Stanizai.org

The Allure and Predicaments of Federalism for Developing Countries

Zaman Stanizai

zstanizai@csudh.edu

Department of Political Science, California State University Dominguez Hills, Carson, California 90747 USA

Abstract

Norms of international diplomacy recognize ‘nation-states’ as of equal standing. In reality, however, many of these states are not necessarily nation-states, and the disparity in the size of their territory and population, as well as the incomparability of their economic strength, political influence, and military power, speaks loud and clear. It’s hard to compare China with Chad, Nauru with Nigeria, or India with San Marino. 

With this one-size-fits-all definition of a nation-state, large super-states project way more economic and political power around the world than smaller nations that try to compensate for these disparities by forming larger coalitions, alliances, or federal or confederal unions. Attempts at forming such unions, however, are not always successful.

This paper discusses the success of federalism in advanced Western societies contrasting with its failure in developing countries. We will try to identify reasons for such failures in political culture, social dynamics, and global powerplay, and suggest remedial solutions.  

Keywords: federalism; confederation; pluralist federation; identity-based federalism; devolution; post-federal economic stagnation; pluralism; unitary state; ethnic federation; sub-national identities; political consciousness; assimilated identities; Afghanistan; Pakistan; Pan-Islamism; Pan Arabism; Central Asia;

The Allure and Predicaments of Federalism for Developing Countries

Historical Setting

Nation-states developed during the rise of nationalism after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 which “ended the century-long struggle between the monarchical tendencies of the Holy Roman emperors and the federalist aspirations of the empire’s German princes. The Peace of Westphalia recognized the full territorial sovereignty of the member states of the empire.”^[1] Westphalia essentially transferred political power vested in the divine sovereignty of the church-state to the popular sovereignty of nation-states.

In the decades that followed Europeans established states in the name of nations and to an extent force-assimilated people to the majority ethnic, linguistic, and/or religious traditions as sub-national identities were marginalized. This helped European states achieve ethnolinguistic cohesion and religious conformity at the national level. With the birth of nationalism and the formation of nation-states, it became easier for Europeans to establish more ‘homogenous’ societies and confederacies. A century or two later these traditions were established in overseas European settlements with even more success. 

Asian and African societies had established large states such as Mughal India, Ottoman Turkey, Safavid Persia, Durrani Afghanistan, and Fatimid Egypt, for instance. The structure of these political administrative units and the semi-autonomous regions within these super states had some semblance of a federal arrangement, but the monopoly of power within the hierarchical structure of these authoritarian governments, in essence, made them more imperial than federal. Another critical difference between those super-states and the modern European nation-state model is that they largely maintained the ethnolinguistic diversity of their constituent communities known as millets or nations. 

“The millet system in the Muslim world provided the pre-modern paradigm of a religiously pluralistic society by granting each religious community an official status and a substantial measure of self-government.”[2] That’s why, after the dissolution of the Ottoman super state, for instance, Greek, Serb, Bosnian, Albanian, Kosovar, Macedonian, Croat, Armenian, Arab, Tatars, Azari, Kurds,[3] etc. came out from under the imperial mantle with their language, ethnicity, religion and other cultural traits intact—just as they were initially incorporated into the empire. 

Contrast that with the European model where forced assimilations within the boundaries of a state not only destroyed the cultural diversity on European soil at the sub-national level, but they even exported these policies to foreign lands. Colonial France, for instance, prohibited the use of the Arabic language in Algeria, a country whose very raison d'être was denied when General De Gaulle referred to Algeria as “La France de l'autre côté,” the France of the yonder side. Many people in Africa have lost their cultural identities and have been ‘transformed’ into French-speaking European-style nation-states with tribal identities.

In the Middle East, at the height of European colonialism in the 19^th century, thinkers such as Sayed Jamal al-Din Al-Afghani launched a conscious-raising movement that became known as Pan-Islamism. A variation on that theme was the post-Ottoman Pan-Turanism. An off-shoot of Pan-Islamism was established as a political party in the name of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1929. Its ‘secular’ reformist counterpart was the Pan-Arabism of Gamal Nasser which established the United Arab Republic: a confederation comprising Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen at various times. Then there was the Pan-Arab Socialism 2.0 of Muammar Qaddafi resulting in the short-lived federation between Egypt, Sudan, and Libya, and the subsequent attempted unification between Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria. Fingers for these failures were pointed at Western colonial and neo-colonial intrusions, but the real culprit might have been the lack of socio-political cohesion necessary for such fundamental political undertakings at the time.

These movements slowly drifted from their anti-colonial campaigns to political/religious reformation. The universality of ‘religious’ orientation by its very nature came into a head-on collision with the budding ethnocentric European style nationalisms as they got caught in yet another East-West entanglement where the once five large super states were divvied up into more than 60 Muslim-majority states.

Were these small Developing countries states to follow the post-reformation European model into confederacies of their own? Was federalism an antidote for the many political problems of the post-colonial Muslim states? Did these societies develop traditions and political cultures enabling them to turn such dreams into viable realities? Was political Westernization perceived as modernization or an anathema by Muslims? These are some of the questions we will try to answer in light of theoretical parameters. 

Theoretical Framework

Theories of governance rely on hypotheses that are comprehensive in scope and falsifiable in their degree of applicability. Through logical inferences, scientists draw conclusions where the validity of a claim is only as good as the degree to which repeated experimentation in different, but similar circumstances can produce the same results. The objective of a methodology is to establish norms, standards, and mechanisms for the analysis of a system of government that ideally leads to social harmony, economic prosperity, and respects human dignity.  

An ideal form of government is one where the relationship between the governing and governed is most direct, and layers of authority and accountability are few and closest to the people. The concentration of political power within a political system and in the hands of a particular group creates distance between the people and those who rule in their name. This may be the reason why in modern polities decentralized and dispersed power structures are generally equated with more democratic systems of government.

While the formation of decentralized federal systems may be beneficial to the needs of a pluralistic society, the establishment of confederations may be even more beneficial in cooperation and coordination with regional development. While confederations generally allow for free admission to and secession from a political union, in federal systems on the other hand, secessions are risky debacles that often lead to an eventual unraveling of the system.

The majority of today’s governments have organized as unitary states, but some have confederal or federal arrangements. There are areas within some states that are identified as autonomous or semi-autonomous territories or any of a dozen other designations where “delegation of powers from the central government of a sovereign state to govern at a subnational level, such as a regional or local level”^[4] is the norm. Generally, however, “federal governments are often established voluntarily from 'below' whereas devolution grants self-government from above.”^[5]

Today, some 173 countries of the world are centralized unitary government systems of which 134 are republics and 39 are monarchies. In contrast, only 18 countries in the world have federal systems, and seven of those are geographically-determined. In contrast, the remaining 11 can be categorized either as administrative or federal systems of political expediency.

Since, at least theoretically, confederations are a step toward federation, we will discuss them first.

Confederation or Confederacy

A confederation is a political and/or economic alliance of sovereign states formed via a treaty for the achievement of common interests that generally include defense, foreign relations, and internal trade.

Under the umbrellas of a central government, states are admitted to a confederation as sovereign independent governments with the implicit right of secession. "Several sovereign and independent states may unite themselves together by a perpetual confederacy without each, in particular, ceasing to be a perfect state."^[6] Member-states can strip confederal institutions of their delegated powers without their consent.^[7]

Due to the absence of a powerful central administration and weaker inter-state cohesion, confederations are easier to form and are not as long-lasting or stable as federal systems unless they gradually and cautiously evolve into a federal order. This may be a long process that requires the refinement, adjustments, and alignment of goals and objectives toward a more cohesive federal system.

The more successful unions are those that are established on the member nations’ own initiatives and terms. Confederations seem to be more suitable to the level of political and social advancement in developing countries because there are no demands on cultural assimilation or identity imposition on the people and the terms of unification in joining or seceding from the confederate union are easy to comply with.

The confederations of the United States of America in 1789, Switzerland in 1848, and Germany in 1866 eventually became federal systems and are considered among the most successful political systems in the world. The European Union adopted the same example of gradual unification that came together as the European Common Market after the Treaty of Rome in 1958 and was upgraded to the Confederation of the European Union in 1993.

Federalism and the Modern Nation-State

 Federalism differs from confederation, in which the general level of government is subordinate to the regional level, and from devolution within a unitary state, in which the regional level of government is subordinate to the general level.^[8]

A federation is a de-centralized state, while a confederation is an inter-national political union. “Federalism is a compromise between a unitary state, where local governments are created by the center and may be dissolved or overruled by it, and confederation, where the central government is the contingent creation of a league of independent states.”[9] In a federal system, power is vested in an association of constituents, rather than in a central government, but the central and regional governments constitute a single political system that divides powers between the two.

From a strictly structural point of view, a federation may be defined as “a political system in which at least two territorial levels of government share sovereign constitutional authority over their respective division and joint share of law-making powers… neither the federal government nor the relevant federative entities may unilaterally alter one another’s powers without a process of constitutional amendment in which both levels of government participate.”^[10]

Federal systems have a single basic law or a constitution that is upheld by their constituent parts, a powerful central administration, and the social make-up of its citizens’ primary identities such as race, language, ideological tendency, religious affiliation, etc. It represents the central form in the pathway of regional integration or separation, bounded on the less integrated side by confederalism and on the more integrated side by devolution within a unitary state.^[11]

“Federalism in the modern era was first adopted in the unions of states during the Old Swiss Confederacy.”^[12] In modern times, however, different styles of federalism have developed due to cultural diversity, based on social and political divisions and the degrees of success in power-sharing while ensuring civil liberties which are the main objectives of a federal order.

For these reasons, there is a tendency on the part of some who believe that a federal system may alleviate some of the problems of an ethnically diverse society and recommend a political power-sharing arrangement in a decentralized dispersive federal system that is compatible with their pluralistic tendencies. “This is because the very idea of federalism allows for distribution and compartmentalization of power in a way that ideally echoes societal needs and provides for an appropriate division of powers and greater regional cohesion.”^[13]

The Typology of Federalism

The terms federal and federalism apply to a variety of political systems that, in spite of their similarities, may differ substantially from one another. The federal systems of Belgium and India, for instance, differ in that in addition to their central governments, India has state governments whereas Belgium has regional and community governments.

Federal systems are formed for a variety of reasons. O’Leary in his detailed analysis categorizes federalism in terms of its organization, power distribution, and decision-making characteristics which can be summarized as follows:

“We may call the national, majoritarian and centralized federation an integrated federation. Its polar opposite is the multi-national, consensual and decentralized federation, or a pluralist federation. At their respective limits a national federation resembles a unitary state while the pluralist federation resembles a confederation.”^[14]

He further elaborates that a national federation recognizes just one national identity whereas a multi-national federation recognizes several nations. For the passage of laws and policies, a majoritarian federation empowers a federation-wide majority while a consensual federation requires super-majorities. Similarly, a centralized federation strongly empowers the federal government, granting it exclusive powers over the military, foreign affairs, fiscal, and monetary policy, by contrast, a decentralized federation grants the regions more power in key federal policy-making decisions.[15]

Requejo addresses the intricacies of federal systems specifically from the perspective of the “territorial division of federal or regional powers.”^[16] These are categorized along five basic analytical axes:

a) the uninational-plurinational axis
b) the unitarianism-federalism axis
c) the centralisation-decentralisation axis
d) the symmetry-asymmetry axis
e) the competitiveness-cooperation axis

The American federal system may be a good example where these definitions and descriptions can be identified and where one can see why it is idealized so much by developing countries in search of a viable solution for setting up a political system.

The Success of American Federalism

The American federal system is the result of a long trial-and-error political process that has been improved in the course of time but is far from perfect even in its present state.

The United States of America was a defensive union of 13 colonies against Britain between 1776 and 1781 when the first United States government was established based on the Articles of Confederation. After 1789 the United States was referred to as a federation, or federal republic, implying a closer union. During the American Civil War when the seceding southern slave-owning states formed the Confederate States of America in opposition to the Federal Union, the distinction between the confederacy and federal systems became more conspicuous. At least in that context, “confederation thus came to mean a union of sovereign states in which the stress is laid on the autonomy of each constituent body, while federation implies a union of states in which the stress is laid on the supremacy of the common government.”^[17] 

The present federal administrative system in the United States has been in place since 1865. This long history of political experience shows the evolution of the American government and the strong and successful political system that it has become under both ideal and challenging circumstances that we summarize as follows:

1.     The American experience took place in relative geographic isolation, i.e. a safe distance away from the middling threats of other states.

2.     The settlers of the 13 original colonies and the subsequent citizens of these United States had left their primary identities in their countries of origin and were willing to adopt the American national identity as their own.  The fluid nature of the settlers’ identities contributed to national assimilation, political cohesion, and a shared inclusive, receptive, and accepting sense of belonging.

3.     Americans began establishing a nation-state at a time when some of the best theories of governance of the Age of Enlightenment such as those of Roseau, Hume, and Locke were ready for experimentation and Americans were willing to test and implement them.

4.     Americans were fortunate to have advocates of a strong state from the Crown Colonies in the South and civil rights advocates in the Northern Colonies who came together to draft a strong Constitution for the stability of the state and a balanced Bill of Rights to protect the rights of the citizens.

5.     The Founding Fathers wisely borrowed the concepts of a bicameral congress and the Great Compromise from the Iroquois Confederacy of the Native Americans.

6.     Americans had wise leaders in the most critical times in their history who made good use of the trial-and-error of the Articles of Confederation between November 15, 1777, and March 4, 1789, and the subsequent Constitutional period as well as the challenges of the Civil War.

7.     The rapid expansion of American settlements in North America resulted in equally rapid economic development. The efficiency of a lower ‘per capita’ government, and more opportunities for experimentation allowed for weeding out failures and replicating successes. This rapid economic and political expansion in the long run contributed to the success of a strong federal system.

8.     All this progress was achieved in an indirect way on the backs of European indentured laborers, African slaves, and underpaid Chinese workforce who produced a strong economy to sustain a political system that could withstand the turbulence of times. The biggest price of all, however, was paid by Native Americans whose land and riches were taken away and whose cultures were destroyed to make room for the American political experimentation in governance.

The Present-day Reality of Federalism

The distance between the developed and developing world is not so much in the degree of their technological advancement and economic growth but in their political advancement. There too, one may question the wisdom of whether the process of creating ‘culturally’ cohesive nation-states through cultural assimilation was worth the price of many decades of devastating bloody wars. And whether the European Union would have been more stable if its member states had more parity in size and power instead of the disparity say between the federal state of Germany and the large assimilated unitary state of France on the one hand and the microstates of Luxembourg and Malta on the other.

The developing world is at precisely that juncture in its political development. The dilemma, at least for some countries is whether to go through the whole process of assimilative nation-building first or to bypass sailing through those troubled waters and arrive at the calmer shores of a federal/confederal state like the European Union.

We want to hypothesize circumstances of time and space that have likely contributed to the establishment of federal systems and the way they have evolved in order to comply with the demands of changing times. Was federalism a more effective way to reach out to the governed, or contrariwise a better means for controlling large populations? Was it more advantageous to delegate responsibility and accountability in a dispersive administrative arrangement, or was federalism a better option for a more efficient bureaucracy or merely a façade for public relations on the world stage? 

For the purpose of this analysis, we categorize federalism less on theoretical grounds, but more on the basis of how these systems evolved into their present state and whether they serve as role models for developing countries. With a bit of presumption, and with the general variance of federalism in mind, we divide contemporary federal systems into the following three categories:

1.     Geographically-determined federalism

2.     Administrative federalism

3.     Ethnic federalism

1. Geographically-determined Federalism

Large countries whose territories stretch for hundreds or thousands of kilometers or have very large populations can be governed more effectively only through a federal system. These include countries such as Russia, Canada, the United States, Brazil, Australia, India, and perhaps Argentina, whose total territory covers almost half of the earth’s land mass as well as nearly half of the world population. China may appear as an exception to our generalization, but even though China is formally not a federal state, the existence of many autonomic regions, prefectures, countries, and other administrative divisions^[18] make it more like a federal system, even if is not in name.

A key element that factors in the establishment of a geographically-determined federal system is the assimilative ethnolinguistic makeup of states formed around European colonial settlements. With the exception of China and India, most of the large countries with federal systems are former European colonies where the indigenous populations have been decimated or disenfranchised from the political process. This includes Russia which is the only successively redefined, restructured, and renamed colonial state in relation to its former trans-Uralic colonies. 

Disenfranchised European urbanites who settled in the Americas, Australia, and parts of Africa were receptive to adopting newer identities in the assimilative settings of the new colonies. The fluidity of the evolving identities of the European settlers helped the socio-political cohesion in the new settler communities which in turn contributed to the success of large federal systems.

The word colonization, and its Arabic equivalent este’mar, ‘building, developing, and establishing,’ in particular, implied the development of ‘wilderness’ particularly of unpopulated or sparsely populated areas that the European colonial powers invaded, occupied, and settled. With a tinge of cultural relativism, the word also implied a sense of dread and despise because of the subjugation of indigenous peoples by Europeans and the occupation and control of their lands and destinies. Catchphrases such as ‘manifest destiny,’ ‘white man’s burden,’ and ‘protestant ethics’ are variations of a sense of mission to enforce a religious and/or cultural assimilative inclusion.

2. Administrative Federalism

Contemporary political experience points to the success of federal systems in societies where ethnic, racial, linguistic, and/or religious identities are not so salient. In these situations, federalism has evolved as an administrative arrangement like in the United States, Mexico, Canada, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, and Australia. These European settlers who had in a sense abandoned their ethnic, linguistic, racial, and perhaps even their religious/sectarian identities in their ancestral countries had adopted new national identities instead. Even non-European immigrants followed that trend.

In the United States, for instance, even those who use hyphenated identities such as German-American, Irish-American,… use them with emphasis on their adopted national identity rather than on the abandoned ethnolinguistic identities.[19] The emphasis on national identity is so strong that regional or city and state-derived identities such as Californian, Bostonian, and Texan rarely if ever connote a political identity rather it is often in reference to sub-cultural regional identifications such as one’s accent when, for instance, somebody uses “y’alls and drawls.”^[20]

By contrast in the ‘old world,’ Catalonian, Scottish, Irish, or Macedonian identities are primarily seen as political identities rather than linguistic ones. Similarly, in Turkey, Egypt, or Pakistan a Kurdish, Coptic, or Pashtun identity respectively is seen primarily as a political identity.

We can conclude that the low registry of an ethnic identity gives weight to national identity which in turn contributes to the cohesion of a decentralized political system, i.e. federalism.

3. Ethnic Federalism

Sociologists and anthropologists classify identities into two categories:

a. Primary or vertical identities that are inherited through blood (DNA) or birthplace. These generally include race and language which are not transferable, and even religion is not easily changed or given up. This is why people who identify with their primary identities resist assimilation into ‘nation-building’ plans, particularly in traditional societies.

b. Acquired or horizontal identities are amenable to circumstances such as those that determine an individual’s social status, ideological tendency, political affiliation, economic standing, or other circumstances susceptible to the winds of time and place. These identities have a lot more fluidity and can be replaced or substituted conveniently. They, therefore, pose little resistance to national/political assimilation plans.

In an identity-based federal system, a country's politics revolve around the primary identities of race, language, or religion more than around the national identity. The attempt to form a federal system in such societies is more like forming a union, or a confederation within a state. Even in societies with advanced political cultures such federal unions are vulnerable to the threats of intra-group rivalries.

Even in states with full or partial autonomy, sub-national identities pose a threat to the federal state. Such as Scots in the U.K., Catalans and Basques in Spain, Flanders in Belgium, Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, the French in Quebec, Chechens in Russia, Assamese in India, Russians in Estonia, Maoists in Nepal, Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kurds in Iraq among others.

A certain degree of political consciousness and socio-economic development is necessary for political cohesion to hold a federal system together. In the majority of identity-based federal systems where sub-national identities have challenged and trumped national identity, the federal system has failed. The stronger the ethnic identity registers, the more likely the federal system is to fail. Such failures are more likely accompanied by bloodshed, violence, and civil strife. When religious identity differences are added to the mix, violent disintegration becomes certain. Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sudan, Nigeria (Biafra), and Pakistan-Bangladesh were at the higher end of a violence-prone federal disintegration while the unraveling of Czechoslovakia and Malaysia-Singapore were at the lower end of that scale.

Federalism in Developing Countries 

In politically advanced Westernized societies, administrative federalism with fluid sub-national identities is a matter of political expediency. In large countries, federalism as a geographic determinant has proved to be a way for an efficient form of decentralized government. In advanced societies with ethnic diversity, but assimilative tendencies at the national level, ethnic federalism, as evolved confederacies, has had a successful track record.  In most other cases, particularly in ethnically diverse developing countries with lower levels of political consciousness and regressive political culture, federalism has failed miserably:

The federal system of the Central American Republics lasted for 18 years between 1823 and 1841, and after three years of bloody civil wars, they fell apart. The federal system of West Pakistan and East Bengal lasted only 23 years between 1947 and 1970 when their federal system fell apart in a shameful civil war. The Federation of Malaysia and Singapore lasted for only two years between 1963 and 1965. In Africa, the federal systems in Sudan, Ethiopia, and Nigeria ended in the disintegration of Sudan and Ethiopia; and Nigeria’s attempt to prevent the secession of Biafra produced one of the bloodiest wars in Africa’s history.

Even European countries like Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia were kept "united and federal" during the Cold War because of the threat of Communism. After the fall of Communism, the federal system of Czechoslovakia lasted only two years collapsing in 1992, and the federal system of Yugoslavia lasted three years and fell apart in 1993 in one of the bloodiest wars in Europe since World War II. 

The Economic Woes of Disintegration

The effects of federal disintegrations continue beyond the fiasco of political chaos, civil strife, and civil war. Seceded states pay a heavy price in loss of life during the break-up, but also in the form of brain drain during the ensuing political instability that leads to economic slowdown and stagnation. Smaller countries become even less self-sufficient because part of the once ‘domestic’ trade markets becomes less accessible under the foreign tax and tariff restrictions, as their former trade partners become foreign nations and the inaccessibility of some of the natural resources they may have once had with their federal constituent partners. Civil wars that often entail secessionist movements consume even more resources and set back their economic progress which is hard to recover from. Even if a secession is relatively peaceful, people suffer from serious irremediable losses.

With the exception of Singapore, most countries that seceded from federal systems ended up in worse economic situations than before. Former member states of the once-federal Republic of Central America, with the exception of Costa Rica, are among the least developed and most exploited underdeveloped countries in the Americas. They have mostly been reduced to single-commodity-producing collectives, earning them the derogatory name of banana republics.

Sudan and Ethiopia and their seceded states of South Sudan and Eretria respectively are economically among the least developed countries in Africa if not in the world.

Bangladesh and Pakistan are among the most backward countries in Asia and don’t carry the clout they once did together as a federal state rivaling India. Historically, the Bengal Subah was “probably the wealthiest province” in the world-rich Mughal Empire^[21] and “generated almost half of the empire’s GDP and 12% of the world’s DGP.”^[22] Even when it was conquered by the British East India Company in 1757, “Bengal directly contributed to the Industrial Revolution in Britain.”^[23] Today, post-patrician and post-secession Bangladesh ranks 144 in the world on the list of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita.^[24]

With the exception of Croatia and Slovenia, none of the other post-federation Yugoslav republics have reached a level of economic self-sufficiency to qualify for membership in the European Union, even thirty years after independence.

The Human Cost of Disintegration

In addition to the political and economic crisis disintegrations, partitions, and secessions in developing countries are responsible for horrific tragedies in history that have left deep scars on the human psyche:

·      Hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Muslims were killed in the 1947 partition of India into India and Pakistan and tens of thousands more Muslims died in the subsequent secession of East Bengal (Former East Pakistan) from West Pakistan.

·      In the unraveling of former Yugoslavia in 1993 hundreds of thousands of Bosnian Muslims, tens of thousands of Croatian Catholics, thousands of Serbian Orthodox, and thousands of other southern Slavs died in the subsequent Macedonian and Serbo-Kosovar conflicts that haven’t dissipated.

·      In Rwanda, in 1995 the Hutus massacred more than seven hundred thousand Tutsis because of the growing resentment between the two communities within one state.

·      In Sudan, the Christians south separated from the Muslims north and now the Muslims in the north are killing each other and the Christians in the south are slaughtering each other.

Causes of Federal Disintegration

The success of federalism in advanced European cultures can be attributed to long-established political traditions, sufficient economic prosperity, and/or a political culture that can withstand the troubles and turmoil of political change. Americans were lucky to establish a successful federal system under the most ideal circumstances, but not all nations had such opportunities. Attempts for the establishment of such a successful federal system in other societies have suffered from a number of underlying reasons. We will discuss three of them:

1. Clash of Identities

2. Cult of Leadership

3. Misdiagnosed Problems

1. Clash of Identities 

Developing countries have suffered longer under colonial rule and have since been struggling to achieve political stability, economic self-sufficiency, and social cohesion. For the most part, their national identities have not jelled as they are frequently challenged by groups who are beholden to their sub-national identities more than their national ones. 

Even countries that didn’t have direct colonial experience suffer from conflicting identity crises. Instead of building on their ethnolinguistic cultural diversity, they advocate ‘nation-building’ modeled after assimilative European nationalism. This runs counter to the democratic composition of their cultural diversity. Thus, the establishment of a European style of nationalism clashes with the traditional norms of the society. The Northern Tier countries of Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan which have inched closer to the European model in some ways, suffer from this paradoxical dilemma.

The Turkification of the Kurds, the Persianization of many non-Iranian people in today’s Iran, and the failure of similar attempts in Afghanistan are all examples of efforts tampering with subnational identities. The situation is even worse in Central Asia where the lingering shadow of the czarist legacy has been deliberately infused with a two-tiered Stalinist era identity as русские, ‘Russian,’ and россияне, ‘Russified.’ These socially engineered ethnic/national identities are now blindly imitated in Afghanistan where identity terms such as ‘Afghan’ and ‘Afghanistani’ are used as the equivalents of corresponding identity terms for русские and россияне. Manufactured identity crises like these have unleashed centrifugal forces that threaten national cohesion and question the validity of the national identity in Afghanistan.

A major problem of identity-based federal systems is the challenges that constituent member states pose to the authority of the central government. Intrusions in the central government’s authority weaken the federal system and endanger national identity and territorial integrity. If not resolved quickly, this is where the slippery slope to an eventual disintegration of the whole federal system begins.

In situations like these, futile competition takes over positive cooperation when the emphasis for many is on dividing the wealth they already have rather than on producing the wealth they can have. This often leads to a kleptocracy where corruption takes over the government bureaucracy.[25]

Such an identity crisis stands in the way of establishing a cohesive civil society and a lasting political order—a prerequisite for a confederal union along the European model. In the absence of a long tradition of statehood and governance, idealizing the American federal system will remain an unattainable dream.

If identity consciousness registers more intensely at the sub-national tribal, linguistic, sectarian, religious, or regional levels, it threatens national cohesion, national unity, and national identity. In these situations, certain people feel trapped between two identities. Instead of building on cultural commonalities, opportunistic leaders may exploit identity differences with disastrous consequences.

2. Cult of Leadership

Governance by its very nature has a public, ‘republic’ sphere. Political leaders emerge from public squares. The very reason for which the promotion of a public agenda needs a leader turns into a medium through which populism becomes manipulative and exploitative.

 In the absence of a long tradition of the rule of law, ambitious leaders exploit opportunities to advance a local cause to the national level regardless of whether it benefits the public in the long run. If the cause appeals to a substantial segment of the population, it is exploited. This is sometimes done through the manufacture and manipulation of crisis for demagoguery and self-aggrandizement that creates and deepens rifts between segments of society. 

When such conflicts are polarized, populists find opportunities to make themselves indispensable—political rifts widen, self-assuring hubris kicks in, and cults of personality are built. Tensions unpredictably spiral out of control resulting in civil strife, civil wars, and secession. Here are some examples:

A clash of personalities amidst an ethnic rivalry between Patrice Lumumba and Moi͏̈se Tshombe in Congo resulted in the disintegration of that country in 1960 and remains divided to this day. “Mr. Tshombe laid a wreath on the monument to the Congo's fiery first Premier, who was murdered in Katanga in January 1961. Mr. Tshombe, then the President of the secessionist province, has been widely called responsible for the killing.”^[26]

In Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew's identity-based power constituency resulted in his insistence that Singapore leaves Malaysia’s federalism in 1965. Lee himself called that his ‘moment of anguish.’ “He had seen himself in a never-ending struggle to overcome the nation’s lack of natural resources, a potentially hostile international environment and a volatile ethnic mix of Chinese, Malays and Indians.”^[27]

More than a million people in Nigeria died as a result of the brutal civil war when in 1967 Biafra decided to secede from the federation. “Following two coups and turmoil which led to about a million Igbos returning to the south-east of Nigeria, the Republic of Biafra seceded with 33-year-old military officer Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu at the helm. The Nigerian government declared war and after 30 months of fighting, Biafra surrendered.”^[28]

In 1970, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League which had campaigned for full autonomy for East Pakistan (East Bengal) was on the verge of an election victory. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto won in West Pakistan, but “Bhutto refused to form a government with this separatist party, causing a nullification of the election. The widespread rioting that followed degenerated into civil war, after which East Pakistan, with the help of India, emerged as the independent state of Bangladesh”^[29] and the federal system in Pakistan collapsed.

In Yugoslavia, partly due to the totalitarian norms of ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat,’ Marshal Josip Broz Tito remained the head of a federal Yugoslavia for life. In 1990 Slobodan Milošević curtailed the provinces’ autonomy. “He sought to use the extensive Serbian diaspora throughout Yugoslavia in his fight against confederalism, a looser union of sovereign republics that was advocated by the leaders of Croatia and Slovenia. But Milošević’s policies created an anti-Serb backlash in the other republics, and Serbia’s continuing resistance to political and economic reform accelerated the breakup of the Yugoslav federation.”^[30] Tiny Slovenia and Monte Nigro were probably the only states that escaped the heavy cost of human life in the tragic Yugoslav disintegration wars.

3. Misdiagnosed Problems

There are two critical problems that are often overlooked in suggesting federalism: timing and the rights diagnosis.

Federal arrangements are usually considered in the formative stage of nation-building. That is to say in the case of post-colonial societies, during the process of negotiation for independence or immediately afterwards. Federalism may also be considered in the aftermath of a regional or global turmoil or shake-up like WWI, WWII, the end of colonial rule in India, or the fall of the Soviet Union.

Suggesting a federal system as a conversion from an existing unitary state into a federal arrangement is neither the norm nor is it recommended as it could result in chaos with too many political, economic, and social variables factoring in. Observers believe that the suggestion of federalism from a unitary state in most cases is a camouflaged first-step attempt toward secession. The Catalans in Spain, the Kurds in Iraq, and the Tajiks in Afghanistan may be playing with such a fire.

‘Remedying an incorrectly diagnosed illness’ or ‘rushing to a solution before the problem is correctly identified,’ are analogies that point to yet another villain in the failure of federalism. 

Sometimes in their demand for a more power distribution and a more participatory system of government instead of an over-centralized authoritative one, people hastily and conveniently suggest federalism as a solution without correctly identifying the problem. 

The legitimate concern can be correctly resolved only if the problem is correctly identified. That is, if the problem is the political structure and an over-centralized hierarchical power pyramid, the solution could be restructuring the state as a federal system. However, if the distribution of power is due to the center-oriented legal system, the solution is not federalism, but a constitutional reform aimed at a dispersive redistribution of political power called devolution. 

Federalism doesn’t automatically imply the distribution of power unless provisions for power distribution are stated in the law of the land. In that case, a legal or constitutional reform—amending or redrafting—could remedy the problem, instead of hastily jumping into a debate over the structural reform of the state. 

Devolution is the statutory delegation of powers from the central government of a sovereign state to govern at a subnational level, such as a regional or local level.[31] It is a form of administrative decentralization. Devolved territories have the power to make legislation relevant to the area, thus granting them a higher level of autonomy.[32]

Devolution differs from federalism in that in devolution powers ultimately reside with the central government, but they may be devolved to subnational authorities temporarily and are reversible. In this manner, the state remains de jureunitary while power devolution may be exercised as a temporary measure for political expediency.

Conclusions

The failure of federalism in developing countries has become synonymous with bloody disasters and human catastrophes. Examples of contemporary events point to blind imitation by well-intended leaders of a political system for a society that hasn’t done its homework like resolving the clash of sub-national identities in a culturally diverse society.

Lack of foresight and vision, or both lead certain political leaders to suggest risky propositions, jumping head-on into federalism when the maturity of a political culture is not there to sustain it. They idealize a long-term goal without considering the degree of political consciousness and socio-economic development as prerequisites for the establishment of a successful federal system to bridge the gap between an idealized dream and the harsh reality that stares them in the eye.

Establishing larger and more viable political unions is good for social welfare and economic prosperity in cases where resources can be shared from a larger pool and building skills can be employed where they are most needed. To use the analogy of building a house, this is contingent upon having a stable location, the right building blocks, the necessary masonry and carpentry skills, and sufficient finance to put it all together. The building blocks of a federal system are its citizens who may have different sub-cultural identities. All subnational identities do not necessarily make good building blocks to build a federal house.  

Federalism has a good chance of success in societies that have assimilated as a cohesive political culture, have a higher degree of political consciousness, a long tradition of governance, and the necessary political experience to go through the inevitable trial-and-error process to fine-tune the system.

For the purpose of this analysis we categorized federalism as a) administrative federal systems where constituent states yield to the authority of the central government, b) geographically determined federalism where a central government can reach out to the far-flung areas of the country more effectively, and c) ethnic federalism where the registry of the national identity is substantially higher than that of any sub-national identity. In developing societies where most of the above criteria do not apply and where sub-national— ethnic, linguistic, sectarian, regional, religious, etc.—identities register higher than the national identity, playing with federalism is a very risky predicament that could unravel with devastating consequences. In such cases, either a confederal regional union should be considered or, by default, a centralized unitary political system with considerable power distribution to serve the people.

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Bio

Zaman Stanizai is a Professor of Political Science at California State University, Dominguez Hills, and a Professor of Mythological Studies at the Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California.  Dr. Stanizai earned an MA degree in linguistics at the University of Washington in Seattle as a Fulbright scholar and a Ph.D. and MA degree in political science at the University of Southern California.  His recent research in political theory focuses on national and sub-national identities and the viability of developing nation-states encountering globalization.  He has lectured widely on the separation of state and religion in Islam and on Islamic contributions to world civilization. Zaman Stanizai is the translator of the acclaimed memoir Dancing in the Mosque.