Federalism

Federalism is often referred to in current writings on politics as an old political idea whose time has finally come in the 21st century. In this respect, a distinguished scholar of this subject, Ronald L. Watts (2008), has noted “there are at present some 25 countries encompassing over 40% of the world's population, and each exhibiting the fundamental characteristics of a functioning federation” (p. 1). And he points out that “a distinctive feature about this current popularity of federalism in the world is that the application of the federal idea has taken a great variety of forms” (p. 7).

The initial framing of “federalism” in its modern manifestation, both as an idea and as an institutional form, is generally attributed to two [Page 896]prominent American Constitutional Fathers, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, the principal authors of The Federalist, in October 1787. In promoting this concept, they sought to defend a new hybrid regime form that they and other framers of the American Constitution had proposed at the founding Philadelphia Convention on September 17, 1787, for later ratification. It was intended to strike a balance between the decentralized and centralized forms of confederal and unitary government. The former had been applied to the much more decentralized political union that had operated from 1781 to 1787 in the 13 newly independent colonies of British North America under the Articles of Confederation. In this earlier shortlived and highly unstable political arrangement, the original constituent units were essentially in control of the newly formed and fragile central government. A similar pattern of union had operated in the German, Dutch, and Swiss Confederations of the 16th and 17th centuries. Unitary government, on the other hand, was the pattern of rule that operated in most other states in which political decision-making power and authority were vested in one unit or center. The American Constitutional Fathers favored federalism as an intermediate form between centralized and decentralized government because they believed that by dividing sovereignty in this balanced way, they could prevent the concentration of authority and promote liberty and political pluralism in a new union. They considered federalism to be a vertical extension of the concept of separation of powers between the executive, legislature, and judiciary, which they had adapted from the noted 18th-century French political philosopher, the Baron de Montesquieu.