Philippe C. Schmitter is an Emeritus Professor of the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute. He has published widely on comparative politics, European regional integration, Latin America regional integration, transitions from authoritarianism, and the intermediation of class, sectoral and professional interests. More recently he has been examining the possibilities for post-liberal democracy in North America and Europe.

Gulan Media: If we start with the issue of democracy building process and transitional phase, we see that in the multi-ethnic societies, democracy and federalism complete each other; that means federalism cannot succeed in the absence of democracy. What is your comment about it?
Prof. Schmitter: That is an interesting question because I have doubts about federalism succeeding under democracy. The obvious problem here is that, at least in the cases you mentioned, and you could also put Mexico in that same category, federalism was a formal institutional characteristic, I would say in Yugoslavia, Soviet Union or Mexico, the actual functioning depended on the party system, in which you cannot separate, you want to put together federalism and democracy, but between democracy and federalism is the party system, if you have a single party, which coordinate the political elite in each of the federal unit, as was the case with Yugoslavia, Mexico and Soviet union, then federalism is not actually functioning, because the party overrides the autonomy of the sub-units.
Gulan Media: Obviously for maintaining European federation, the EU has set some principles which are fundamentals of democratic societies to become member in EU. So, don't you think that in this case democracy comes before the condition for preserving the federation?
Prof. Schmitter: The word we need to describe this and we call it as "Political conditionality", in other words in order to become a candidate or eventually a member, you must meet certain conditions which are established by already existing members of the EU. It is not just democracy, it is also Human rights for example, and the Rule of Law, that is the typical three conditions. And then the EU, with missions in each of the candidate countries, for example right now Serbia and Croatia which are the next most advanced member states, it has missions in those countries which are monitoring the performance of those two countries in terms with Human rights, rule of law and democracy. But the real problem I think that exist is the European Union insists that its members are democratic, but it itself is not democratic. That is the peculiar feature of the EU.
Gulan Media: So, according to your opinion; what are the causes that lead to the failure of federalism and split up of the nations?
Prof. Schmitter: I think the most obvious case that you should be interested in is the division between Czech and Slovaks, in which there was a peaceful voluntary separation of the two, which are two different countries today. The difference of course in Yugoslavia was that the separation and the eventual autonomy of Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia, that was accomplished only as a result of violence. so that is one thing that consider, it is possible for a federal state to break a part, and for units of the federal state to succeed and become independent natural states peacefully. And that is what happened in the case of the former Czech and Slovak republic divided into two. In the case of Yugoslavia the problem was largely because of the domination of the Serbia over the other units, and the fact was the army of Yugoslavia was dominated by Serbian officials. That is what made it particularly difficult because Serbia had the military capacity to suppress the succession of the other Yuglsav states. To somewhere you're thinking how federalism functions, you need to include an understanding of what is an army in a federal system.
Gulan Media: In Iraq, which is a Multi-nation and Multi-ethnic country, theoretically after the fall of the former regime a constitution was drafted on the basis of federalism principles, but it has been 8 years that the Iraqi government still wants to centrally run its affairs. We would like to ask you in here; if the country itself doesn't want federalism, do you think if foreign forces can do something to get the federalism succeed?
Prof. Schmitter: That is a very big question and it's been made more complicated, but in fact in the Iraq case with the Kurds. Remember, and one thing always keep in mind, that when you talk about federalism and ethnicity, and that is the relationship between territory and ethnicity or religion. That is to say, it makes a huge difference; whether an ethnic minority itself concentrated in a particular territory or whether it was dispersed or there is various religion and ethnic groups are not concentrated in the same places, federalism is a territorial arrangement, it has various sub-units which have an integral territorial existence and certain guarantee rights under a constitution. If you think about federalism in the situation of central Europe, with gypsies or some other minority groups which are not concentrated in the same place it is a very different kind of problem. I gather this is the problem in certain areas of Iraq where you've a territorial unit but there is a great deal of conflict over who or which is the dominant ethnic group in that particular city or province, whatever you call those sub-units. Now, the other problem that the Kurdish one in Iraq is something that has happened occasionally historically mainly the fact that the ethnic minority of Kurds within Iraq is also ethnic minorities in other States, next to Iraq. And that makes a federal type of solution much more difficult because, if there were to be a federal system in Iraq, the question that will immediately rise over the relationship between the Kurdish part of Turkey or Kurdish part of Iran with the Kurdish part of Iraq. That is a special feature of the Iraqi situation.
Gulan media: Some things happen in Iraq which make the Iraqi people to ask for staying together, sometimes some different things take place and makes the people to wish for separation.
Prof. Schmitter: I agree with you, but you know one thing that you might want to think about, I don't know if you remember the history of Yugoslavia, but there was a radical change when Germany recognized the independence of Croatia, it was a signal that the world was prepared to see Yugoslavia break up, rather than what the America and others wanted was not to deal or grant independence or recognition of the subunits and to insist that it was only if Yugoslavia stayed together that it would continued to be recognized and it would get economic aid and still had some chance to in joining with EU, etc. But, as soon as Germany recognized the autonomy of Croatia that fell apart, the message was the world system wants sort of speak Yugoslavia to fall apart. And then it was prepared to make arrangements with and to support the autonomy of the former federal units. And same thing of course is going on right now with Kosovo. I'm trying to tell you that the international element and the external powers exist, and the problem is that all the external powers all have Kurdish population within them, their policies are going to be strongly influenced by the possibility that some kind of secession of Kurdistan in Iraq will serious implications for the internal politics, of Turkey and Iran and other countries in the region. That is a special problem.
Gulan Media: We see that there was a de-facto independent territory in Iraq before the downfall of Saddam's regime, and it was Kurdistan region, unlike Taiwan, Kurdistan was part of Iraq.
Prof. Schmitter: That is a good point, because in the case of Taiwan, the Taiwanese and the Chinese live right next to each other, there is no physical separation between Taiwanese and Chinese, they live in the same place and they're next door to each other, even though they have different ethnic origins, and of course they speak different kind dialect of Chinese, that is not in the case as I understand it, in the case of the Kurds of Iraq, there is a physical concentration so that you can identify a territory, but I gather there are certain cities and areas which are divided between not just Iraqis, but also between different sects of Islam. There is a term "consociation democracy", that is something parallel to but not the same meaning with federalism. Let me give you an example; in the Netherlands there was historically a very deep divide between Protestants and Catholics, in that case, they were not a federalist country, in fact Holland was the most politically centralized countries in the Western Europe. However, in order to overcome this divide, I think it was in 1914 early in the First World War, they came to so called "Consociation agreement", which is not a territorial agreement, but it was an agreement to share offices in the government, and to allow for the separate development financial by the state of the Catholic and Protestants educational system, radio stations, and eventually television stations, etc... So, within a highly centralized regime you had a very decentralized application and a formula which divided resources between Catholics and Protestants. That is something that should be of interest especially in the situations where the groups involved are not territorially exclusive or whether they overlap which was the case in the Netherland. So, if you were a catholic in Netherlands, which was minority, after 1914, you were guaranteed the right not only of course to be educated in a catholic character, and even to be married and etc, in all sources of legal things as education in separate, and both enhanced by the state, and there was a formula for dividing up revenues between Catholic and Protestants in Netherlands. Switzerland and Austria are other cases, these are so called as "consociation systems". In Switzerland and Austria, they are also federal system, but in the Netherlands they are not a federal system.
Gulan Media: Do you think like if this should be implemented for Iraq as well?
Prof. Schmitter: Yes, that is the basic idea, with consociation system independent of how you deal with territorial authority, depends on an agreed up on principle of proportionality. How do you divide up state resources, and how do you ensure that those resources allow different ethnic or religious groups to educate and to communicate with each other exclusively sort of speak.
Gulan Media: Do you think if this can work between Kurdistan which has an elected government with another central government which is Baghdad's? As the prime minister is heading toward authoritarianism.
Prof. Schmitter: That is an interesting point, because the European experience suggests NO. That is to say in countries like Holland and earlier experiences of Austria and Switzerland, it was important that the groups that you were dividing these resources and the territorial degree of autonomy for sub-units in Switzerland or Austria depended on the fact that the units were all democratic even if the specific units had different party systems or different interest group systems, etc. Spain was a perfect case for that as an example. So, all of Spain and its sub-units are democratic, but they are differently democratic, so you have local parties of various types in Catalonia and in Andalucía or other areas. But, the fact that they are all democratic if in different ways absolutely essential in reaching an agreement and ensuring that the agreement will be kept, but that is made two problems, so you have to reach an agreement on what is a fair division of authority that is federalism, and money or policy making that is the consociation aspect. But, you also have to be sure that you will keep that agreement, that is to say the agreement is not simply a temporary solution, and as soon as one or another of the partners think that they are strong enough, they will simply override the agreement behave as they please. So, you need to reach an agreement initially on territory, money and function, and then you need to have the development of sufficient confidence that the all sides will keep the agreement. I imagine that there is a very special problem in a country like Iraq, which has not been characteristic of any of the countries that I have studied or with Europe or that matter with Latin America. Mainly, that the resources to be distributed is based on a single source which is petroleum, in other words you don't have a diversified economy, or diversified activities.
Gulan Media: Is there any multi-ethnic and multi-national country in the world that has its different sub-units unified in a federal system? Except for Emirates, because it is not a multi-national state.
Prof. Schmitter: No it doesn't seem to be, we make a distinction between con-federal and federal systems. And I really suspect that the United Arab Emirates is a con-federal system, there is a great deal of autonomy in each of the sub-units, and not resources, authority or centralization at the level of the union as a whole. The most obvious case or the most difficult case we chose how impossible it is, is Nigeria, it is a federal system but it doesn't work, it is completely corrupt, violence all the time, no one on the earth would want to imitate Nigeria. And of course, in terms with Iraq, it is also a country which main source of revenue for the state is petroleum, which obviously make things much more difficult. I guess the closest country I can think of is Mexico, the problem in Mexico is that the ethnic divisions centrally between the native populations which are divided into various types of ethnic groups, that have been there before the Spanish arrive. And then the descendents and the mixed population between the Europeans and the natives, so you could describe Mexico as a multi-national state, but not in the sense I think that you would be use it in the case of Iraq, in other words, it is much less internally divided than Iraq. Never the less, it was an authoritarian regime since the end of revolution in 1920 and until 10 years ago. So, Mexico ran a multi-national federal state dominated by a single party, so again I come back to the point I made in the beginning, if you look for a solution in a federal state, what has been used in the past in the Soviet, Yugoslav and Mexican case is a single dominant party, so you have on paper a federal system, but the federal system has limited practical autonomy, because in everyone of the federal units there is a domination of a single party. And it is clearly not going to happen in the case of Iraq, I gather in the case of Iraq it has not one dominant party.
Gulan Media: We will be glad to have your message and also if you have anything else you would like to add in the end.
Prof. Schmitter: I do believe two or three things, it is possible the most miraculous thing in the world and it is really due to the globalization. You can be small and large at the same time, this is encourages the formation of smaller and smaller political units. And this is actually a good thing, so if you look at the history of Slovakia and Czech Republic, they are both better off since the division, and they're better off of course in particular in that context because they are both members at the EU, which means you can have a small political unit but you are part of a larger economic system. You trade and you have open relationships with a larger world, while being small in terms with how you make political decisions and you can also have sub-distinctive characteristics about language, history and other things, as a small unit. So, the exiting thing about the present context and one of the reasons why so many federal systems, I mean Belgium, Canada and all other systems if not breaking up at least becoming more and more decentralized, and dispersed is the awareness that small countries can actually do very well in the presence of international context because also be larger free trade and regional organizations. In the past, if you became independent, you also had to have a much more autonomous economy and that of course was a very high price to pay. Now, you can be small and large at the same time. But, of course in the case of Kurdistan that depends on the degree to which an autonomous, whether within Iraq or complete autonomous unit, what relationship would it have with Turkey, Syria, Iran and the remaining part of Iraq, because that depends on how they react. As it was the case with Slovakia and Czech republic, other European countries said fine we don't care, we will include both of you. And they both better off because of it. The problem of Iraq is that, you don't know and I don't know who the Iraqi people are. Just because you live in a political unit that used to be and still is called "Iraq" that presumes something exactly what is in question. So, when you say that the decision for Iraq should be up to the Iraqi people, of course I agree with you, but who is the Iraqi people. Should the fact that Kurdistan and other regions of Iraq which might have other linguistic and distinctive characteristic, when you say it should be up to the people of Iraq, obviously the people of Iraq as a whole is much larger group than the Kurds. So, when you say it is up to the Iraqi people, than the Kurds will not have the right to self determination, because their rights will be overridden by the Iraqi people as a whole. It seems to me that is exactly what is in question, so I ask you who is the Iraqi people? In other words, who should be making this decision about the division of authority and division of resources, etc. The answer is when you look at the European cases is by compromise, and the comprise is almost always 1, in which the larger political unit say the Germans in the case of Switzerland as opposed to the French because they are three to four times as many Germans as there French, but the division favored the minority. So the majority has to be flexible enough to concede a larger proportion of autonomy and of resources to the minority, that is the way in which consociation works




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