PDF Comparing Federal Systems Queen Policy Studies Series Ronald L Watts 9781553391883 Books
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In this updated and extensively revised third edition, Ronald Watts provides a clear analysis of the design and operation of a wide range of federations. There is much that can he learned from the experience of federal systems throughout the world. At present there are 25 functioning federations in the world (containing over 40 percent of the world's population). A distinctive feature of the popularity of federalism in the contemporary world is that its application has taken a variety of forms and has included some new variants and innovations.
PDF Comparing Federal Systems Queen Policy Studies Series Ronald L Watts 9781553391883 Books
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Tags : Comparing Federal Systems (Queen's Policy Studies Series) [Ronald L. Watts] on . In this updated and extensively revised third edition, Ronald Watts provides a clear analysis of the design and operation of a wide range of federations. There is much that can he learned from the experience of federal systems throughout the world. At present there are 25 functioning federations in the world (containing over 40 percent of the world's population). A distinctive feature of the popularity of federalism in the contemporary world is that its application has taken a variety of forms and has included some new variants and innovations.,Ronald L. Watts,Comparing Federal Systems (Queen's Policy Studies Series),Institute of Intergovernmental Relations,1553391888,American Government - National,Comparative Politics,Comparative government,Comparative government.,Federal government,Federal government.,Federalisme,Institutions politiques comparees,Comparative law,Constitution government the state,General,POLITICAL SCIENCE / American Government / National,POLITICAL SCIENCE / Comparative Politics,POLITICAL SCIENCE / General,Political Science,Politics government,Politics / Current Events,Politics/International Relations
Comparing Federal Systems Queen Policy Studies Series Ronald L Watts 9781553391883 Books Reviews :
Comparing Federal Systems Queen Policy Studies Series Ronald L Watts 9781553391883 Books Reviews
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- _Comparing Federal Systems_ offers readers a concise almanac of matters federalistic. While the book is a comparative work, Canada and its federal structure serve as the explicit fulcrum of comparison throughout. Constraining his analysis to procedural and prescribed formal characteristics, Watts provides a summary of the formalist extant literature on federalism that would be useful for graduate and undergraduate classes alike. Secession is a special topic, receiving treatment at the end--and Watts explicitly and implicitly deals with Québec separatism. Indeed, his very selection of cases depends strictly upon their relevance to the Canadian situation (p. 18). Watts' book is also a celebration of federalism's diversity across the globe. The tables within the first chapter illustrate the book's assumptions about the wide taxonomy of federalism.
For Watts, the critical tension underpinning the form of federalism, whether through creation or "evolution" (though "change" is a better and less value-laden word choice), rests between diversity and unity of a country. And this dichotomy is actually an echo of a federalist union's previous circumstances. If a country was previously coherent and centralized, the flavor of the subsequent federalism will retain vestiges of centralization, such as residual power in the hands of the central authority (Belgium, Spain). If a federal structure forms by aggregating previously distinct political entities, the opposite effect occurs residual powers tend toward remaining in the constituent units rather than shifting toward the center. He suggests that, ceteris paribus, the degree of societal homogeneity (meaning presumably ethnic, religious, linguistic, etc. homogeneity) drives the level of autonomy in the units. Heterogeneity suggests power in the periphery and homogeneity suggests power in the center.
Perhaps a fitting book for the Halloween season, _Comparing Federal Systems_ is a veiled imploration for continued Canadian multi-communal federalism masquerading as social science. To be fair, it is part descriptive social science focusing on the taxonomy of federalism with its several competing tensions and part a largely unconcealed plea for the salvation of federal Canada. He begins his critical chapter on federations' pathologies with an important caveat, one that stipulates that the observed problems with federations stem not from the choice of federalism but from mismatching the type or form of federalism to the circumstances at hand. Québécois separatists are therefore misguided in their hopes to make Canada a "bicommunal" federation ("Québec and `the rest'"), since previous attempts at confederal bicommunalism have failed due to essentially the impossibility of parity-leading to bipolar, contentious, "terminal instability." A mere pair of constituent units does not a federation make, especially when they are as disparate as "Québec and `the rest.'"
_Comparing Federal Systems_ is not equipped to answer the critical question of whether federations in general, as a form, can serve as the deliverance for disparate societies (ethnic or linguistic) in general terms. The book uses a dual voice (anti-Québec separatism and cataloger of federation types), but neither of these voices can speak to the larger questions of whether to federate or not. It would seem likely to deduce that Watts views federalism as a successful mitigating factor for inter-constituent unit conflict through management of inevitable asymmetries, as his prescription for success lies largely along the lies of selecting the right form of federation to match the pre-existing situation.
As presumably most other naïve Americans who read this book, I came with preconceptions of federations and confederations drawn only from the American cases of the Articles of Confederation and the Confederate States of America versus the 1789 Constitution's union. This book was helped by the description of the spectrums of federalism, making it easy for a reader to conceptualize the place of various cases. The list of definitions within the initial chapter of the book gives broad parameters and emphasizes the need to classify federations and confederations on a scale rather than as a dichotomous grouping.
Too many competing sets of variables contribute to the degree of a federation's integration to use a simple binary scheme.
Readers will not find Watts' comparative treatment of bicameralism illuminative, however. The intra-house tension within bicameral systems varies from federation to federation, unsurprisingly corresponding to the level of power prescribed to the respective houses. Lacking from analysis is a coherent treatment of the tension that depicts how the variation in intra-house power allocation affects outcomes in federal systems.
There are few instances to dispute his methodological decisions, but his metric for measuring a given federation's level of "population asymmetry," per its constituent units, merits minor criticism. He uses the difference between a union's largest and its smallest constituent units as a measure of asymmetry (see p. 64 for table), but this measure lacks an ability to compare across federations of varying populations. Indeed, the world's Uttar Pradeshes and Zurichs can be disproportionately powerful within their unions, but Watts is concerned with the utter domination of a union by one or two powerful constituent units, such as Prussia, Jamaica, and Russia. I find it questionable that he uses an absolute measure of raw difference in population between largest and smallest units as his asymmetry measure to rank the federal systems instead expressing the asymmetry as a ratio-thereby making the measure more comparable across different sized federations.
Though Watts did not make it his mission to satisfy them, elite scholars will find little satisfaction with _Comparing Federal Systems_, considering its treatment on the subject is constrained strictly to formal and procedural aspects of politics, federations, and constitutions. Ignoring elite incentives and inter-elite relationships provide readers with a book that misses large causal elements behind both the form and rationale behind federalization.
Jeremy M. Teigen
University of Texas at Austin
