Response to the interview questions by Dott.ssa Elisabeth Alber, Senior Researcher at the Institute for Studies on Federalism and Regionalism at the European Academy of Bozen/Bolzano (EURAC) located in the Autonomous Province of Bolzano/Bozen (South Tyrol, Northern Italy) www.eurac.edu/sfere

1-Federalism is a method to have coexistence of religions and nations in a country. But the successful experiences are evidence that federalism cannot succeed in the absence of democracy, just like the former Soviet Union countries and the Middle and Eastern Europe. According to your opinion; why federalism cannot succeed in the absence of democracy?
• As federalism is interpreted in many different ways let me begin with explaining how we from the EURAC-Institute for Studies on Federalism and Regionalism define federalism. Federalism is, in general terms, a form of constitutionalzed division of power whereby authority is shared and powers are divided between several (at least two) levels of government over the same people(s) and geographical area. Contrariwise, unitary systems have only one source of power, the central government. In our view, the main task of a federal multi-tier system of governance is both the de-concentration of power (first raison d’être) and the creation of power-sharing mechanisms in multiethnic contexts (second raison d’être). Both, if implemented functionally, are to guarantee for the co-existence of different interests under a common roof.
In a federal system power and resources are distributed more fairly, allowing for the accommodation of differences by participatory decision-making processes. The government tiers act more closely to and with the citizens. Federal systems thus protect legitimate difference (ethnic, cultural, economic, political, social, geographic) among the territories better than unitary systems, which – at a first glance – may seem less complex. Key elements of a federal (or federalizing) system are, among others, transparency and accountability as well as the willingness and ability to have policies tailored to local needs and peoples’ preferences (applying the so called subsidiarity principle). Both transparency and accountability are not achieved per se because of federalism, but federalism is doubtless a tool that facilitates the achievement of these elements of good governance. Good governance itself is but one key element of democracy next to human rights, the separation of powers, freedom of opinion, religious liberty and the general and equal right to vote. Although democracy can prosper under either system, federal or unitary, there are essential differences between the two types of governments when it comes to guaranteeing in legal terms the accommodation of differences and local preferences. For example, with regard to Great Britain the ultimate authority over all things within the United Kingdom lies at the end of the day in the unitary government, even if we take into consideration the latest development of devolution of powers (Scotland Act 1998, Northern Ireland Act 1998, Government of Wales Act 1998 modified by the Government of Wales Act in 2006). On the contrary, in the United States, the Congress does not have the power to abolish a state nor can a state assume a power intended for the national government alone. The Constitution of the United States is indeed the source of authority of both democratic tiers of government but, in turn, the Constitution vests the American People as the ultimate power in democracy (“We the People of the United States …”). Let me recall the definition of democracy as the “Government of the people, by the people, for the people” by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and the definition of federalism as a political organization based upon the combination of “self-rule plus shared rule” (Daniel Elazar); these definitions show that a successful model of federalism can’t be else than democratic, even though the mere existence of a federal system does not necessarily mean that the concerned state is democratic. Federalism without democracy is simply not sustainable. If basic democratic elements are not respected, key elements of federalism as mutual cooperation schemes and loyalty cannot function. Let me put it in another way: federalism fails because basic democratic elements are absent and not because of its complexity in governance; latter one originates from misconceptions about what federalism means and what opportunities it provides for better governance. Nigeria, Venezuela and Pakistan are examples that are permeated by such misconceptions and non-democratic dysfunctional ties.
Both federalism and democracy are as much about division of powers and responsibilities as it is about coordination and cooperation among the levels of government and the constituent peoples.
South Africa and Ethiopia are examples for a political culture willing to implement federal structures.
Federalism as such is neither a source of conflict nor a remedy to all problems. It is the result of political compromises aiming both at accommodating differences and building unity as well as solidarity among different territories and groups. Both political compromises and unity in diversity cannot be reached and guaranteed by legal procedures in absence of the key elements of democracy that I mentioned beforehand.
2- European Union as a federation consists of 27 states, the membership pre-condition is democracy. Also, the European Union constitution has set some conditions for the member states which are basics of Liberal democracy?
• The European Union is an example for a governance system beyond the state (a new quasi- supranational model of governance), which is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities (Article 2 of the Treaty of the European Union TEU). It has created the most effective international human rights regime to date: the Court of Justice body of case law serves as a framework of fundamental rights and has given the Union an extensive body of quasi-constitutional law, guaranteeing fundamental freedoms (freedom of movement for workers, freedom of establishment, freedom to provide services, free movement of goods and capital) by taking also into account the transitional rules for member states who joined in 2004 and 2007.
Currently, the European Union counts 27 member states. With regard to its nature, there is an ongoing debate among scholars, judges, politicians and citizens about whether the EU is a federal state, federation, confederation, association of states or sui generis entity. The ratio of the EU is to respect its member states national identities. Member states are not to be dissolved into the EU.
They keep their peculiarities and thus the EU draws its legitimacy both from national governments and citizens, as shown by its bicameral structure of its legislative power (the strong Council of Ministers as a Chamber of State Ministers and the European Parliament as the Chamber of Peoples).
In legal terms, the Union’s nature was set out in two precedent-setting judgments of the Court of Justice in 1963 (Van Gend & Loos) and 1964 (Costa vs Enel), relating to the then European Economic of it. European institutions are coordinating national responses and seeking common strategies to restore confidence in the financial industry and economic growth, especially with regard to the PIGS- countries (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) and Italy. The debate on the European Economic and Financial Reform Agenda requires from all member states a full engagement in economic and social reforms. Economic divergences and different political priorities between member states put on the test the governance mechanisms of the European Monetary Union and non-Euro zone EU member states. The Union’s cooperation alludes almost to a possible functioning model of cooperative federalism at European level, which seems to succeed in guiding its member states in implementing best practices experienced throughout Europe, while maintaining national specificities. A constitutionalisation of such cooperative federal philosophy is without doubt helpful in approaching
any kind of crisis affecting a governance body – may it be internal or external. Community, but still valid. The conclusion to be drawn from these cases is, with regard to the Van Gend & Loos case, that the Community constitutes a new legal order of international law for the benefit of which the states have limited their sovereign rights, albeit within limited fields, and the subjects of which comprise not only member states but also their nationals; and, with regard to the Costa vs Enel case, that the transfer by the states from their domestic legal system to the Community legal system of rights and obligations arising under the Treaty carries with it a permanent limitation of their sovereign rights, against which a subsequent unilateral act incompatible with the concept of the Community cannot prevail. All in all, the Union is the most significant example of institutional cooperation between states and its initial aim “creating an ever closer union” makes it an unfinished project in continuous evolution. The actions taken by the EU’s national governments, the European Central Bank and the Commission in the global economic and financial crisis are a proof As to the conditions for membership, 1993 was the year in which the European Union at the Copenhagen European Council took a decisive step towards the fifth enlargement (“the associated countries in Central and Eastern Europe that so desire shall become members of the European Union”) and, at the same time, defined the membership criteria. The so called Copenhagen Criteria require from each candidate country to achieve a political criterion (stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities), an economic criterion (the existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union) and a acquis criterion (the ability to take on the obligations of membership including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union). Membership criteria therefore require that the candidate country must have created the conditions for its integration through the adjustment of its administrative structures, as underlined by the Madrid European Council in December 1995. This adjustment is as a prerequisite for the effective implementation of EU legislation through appropriate administrative and judicial structures. Additionally, a de facto condition for states to become members is their compliance with the Council of Europe statuary principles (pluralist democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of law). Established in 1949 as a European organization for intergovernmental and parliamentary cooperation, the central motive for its creation was the need to secure democracy in the light of recent and actual totalitarism by backing political, legislative and constitutional reform, and to prevent the recurrence of the violations of human rights. Currently, it counts 47 members states.
3- The western countries and America usually try to resolve the ethnic conflicts by making them stay together in a federal country, but as that state fails to produce democracy and after a severe violence and massacre, just like the former Yugoslavia, they split up. So, according to your view; to what extend has the International community picked some lessons from former Yugoslavia?
• It is true that most of Europe’s ethnic bloodshed have recently occurred in the three federal states that made up part of the Communist Europe – Yugoslavia, the USRR and Czechoslovakia. Despite of that, federal rather than unitary states are the form most often associated with multinational democracies. Even if generally speaking there are much more states with a unitary governing system and “just” 25 states (Ronald Watts) with a federal one, one has to be remember that almost half of the world population live in a federal state and federalism as a political organization is prevalent in countries that are geographically large and have a large number of population, and thus also diversity (India and Canada for example). The mere fact that those countries chose federalism as governance system does not prove that federalism is a panacea for all problems but it proves that it does offer tools to successfully manage problems that come with a high degree of ethnic and linguistic diversity.
The lesson to be learned from failed federalism projects is that federalism is much more than just an institutional setting and constitutional design. Latter ones are only some of the ingredients of a working federal system. Many other elements are essential to make a federation work, both legal and cultural in nature. Among the former, the role of courts and the party system are of utmost importance and they both influence the cultural elements and are influenced by them.
No democratic federal system will ever work without a proper federal culture, owned both by its political elites and its people(s). If some of the Asian countries are ever to become stable democracies, federalism (or at least the creation of special jurisdictions as a first step) might surely offer some tools for accommodating diversity in a fair way. A further lesson to be learned is that there are no “One size fits all solutions” for accommodating differences; models cannot be transferred, they can just offer techniques. Asking the right question comes prior to finding the right answer! Let me quote Prof. Palermo, director of the EURAC-Institute for Studies on Federalism and Regionalism, who calls for a Law of Diversity that is “not only constituted of a large variety of legal instruments, legal sources, an interrelated levels of complexities; it is also shaped by a great number of different actors. The rules of the law of diversity are inevitably subject to constant revision with respect to their proportionality, efficiency and sustainability […] directly linked to the changes of the societal reality that they regulate.” It is also true that no system has the guarantee of being permanently stable. Every system will always contain tensions in its design. Even if a system appears stable in relation to a give context and set of problems, it may face challenges when the problem or context changes, as we have seen for some aspects in Germany or also in the course of Swiss federalism. Federalism offers tools to manage tensions.
At present, in federalism studies, more sophisticated advantages are capturing attention by scholars and practitioners.
These include the enhancement of learning capacity from the multiplication of centers of government: policies and governing techniques experimented elsewhere and at different levels of government can provide solutions to specific problems.
The multiplication of interest groups in federal systems prevents the formation of a permanent majority with the potential to trample on minority rights. Also, very important is the ability of scholars, policy-makers and ultimately citizens to compare the performance of their governments with that of governments in other jurisdictions.
4- Some experts think that; the best resolution to the ethnic conflicts is to separate the ethnic groups from each other so that each will have chances to build democracy on their own, afterwards; letting them to come up with each other again within a federation. So, how far do you agree with this please?
• I do not agree. This would be too simple and just does not work. Transforming system is a challenging task and peoples cannot be reduced to human beings part of board games. Territorial socio-linguistic homogeneity is neither reality nor desired.
From a philosophical point of view we could define culture, identities and differences as essences that show people the different characteristics of their cultural/ethnic group and act as guideline. But there is also an evolving element inherent in culture and ethnicity. Ethnicity thus results in a complex interplay between past, present and future aspects.
For the same reason law as a tool for political organization cannot be considered as an artificial artifact but it has to offer a certain degree of flexibility to quickly respond to different needs. Federalism is much more about processes, than about ends. It is about offering dynamic instruments based on precise cooperation schemes.
With regard to ethnic groups, a significant number of federal systems allow for asymmetrical arrangements (Canada, India for example). However, de jure and de facto asymmetry is peculiar not only to federal but also to regional states (see the Italian federation in the making and the quasi-federal Spain). Asymmetrical arrangements are of key relevance when it comes to the accommodation of cultural diversities, especially in divided societies, where classical instruments of minority protection are not anymore sufficient or adequate to respond to the increasing complexity of government schemes and the claims of all actors. In fact, Will Kymlicka’s notion of multinational federalism also alludes to instances of asymmetry of ethnic groups that are granted special territorial rights as in Catalonia and the Basque region in Spain, Quebec in Canada and South Tyrol in Italy. Obviously, the implementation of both symmetry and asymmetry matters.
The resulting balance between unity and diversity makes the difference for establishing viable solutions and flexible relationships capable of facilitating and developing cooperation among sub national units and their diverse groups. The aspect which matters in defining the role of asymmetry as best (unity in diversity) or worst practice (leading to secessionist tendencies) and mitigating conflicts is the extent to which it enters the scene of the state’s constitutional and political architecture. What kind and how much asymmetry a state can or should burden depends on many contextual variables inherent to the political and legal system, and on salient facts. The example of Bosnia Herzegovina shows that federal institutions and asymmetries alone do not guarantee success in conflict management and democratization. With regard to Italy, asymmetry is a consequence of historical developments, an outcome of political negotiations (especially regarding the 5 special regions out of overall 20 regions composing the Italian state), an obliged path because of the existence of minorities (see international agreement on the protection of German-speakers in South Tyrol), a duty of the emancipation of the regional level (regarding especially the 15 ordinary regions) and a process that assigns the constitutional court a great margin of discretion. The most important achievement of the Autonomous Province of Bonze/Bolzano (South Tyrol) where EURAC is located, is the slow but permanent trust-building process based on extremely detailed legal arrangements and a meticulous mechanism of negotiation with the central level based on the work of so called joint commissions; they elaborate the text of the enactment decrees for the implementation of the Autonomy Statute (being then adopted by the government bypassing the parliament). Both, the enactment decrees and the relations between the central level and South Tyrol have special characteristics; first have a peculiar rank as sources of law and second are based on parity (all actors play a fundamental role and are equally heard).
5- Taiwan is a special consideration of coexistence between Democratic government and Chinese authoritarian government. Currently international community considers Taiwan as a part of china and wants it to integrate with China again. So, we would like to ask you if; how to manage relations between democratic and authoritarian governments in a country?
• One can simply not manage such relations. The most important goal of an authoritarian regime is the maintenance of power and the personal enrichment on cost of the country and its population.
Authoritarian regimes may randomly provide high-quality governance, but if they do not, they can only be changed by force. Let me quote SenAmartya in considering the effects of democracy relative to authoritarian regimes: “political incentives operate on governments and on the persons and groups that are in office. The rulers have the incentive to listen to what people want if they have to face their criticism and seek their support in elections”. According to the Freedom House’s annual assessment of political rights and civil liberties around the world, global freedom suffered its fifth consecutive year of decline in 2010. The number of countries designated as Free fell from 89 to 87, and the number of electoral democracies dropped to 115, far below the 2005 figure of 123. In addition, authoritarian regimes like those in China, Russia and Venezuela continued to step up repressive measures with little significant resistance from the democratic world, obviously not inherent in federal principles.
With the recent challenges to a number of authoritarian regimes in Northern Africa and the Middle East, the role of the West in the process of Arab democratization will be redefined. Prior to the uprisings the dominant global political trend was characterized by an increasing assertiveness of the world’s leading authoritarian states. Time will show in which direction the Arab spring will go: are old power structures definitely dismantled or do they present themselves just in another form? Will we be able to talk about a “Fourth Wave of Democratization” (following the reasoning of Samuel Huntington’s waves of democratization)? Transformation is a challenging task and does not necessarily mean democracy (or federal alike structures that could be an appropriate tool for the accommodation of religious and ethnic diversity).
As the experience in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union shows, there are many opportunities in transition periods for extremists and political opportunists. Of the former Soviet countries, only 13 are categorized by Freedom House as free countries.
6- Iraq is a multi-ethnic and multi-nationality country, after the fall of Saddam’s regime, a constitution was drafted theoretically to rebuild Iraq based on fundamentals of federalism. But, it has been 8 years after the fall of the Saddam’s regime; the Iraqi government is still trying to run the state centrally. One of the regions in Iraq is independent Kurdistan region. Unlike Taiwan it is part of Iraq but Iraq is not a democratic or federal state. So, since Kurdistan region is a democratic region, how is it possible for Kurdistan region to deal with a government that doesn’t believe in federalism?
• It is hardly possible, rather impossible. Federal political culture is needed as federalism is an organization of political compromises. In authentic federations the federal government cannot unilaterally alter the horizontal division of powers.
Division of competencies requires consent from all tiers of government. Successful federalism requires thus well functioning democratic institutions, judicial system, integrated national political parties and appropriate electoral incentives created by political competition. The basic finding of the literature is that only in well functioning democracies can federalism be a stable and effective form of government.
And conversely, outside of the democratic context, federalism is ultimately an unstable form, which logically progresses either to territorial disintegration or to becoming a mere constitutional formality (Russia for example).
Federalism can only work if all players have a say in the game and all aspects are considered (ethnic, demographic and religious differentiation but also the demographic distribution of such differentiation within the country). Federations are also more likely to be stable if they have non-interventionist neighbors and if policies are of cross-community and cross-cleavages nature.
In establishing federal structures one should further avoid the empowerment of identity-based parties.
Federalism is not meant to empower differences, but to make them visible and to develop mechanisms in accommodating them by power-sharing.
Whether a state will be able to develop a viable democratic federal system ultimately depends on the design of its system, the implementation of it or its reforms, which requires the willingness to commonly engage in a federal political culture. Values as trust, tolerance and transparency are essential to make any federal system work properly. Federalism offers tools but it is all about how their implementation, which has to take into account all contextual variables to be successful.
External forces or unilateralism might work to establish some aspects of federalism. But they cannot make democratic federalism work as a whole in a long run.
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Short biographical note:
Dott.ssa Elisabeth Alber, Senior Researcher and former Coordinator at the Institute for Studies on Federalism and Regionalism, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Innsbruck; lecturer at the “Master for Peace workers”, the “Master on European Integration and Regionalism” and the EURAC Winter School on Federalism and Governance.
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Education: Master degree in International and Diplomatic Sciences (University of Torino); Visiting Researcher (University of Turku) and the European Centre for Minority Issues (Flensburg); Human Rights Diploma; Advanced Certificate of European Studies (Jean Monnet Institute, Turku). Work experience: European Union (EESC); German teacher; research analyst at different research centers; organizer, trainer and facilitator of intercultural youth seminars at European level.
Memberships: Board member of the NGO Association for Community Colleges (ACC), member of the Euro regional Association for comparative public and European law, Devolution Club.
Language skills: German mother tongue, Italian (mother tongue level), English fluent, French very good, Spanish, Russian and Finnish basic knowledge.