to sharpen our conceptual lenses with respect to the role parties play in democratic multi-level settings. As mentioned in Chapter 1, the debate on parties in federal settings has rarely been at the centre of academic discourses. However, we will see that there have been quite some interesting debates which can guide our analytical thinking.