By Ethan Hollander, Wabash College
Federalism is a system of government that attempts to preserve some degree of local control while also reaping the benefits of centralization. However, given the tendency for federalism to complicate government decision-making, why does anyone adopt it? Let’s find out.
Benefit of Security
Let’s start with the bottom-up motivations: the forces that drive a group of states to get together and form a federation.
Oftentimes, states are simply stronger together than apart.
For the early United States, the primary benefit of union was security—from others, and from within. It was a fledgling country, and in declaring independence from Britain, the new states had made a really powerful enemy.
Under the Articles of Confederation, the newly united states also had domestic threats to contend with: There were fights between the states, and fights within the states. And so, at the Constitutional Convention, it was easy for delegates to recognize that ‘providing for the common defense’ would be a handy way for the states to put out fires, wherever they arose.
This article comes directly from content in the video series Democracy and Its Alternatives. Watch it now, on Wondrium.
Economic Benefits
There are also economic benefits to association. Trade is easier when there’s a common set of standards, free travel, and a referee.
The problem with coming together to achieve economic efficiency is that the associated entities still want to preserve their own autonomy, and they don’t like giving others—especially faceless bureaucrats in a far-off capital city—a say over their own affairs. It’s also hard to guarantee that a powerful federal entity, once created, won’t then use its power to break the promises agreed to at the establishment of the federation. A federal government might be tempted to rule in the interests of a majority of its citizens, regardless of what a majority in any given state might want.
This dynamic was clearly at work in the early years of the United States, when the minority that was most interested in preserving states’ rights was the portion of the population that owned slaves.
Southern Slaveholders
Southern slaveholders might have been a minority in the country as a whole, but the number of slave states and free states was relatively balanced, and this gave them a built-in defense. Institutions like the US Senate and the electoral college—both of which represented states as states—allowed slaveholding interests to punch above their weight nationally.
Building institutions like these into the US Constitution could be seen as an enticement for the Southern states to join the Union. These institutions meant that the rights of Southern slaveholders wouldn’t be infringed, even if they were outnumbered by the population in the North—which they soon were. Federalism gave slaveholders protection against the potential for a Northern tyranny of the majority.
A Delicate Balance
It’s not the smallest irony in American history that so many of the unique features of our democracy were put there in an effort to protect the property rights of people who owned slaves.
That said, as the United States expanded westward and added more states to the Union, Southern slaveholders feared that the delicate balance between slave states and free states would be disturbed. This shifting balance of power was one of the key causes of the American Civil War.
Ethnic Minorities
But federalism isn’t just a way of getting small states to join a union in which they might someday be outnumbered; it’s also a way of keeping a country together when divergent forces might otherwise tear it apart. These are some of the top-down motivations for federalism, and they are particularly common in culturally diverse countries, where ethnic minorities want to continue to enjoy the benefits of federation, but fear being oppressed by the majority.
Ethiopia and Nigeria, for instance, are incredibly diverse—religiously, linguistically, culturally, and so on. And both have histories of ethnic unrest and civil war. But because the ethnic minorities are often concentrated in regions that have a lot of say over their own affairs, the federal government can entice them to stay together (sometimes), promising them benefits of continued union without too much federal interference.
Federalism in Switzerland
This kind of policy sometimes works quite well. Switzerland is another country that uses federalism to accommodate ethnolinguistic diversity.
Switzerland has four major language groups: French, German, Italian, and Romansh. However, federalism divides the country in such a way that in 22 of its 26 cantons, there’s really just one dominant language to contend with. Partly, this is just a matter of convenience, but there is also more to it.
Switzerland’s language groups are also cultural groups, and there are social and economic conditions that are particular to each region. In this context, local decision-making means that regions decide for themselves what kinds of policies they want, and fewer people find themselves subject to a one-size-fits-all policy handed down by the central government.
Common Questions about Federalism
For the early United States, the primary benefit of union was security—from others, and from within. It was a fledgling country, and in declaring independence from Britain, the new states had made a really powerful enemy. Under the Articles of Confederation, the newly united states also had domestic threats to contend with: There were fights between the states, and fights within the states.
Building institutions like the US Senate and the electoral college—both of which represented states as states—into the US Constitution could be seen as an enticement for the Southern states to join the Union. These institutions meant that the rights of Southern slaveholders wouldn’t be infringed, even if they were outnumbered by the population in the North. Federalism gave slaveholders protection against the potential for a Northern tyranny of the majority.
Switzerland’s language groups are also cultural groups, and there are social and economic conditions that are particular to each region. In this context, local decision-making means that regions decide for themselves what kinds of policies they want, and fewer people find themselves subject to a one-size-fits-all policy handed down by the central government.
