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Similarities and Differences in Patterns of Intergovernmental Relations

in Parliamentary and Presidential Federations: A Comparative Analysis

Michael Stein

Visiting Professor Department of Political Science

University of Toronto michael.stein (at) utoronto.ca

and

Lisa Turkewitsch

PhD Student Department of Political Science

University of Toronto lisa.turkewitsch (at) utoronto.ca

Paper Presented to the

International Political Science Association (IPSA) 21st World Congress of Political Science

held in Santiago, Chile Research Committee 28 Panel on “The Contribution of the Concept of

Multilevel Governance to Studies of Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations around the World”

on July 14, 2009

(This draft submitted on July 6, 2009)

Stein and Turkewitsch Patterns of Intergovernmental Relations

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Section 1: Introduction: Watts’ Pioneering Contribution to the Comparative Study of Intergovernmental Relations This paper is intended to broaden and expand on an earlier paper presented by us on the comparative analysis of patterns of internal intergovernmental relations in Canada and the United States (Stein & Turkewitsch 2008). In that paper we offered the hypothesis that each of these two North American countries manifests and represents a prototypical pattern of internal intergovernmental relations associated with one of two ideal-type federal regimes: “parliamentary federations” and “presidential federations” (Stein & Turkewitsch 2008:5). These patterns of consultation and coordination were initially and innovatively sketched by an eminent authority of comparative federalism, Ronald L. Watts, of the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, Queen’s University, Canada. In chapter 7 (Intergovernmental Relations) of his pioneering study, Comparing Federal Systems, first published in 1996 and now in its 3rd edition (2008), he identifies “executive federalism” as the dominant pattern of intergovernmental relations “especially characteristic of parliamentary federations”. He defines “executive federalism”, in Donald Smiley’s original terms, as an “ongoing pattern of relations between elected executives and appointed officials of the two levels of government.” (Smiley 1980: 92). But he adds that in parliamentary federations “first ministers and cabinet ministers responsible to their legislatures tend to predominate within both levels of government.” (Watts 2008: 118). He also points out that the institutions and processes of executive federalism “have usually developed pragmatically rather than by constitutional requirement”, and “in such federations as Canada, Australia, Germany, India and Malaysia, they range extensively from meetings of officials to councils of ministers and first ministers’ meetings.” He notes that “where executive federalism” has been the characteristic mode of intergovernmental relations, governments have each established their own internal specialized intragovernmental organizations to coordinate their relations with other governments within the federation.” Finally, he cites the Council of Australian Governments, first established in 1992, and the cooperative framework of intergovernmental relations established in Canada in 1999 by the Social Union Framework Agreement (SUFA) (but not including Quebec) as two recent examples of the institutionalization of executive federalism in parliamentary federations. (Watts 2008: 119). Interestingly, Watts argues that “among contemporary federations, executive federalism in intergovernmental relations is probably the most extensively developed in Australia and Germany”, rather than Canada, even though this concept was initially framed and disseminated by Canadian academics. He also considers the Bundesrat to be the principal current venue of Germany’s executive federalism, and the activation in the 1990s of the constitutionally defined Inter-State Council in India to represent an important recent formal institutionalization of this pattern of intergovernmental relations in India. Watts does not provide as detailed or comprehensive an analysis of patterns of intergovernmental relations in “presidential federations”. In fact, rather than describing these systems as “presidential federations”, he refers to them as systems “where there has been a separation of legislative and executive powers within each [level of] government of a federation.” He includes as case examples of this type of federation the United States, the Latin American federations (Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Venezuela), and Switzerland. He views the dominant and most representative patterns of intergovernmental relations in such a federation to be “more dispersed”, and characterized by “a variety of channels between executives, legislators and administrators in different governments, often in crisscrossing patterns.” Particularly notable among these interactions are the lobbying activities by representatives of the unit or state governments directed specifically to federal legislators (Watts 2008: 119).


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Another rather different pattern of intergovernmental relations discussed by Watts involves formal interactions that are conducted exclusively among the governments of constituent units or states, and which exclude the central government. This type of arrangement is sometimes referred to as “federalism without Washington” (in the U.S.) or “federalism without Berne” (in Switzerland). Also included by him in this category are regular meetings of recently institutionalized unit-level intergovernmental structures such as the provincially and territorially constituted Council of the Federation in Canada, established in 2003, and functionally equivalent institutions in Australia and Switzerland. However, some analysts of federalism reject this mode of intergovernmental relations as an aspect of federalism, since it is conducted only at one governmental level of a federation. Moreover, as Watts also notes, the exclusion of the federal government from its discussions has undoubtedly prevented these conferences from having much success in producing substantive agreements between the two orders of a federal system (Watts 2008:119-120). Watts also highlights some more informal patterns of intergovernmental relations in these federations, particularly those of the parliamentary type. For example, he points to a tendency in federations in which the same party is dominant in both levels of government for intergovernmental issues to be addressed within the informal structures of that party itself, rather than in more formal intergovernmental channels. Examples of this pattern may be found in the initial decades of the Indian federation, in which the Congress Party tended to win legislative majorities and to form the government (or a major part of the governing coalition) at both the central and state levels. A similar informal intergovernmental pattern has also operated in Malaysia and South Africa. This use of informal party structures to negotiate intergovernmental issues had also been previously identified by William Riker in his comparative study Federalism (1964: chapter 5). This initial effort by Watts to compare cross-nationally the patterns of intergovernmental relations in federations, while valuable and innovative, is nevertheless quite sketchy and limited in scope. And although he does include a short (2 ½ pages) chapter on Multilevel Federal Systems (chapter 9) in Comparing Federal Systems, it is even briefer and more sketchy than his chapter 7 on Intergovernmental Relations. While touching on the impact of “supra-federal organizations” and “local governments” in that chapter, he does not include in it any additional contributions to existing theories of multi-level governance (MLG), or relate his comments in that chapter to his earlier analysis of intergovernmental relations. Watts has laid the groundwork for a more comprehensive and more nuanced comparative analysis of patterns of intergovernmental relations (IGR) in “parliamentary” and “separation of powers” federations that exist today. The initial theoretical and empirical insights offered by him should now be subjected to more critical evaluation and more extensive empirical examination and application. The currently functioning federations categorized by him as clearly falling into one or another of the traditional regime or institutional types of liberal democracies should be carefully studied both theoretically and empirically and compared, and then reclassified. And new federations that have recently been established should be placed alongside older and more “mature” federations for further comparative scrutiny and possible projection of their future paths of development. This paper is intended to take preliminary steps toward that objective. In section 2 (Other Recent Contributions to the Study of Intergovernmental Relations in Federal Systems) we will review some theoretical contributions to the comparative study of intergovernmental relations in federal systems that have been offered since Watts first presented his ideas on this subject in 1996. They will be drawn both from recent publications by other authors and from an earlier paper of ours comparing the patterns of intergovernmental relations in Canada and the United States (Stein and Turkewitsch 2008b). In section 2 (Patterns of Intergovernmental Relations in Other Federations) we will explore and attempt to extrapolate from existing comparative and case studies some preliminary


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theoretical and empirical information about the patterns of intergovernmental relations in other federations, both of the “parliamentary” and “presidential” (“separation of powers”) types. They include Australia, Germany, India, Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico. Finally, in section 3 (Summary and Tentative Conclusions), we will lay out some of our preliminary findings and their possible implications for the future study of comparative federalism and intergovernmental relations in both developed and developing countries. Section 2: Other Recent Theoretical Contributions to the Study of Intergovernmental Relations in Federal Systems:

a) Kelemen’s Regulatory Federalism in “Fused” Power and “Fragmented” Power Federations Political scientists are not the only scholars who have examined patterns of intergovernmental relations and policy-making in federations in recent years. Since the millennium, a Harvard University constitutional law specialist, R. Daniel Kelemen, with a particular interest in regulatory law, has turned to the comparative study of what he calls “regulatory federalism” in “fused” and “fragmented” power systems. He has now published a book and several journal articles dealing with both theoretical and empirical aspects of this topic. And he continues to refine his theory, apply it to new cases, and to engage in scholarly debate with other academics on these issues. (See Kelemen, 2000, 2004, 2007, 2009). According to Kelemen, in parliamentary federations, especially those of the executive-dominant Westminster type, the combination of a fusion of executive-legislative powers at both levels of the federal system, and an upper legislative chamber with weak constituent unit representation at the national level, tends to produce a decentralized pattern of center-state relations in most intergovernmental policy areas. This appears to be the case for him both for intergovernmental legislation in which a high degree of what Kelemen calls “discretionary federalism” is used in enabling legislation and delegation, and for intergovernmental regulation in which the central legislature sets rules for implementing informal intergovernmental agreements. A major explanation for the decentralized pattern and discretionary style of intergovernmental decision-making in these circumstances, according to Kelemen, is that this kind of flexibility and decision-making latitude at the central level of a “fused” federation enables its political executive to maintain its dominant policy-making role over other structures operating at the same level (such as the national legislature and judiciary), and over governments at the constituent unit or state level of the federation. But it is willing to delegate those discretionary powers to the unit governments at the implementation stage of intergovernmental legislation and regulation, since its own administration is not large, varied enough, or sufficiently attuned to local conditions to make detailed and complex decisions of policy application and implementation for its entire national population across a large and heterogeneous geographic environment (Kelemen 2004:20). However, the pattern of intergovernmental legislation and regulation in “separation-of-powers” federations, according to Kelemen, is quite different. This is especially the case in those federations in which power is sharply divided among competing structures both horizontally (i.e. at the same level of government, such as the political executive, legislature and judiciary) and vertically (i.e. in separate structures operating at two different levels of the federation, or in structures at the same level that directly represent these different levels). In Kelemen’s view this type of federation tends to produce a more centralized pattern of intergovernmental policy-making and regulation, which he describes as “non-discretionary regulatory federalism”.


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Kelemen explains this more centralized and less discretionary style of intergovernmental relations largely in terms of the particular goals of the federal legislature in such federations. He argues that this legislature tends to enact detailed, action-enforcing statutes and regulations because it desires to limit or prevent the exercise of too much discretion by the institution representing its major competing governmental branch, the federal executive, and by state governments. In pursuing this objective, it also seeks to forge an informal alliance with the federal judiciary; it does this by enabling the courts, in their traditional function of interpreting detailed legislation or regulations, to exercise substantial constraining power on these same two structures (the federal executive and state governments). The result is that there is a high degree of judicialization of intergovernmental policy-making in such federations, and the federal executive is constrained from overturning easily any judicial interpretations of intergovernmental statutes and regulations (Kelemen 2004: 18). Kelemen classifies Canada and Australia as each approximating the ideal-type of a “fused” or “concentrated” power federation in its intergovernmental policy-making. He considers the United States to be an example of the ideal-type of a “fragmented” power federation because of the numerous veto groups in its governmental decision-making process. And he cites Germany, due to its strong representation of Länder governments in its upper legislative chamber, the Bundesrat, as an example of a federation which falls approximately halfway between these two ideal-type federations. Somewhat surprisingly, however, he categorizes the European Union in its intergovernmental policymaking, like the U.S. , as an example of the ideal-type of “fragmented” power federation, rather than, like Germany, as a halfway house or “concentrated” power federation (Kelemen 2004: 21). Kelemen also introduces a developmental dimension in his description of the patterns of intergovernmental relations in the ideal-type federations. He argues that in the early stages of these intergovernmental processes, the differences in the patterns of regulatory federalism are most marked. But they become more indistinct and convergent over time and at later stages in the intergovernmental relations process. This dynamic tends to be propelled by the initial policy differences between “lax states” and “strict states” in a given regulatory field. Kelemen believes that the federal government naturally seeks to reduce or minimize these policy differences, since it is motivated by “the politics of competence” (Kelemen 2004: 13-14). This includes recognition by the federal government of both the need to guard against bureaucratic and political “drift”, and the need for it to capitalize on the durability and “stickiness” of legislation from one government or administration to the next, even where there is a change in its partisan composition (Kelemen 2004: 16). Kelemen’s theoretical argument concerning the pattern of intergovernmental relations in federal systems, although occasionally quite imaginative and suggestive, like that of Watts, is also fraught with serious ambiguities and weaknesses. In the first place, although he describes it as a “theory of regulatory federalism”, it is not clear whether he intends it to apply only to regulatory policy-making, or to include statutory legislation as well. For example, in a number of places in his argument he describes his theory as intended to encompass legislative statutes and enabling laws, and not merely regulatory rules. Secondly, he lays far too much stress on the extent to which the political behaviour of leading actors or representatives of political institutions is governed by a desire to augment or maximize the power of that body in its ongoing political struggle with other structures or institutions perceived to be in competition with it. Thus the federal legislature in a “fragmented federation” is portrayed as framing detailed regulatory rules and implementing legislation largely in order to prevent the federal executive or state governments from exercising excessive authority over a given intergovernmental policy matter. However, the federal legislature’s concern for detail and precision in legislation and regulation might be motivated just as strongly by a desire to ensure that the intent and content of an intergovernmental agreement are actually followed in the statutory legislation or regulation, rather than distorted or purposely undermined. Thirdly, it is unclear why the federal executive in a “fused” power federation would be willing to


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surrender so much discretionary authority to state governments at the implementation stage of intergovernmental policy agreements if its major concern is to maintain control of the policy agenda that it is seeking to advance in that area.

b) Asare, Cairney and Studlar’s Critique of Kelemen’s Theory: Donley Studlar and his collaborators, Bossman Asare and Paul Cairney, have also directed several important criticisms at Kelemen’s theory in a paper entitled “Federalism and Multilevel Governance in Tobacco Policy” which they recently published in the Journal of Public Policy (January 2009). First they point out that by defining federalism and intergovernmental relations in terms of only two vertical structures and the “politics of competence” exercised by them, Kelemen creates an oversimplified and excessively “top-down” perspective on the process of policy-making in federal systems. In their view, in a “federal-like” system such as the United Kingdom, there may be more “bottom-up” innovative policy-making in the devolved regions of the UK in, for example, tobacco control policy or environmental policy than Kelemen’s framework allows for, since “that structure tends to emphasize federal-like structures rather than behaviour.” In the United Kingdom, although there is no constitutionally established court to act as a mediator between the center and the autonomous regions, the conventional practice thus far has been “for the central government to accept ‘bottom-up’ policy proposals by the regions, because the national government in the UK respects most decisions made in the devolved territories” (Asare, Cairney and Studlar 2009: 83). Secondly, they note that in the European Union the intergovernmental process is much more complex than Kelemen suggests. In their view it is more like that of Germany (i.e. occupying an intermediate or halfway position between the ideal type of a “fused power” federation of the Westminster-style of parliamentary government and the ideal type of the “fragmented power” federation such as the United States. Their rationale is that the European Union has a more fragmented and less concentrated institutional structure and policy process at its pan-European or supranational level than do “concentrated power” federations of the Westminster style parliamentary system like Canada and Australia. But it also has a stronger representative and direct policy-making role for its constituent units, the European nation-states, in the pan-European intergovernmental process than do “separation of powers” federations like the United States. Thirdly, they charge Kelemen with drawing too sharp a distinction between the relationships among the member states in the EU processes and those within each of the member states, including the regions and urban localities. In their view, he neglects the influence that federations or “federal-like” nation-states such as Germany and the UK that are EU members can exercise on the policy-making processes and behaviour of the EU as a whole, and vice versa. He also fails to take account of the impact on the EU of regions and urban governments within those individual member-states. The degree of fragmentation or concentration of power within the EU may be simultaneously shaped or influenced in different directions by corresponding or different configurations of power within each of their individual member states and sub-national regions and local governments. The overall vector or outcome of these conflicting forces is difficult to determine. Fourthly, Kelemen’s theory fails to take account of the division of opinion and uncertainty among EU analysts and specialists about the relative strength and efficacy of EU and member-state influences on the political decision-making processes. This makes it difficult to classify the EU in terms of Kelemen’s typology of centrally-initiated and centralized policy-making processes versus unit-level-originated and decentralized policy-making processes.


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Fifthly, Kelemen’s policy focus is primarily on environmental regulations, and secondarily on food and drug safety, both of which may be atypical of other types of social regulation. But, in Asare, Cairney and Studlar’s view, “a key tenet of policy analysis is variation by policy issue (p. 83). Since environmental policy, like agricultural policy, is unrepresentative of social policy in that it is among the most “Europeanized” (i.e. centralized) of policy areas, it is more likely to be representative of “top-down” than “bottom-up” policy-making. This contrasts with the pattern of policy-making in intergovernmental tobacco-control regulation, which the authors consider to be more “bottom up”. Finally, and most important, Asare, Cairney and Studlar observe that within the “shifting and uncertain patterns of governance” of the EU system, the Brussels-based supranational government is “just one actor upon a contested stage” (Bache and Flinders 2004). They call for closer academic attention to “policy networks, the role of interest groups, and the blurred boundaries between government and non-governmental action.” (Asare, Cairney and Studlar 2009: 84). They also note that the theoretical focus of multilevel governance (MLG) differs from that of federalism in contending that states and international organizations are caught in a web of interdependencies. The flexibility of the MLG framework is that “it allows intergovernmental processes to be explored empirically in different and contrasting ways.” They include “a relatively stable set of intergovernmental relationships among a comparatively small number of actors, with policy responsibility allocated according to territory, and overlaps between jurisdictions minimized (i.e. Hooghe & Marks’ Type 1 MLG). But they also embrace a “ relatively complex and fluid process, with the delegation of responsibility related to the nature of the policy (i.e. its functionality) rather than its territoriality (i.e. Hooghe & Marks’ Type 2 MLG). In other words, in studying intergovernmental relations in the EU, Asare, Cairney and Studlar call for greater “focus on the balance of authority among multiple governmental levels rather than, as in Kelemen’s work, “an either-or struggle between only two” (Asare, Cairney and Studlar 2009: 55). We agree with these three co-authors (AC&S) that “although ‘regulatory federalism’, in Kelemen’s terms, has the advantage of parsimony, one of the problems in theorizing federalism in this way has been the differences in policy authority in such systems worldwide. The EU, with its level of suprastate authority, is unlikely to behave like state-centered federal systems for all policy areas [or perhaps even for two]. The very design of the EU gives it different amounts of competence in various policies.” There is an increasingly large empirical literature on policy-making in the EU to support this contention (See for example, Leibfried and Pierson, eds., 1995).

c) Stein and Turkewitsch (2009) on Intergovernmental Relations and Multilevel Governance In a revised version of our 2008 paper, which will be published in a Handbook on Multilevel Governance later this year (Enderlein, Walti and Zürn (eds.), Edward Elgar, forthcoming) we argued that the concept of multilevel governance, recently devised as an analytical tool applicable to the unique structure and pattern of intergovernmental relations in the European Union, can also contribute to an understanding of recent developments in intergovernmental relations in Canada and the United States. We described the changing patterns of intergovernmental policymaking that have evolved historically in these federations, particularly in three policy areas: fiscal policy, health care policy and environmental policy. And we compared concepts of intergovernmental relations drawn from traditional studies of federalism with newer models and descriptions of federalism and intergovernmental relations in these countries, including those that are based on a concept of multi-level governance (MLG). As we stated above, Watts failed to provide a clear evolutionary or dynamic concept of intergovernmental relations for either “parliamentary” or “presidential” (“separation of powers”) federations. He did observe, however, that


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the entire system [of intergovernmental relations] has evolved over a lengthy period of time, primarily as a result of informal and ad hoc political structural changes.” And he noted that “the rules for such a system are usually undefined, and there are no explicit provisions or detailed descriptions of their existence, status, or procedures of operation in any written constitution or government document (Watts 2008: 118).

In our earlier paper we argued that in Canada these structural developments paralleled the evolving historical pattern of intergovernmental relations. There were initially, in the first half century after Confederation in 1867, intermittent and irregular communications and consultations among separate “watertight” compartments of government. A similar pattern of what was later called “dual federalism” operated through most of the nineteenth century in the United States. However this dualistic pattern of intergovernmental relations began to break down in both countries by the beginning of the twentieth century. In Canada just prior to World War I, the first meetings of intergovernmental ministers and officials were convened, and the first formal intergovernmental policy agreements were struck between the two levels of government. Similarly, in the United States after the Civil War, the first federal grant-in-aid programs were adopted in consultation with the states. And this phase led later to a full-fledged period of “cooperative federalism” between federal and provincial/state ministers and officials. This began, in Canada immediately after World War II, and in the United States between 1930 and 1960, and involved regular and generally amicable consultations and discussions over the sharing of policy responsibilities in most areas of government, as welfare state programs were instituted. At first during this period of “cooperative federalism” the federal government and officials in both countries clearly dominated in such meetings over their provincial/state counterparts, and the main direction of intergovernmental policy-making was set at that level. But after 1960 the evolutionary paths of intergovernmental relations in the two federal systems began to diverge quite sharply. In Canada the provincial governments became more vocal in their demands for greater autonomy from the central government, led by Quebec, and for increased financial support to meet their growing policy expenditures in areas of provincial jurisdiction. The atmosphere in federal-provincial meetings changed from relative amicability to one of frequently strong disagreement and heated conflict. This marked the beginning of what most students of Canadian federalism have described as “executive federalism”. It was characterized by a mode of joint intergovernmental policy- and decision-making that most closely resembled the conflictual style of diplomatic negotiations at the international level. In the United States, on the other hand, despite the substantial growth in the number of expert intergovernmental bureaucrats at each level of the federal system, the political executives and their officials at the national level continued to dominate in the intergovernmental sessions. Moreover, intergovernmental relations were increasingly conducted in the U.S. via direct lobbying by states’ representatives of members of the US Senate. This divergent pattern of intergovernmental relations in the two countries operated between 1960 and 1980. At that point some aspects of a renewed convergence in the mode of conducting intergovernmental relations began to emerge. In Canada a further decade of highly conflictual bargaining among first ministers during a period of intense constitutional reform negotiations from 1980 to 1992 produced relatively little joint agreement. Beginning in the early years of the next decade, the psychological environment of intergovernmental meetings shifted from conflict and widespread animosity among intergovernmental representatives to a more positive attitude of collaboration and partnership. In the United States, this more harmonious phase in intergovernmental relations, despite the simultaneous erosion and dismantling of what were considered by some to be excessively bureaucratic and statist intergovernmental organizations and agencies, was ushered in by conservative Republican President Ronald Reagan. His more decentralized attitude toward federalism and conciliatory posture toward the state governments were embodied in what he described as his concept of “new federalism”. A similar attitude was also promoted during the presidency of his Republican successor, George H.W. Bush, and later even by a Democratic President, Bill Clinton. These trends toward fostering greater partnership in


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intergovernmental relations led inevitably to the extension of the pattern of intergovernmental relations both vertically and horizontally in the two countries. Each took greater steps toward vertical expansion of their modes of intergovernmental action to embrace more supranational and subnational structures than had previously been the case. And they also broadened their horizontal partnerships to include private sector interest groups and third sector not-for-profit organizations in intergovernmental policy-making. There are other indications that the patterns of intergovernmental relations within the European Union that political analysts have designated as forms of multilevel governance have begun to be adopted as useful frameworks for analyzing future intergovernmental relations in the two countries. In fact some distinguished experts of intergovernmental relations in those federations have already begun to comment on these developments. For example, Meekison et al. (eds.) (2004) have acknowledged that in recent years executive federalism has continued to expand, deepen and become more institutionalized in Canada. Among these new or expanding structures are “peak institutions” that serve as important managers of this intergovernmental process such as the First Ministers Conferences, the newly established premiers’ Council of the Federation and regionally based intergovernmental structures such as the Western Premiers Conference and the Council of Maritime Premiers. However they also consider these structures to be undeveloped, weakly institutionalized, and unable to bear the increasing load of federal-provincial intergovernmental relations in an era of expanding urbanization and globalization. They therefore call for their enlargement and further development in the form of a “multi-centered collaboration involving federal, provincial, municipal, aboriginal and foreign governments, as well as transnational institutions that will make intergovernmental relations much more complex and increasingly more political” than in the past. (Meekison et al., eds., 2004:23). Similarly in the United States experts have pointed out that intergovernmental programs are becoming much more integrated and intertwined, interest groups that seek to influence them are proliferating, and the stakes involved in them are growing. At the same time there has been a gradual weakening of institutional capacity for intergovernmental monitoring (Conlan and Posner 2008: 4). Therefore a “new, new federalism may now be emerging in which federalism is being rediscovered by liberals who are proponents of state activism in policy sectors such as health reform, environmental initiatives and regulatory matters (Nathan 2008:18). This appears to be increasingly the case under the currently activist Obama Presidency. In our earlier paper, we argued that these changing patterns of intergovernmental relations in Canada and the United States could be best accommodated by modifying European multilevel governance concepts to fit the North American context. In order to achieve this, certain key aspects of MLG should be infused with more recent and newer concepts and models currently used to study intergovernmental relations in these two North American federations. We therefore included in that paper the following recommendations: 1) There should be increased focus in the comparative study of intergovernmental relations in Canada and the United States on those vertical and horizontal governmental and non-governmental policy structures that are generally omitted in traditional studies of federalism in North America, but that are now normally included in studies of multilevel government policy-making in Europe. These include structures operating at the supranational regional and international levels, such as the European Commission, Council, Parliament and Court, and in the World Trade Organization, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations.


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2) There should be greater emphasis on macro-level concepts drawn from MLG studies in Europe such as “networks” and “webs” of interaction. 3) There should be increasing integration in intergovernmental studies in North America of federal and provincial/state interactions with urban and municipal governments in both countries. 4) There should be further refinement, prior to any application to studies of intergovernmental relations in North America, of the complex, fluid, but rather vague and functionally-oriented Type 2 MLG concept proposed by Marks and Hooghe (2003), and endorsed recently by Asare et al. (2009), as we noted on page 6 above. 5) There should likewise be incorporation into these MLG applications of recent modifications and extensions of the concept, such as those proposed by Bache and Flinders (2004), Gualini (2004) and Peters and Pierre (2004). No individual definition of the MLG concept should be given priority. 6) Somewhat closer attention should be given to how the European Union has managed to establish what appears to be a more cooperative and collaborative mode of intergovernmental relations, including examination of its interlocking structure, its more collectivist and communitarian continental European federal cultural traditions, etc. 7) An effort should be made in the application of the MLG concept to intergovernmental relations in North America to avoid unanimous or near-unanimous voting requirements in intergovernmental policy-making that might lead to what Fritz Scharpf has aptly described as “a joint decision trap” (Scharpf 1988) and a tendency to foster a “race to the bottom” in intergovernmental decision-making. Finally, we now call in this paper for an extension of the somewhat limited North American and European Union intergovernmental academic focus thus far to other federations of the “parliamentary” and “presidential” (“separation of powers”) type, and perhaps also to hybrid forms of federalism that exist in the current international political system. We will undertake a preliminary exploration of these broader global developments and trends in the study of intergovernmental relations in the third and fourth (final) sections of this paper. Section 3: Patterns of Intergovernmental Relations in Other Parliamentary and Presidential Federations: There are several major questions that we will address in this sub-section (section 3 A) and in the next (section 3 B), and attempt to answer comparatively. They are: In sub-sections 3 A) and 3 B): a) How did the systems of intergovernmental relations originate in the other “parliamentary federations” (besides Canada) whose patterns of intergovernmental relations we are comparing in this paper? Were their IGR systems initially identified in their original written constitution? Or were they, like that of Canada, largely undefined in that constitution and other government documents? Was their constitutional origin based at least in part on any other “parliamentary” or “presidential” federations? And what was the relative balance between the central and constituent unit governments in the formal division of legislative powers between the two levels of government? b) Did their patterns of intergovernmental relations evolve historically in parallel with the changing socio-economic and political structures of federalism in their countries? Were these structures largely ad hoc and informal in nature? Did these federations manifest ideal-typical intergovernmental relations patterns


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similar to those of Canada and the United States, the two pioneers of “parliamentary” and “presidential” federations (as noted in section 2 c) above)? For example, did these evolutionary patterns include “dual federalism” (“watertight compartments” or “arms-length” intergovernmental relations) similar to those that have been identified in Canada and the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; “cooperative federalism” reflecting dominant federal government leadership and financial initiatives; “coordinate federalism” (“executive federalism”) in which the two principal levels of government enjoyed essentially equal legal and political status and engaged in diplomatic-type negotiations; “constitutional federalism”, in which intergovernmental relations designed to achieve constitutional reform were dominant; “collaborative federalism” in which the two levels sought to establish harmonious partnerships; and “multi-level federalism” extending intergovernmental decision-making upwards to the supranational level, downwards to the local level, and sideways to the private or third (non-profit) sector, on the model of multi-level governance (MLG) adopted by the European Union? c) What are the likely future patterns of intergovernmental relations in these federations? Are multi-level governance (MLG) patterns likely to be combined with current patterns of intergovernmental relations in such federal systems? We will leave this final overriding question until our Conclusion in section 4. Section 3A: The Parliamentary Federations Australia The Australian federal system that was envisaged in its founding constitution of 1901 was initially modeled on the American rather than the Canadian federal system, since its upper house, the Senate, was elected, like that of the United States, rather than appointed, as in Canada. However, the basic form of government established in that constitution was a parliamentary democracy in the Westminster style, in which the appointed executive was dominant, but was nevertheless responsible to a majority of the lower house of the legislature, based on popular rather than territorial representation. As a result, the elected Senate was only able to represent the states or regions of the Australian federation to a minor degree in the federal system, since party discipline took precedence over regional representation in that body (Brown 2002). In most other respects, then, the federal system in Australia was designed to operate very much like that of Canada, including its system of intergovernmental relations. But unlike Canada and like the United States, the Australian division of powers did not assign general or explicit legislative powers to the federal or Commonwealth government; rather, it allocated these powers largely to a concurrent or combined center and state list. Also like the American constitution and unlike the Canadian constitution, it left the residual powers to the states. However, the fiscal and financial revenue-collecting powers were assigned primarily to the Commonwealth Government, as in Canada, creating a severe “vertical fiscal imbalance” in favour of the center from the inception of the Australian federation. In many respects, the pattern of intergovernmental relations in Australia from 1901 until the present duplicated that of intergovernmental relations in Canada from 1867 to the present. Like Canada, Australia experienced an initial phase of “dual” or “arms length” federalism, in which its two levels of government operated largely, if not exclusively as self-governing units within their respective spheres of jurisdiction. This pattern continued without a major break until the depression years of the 1930s, when the extremely precarious economic and financial situation of several state governments led them to cede most of their powers over fiscal rate-setting and revenue collection to the Commonwealth Government in return for a federal government guarantee to each state of a fixed portion of the total fiscal pie. The amount of this fiscal transfer was determined by the non-partisan and neutral Loan Council. Since that time, the Australian states have been dependent on federal transfers for on average almost 40% of their revenues, in contrast to the much greater fiscal autonomy of the Canadian provinces. Moreover, the


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Australian states have not been able to negotiate a more equitable fiscal balance with the federal government since then. Between 1945 and 1979 a gradual process of centralization occurred in Australia in tune with increasing public funding for new welfare state social programs, and especially under Labor governments of the 1960s and 1970s. The funding of these programs took the form initially of cost-sharing arrangements between the two principal levels of government, Commonwealth and state, on a 50-50 or 60-40 basis. Therefore the term “50-cent dollar” that was widely applied to similar federal-provincial cost-sharing arrangements in Canada between the years 1965 and 1977 was also frequently used in Australia to describe this major financial component of their intergovernmental system. But as in Canada, the Australian states began to complain that this form of conditional grants tended to skew their program spending priorities and severely curtailed their decision-making autonomy. Therefore, from the mid-1980s on, these states began to demand an increase in the proportion of “untied” grants, as these unconditional grants were generally called in Australia. Finally, after 1989, the Labor Government, led by Prime Minister Hawke, ordered a review and rationalization of Australian federalism and intergovernmental relations. It also proposed a reorientation of academic research on federalism and increased attention to intergovernmental relations and policy management, rather than the prevailing constitutional and fiscal emphasis of Australian specialists in federalism. As in both Canada and the United States, both government and academic experts began to call for more “complex” and broader multi-level models of federalism and intergovernmental relations reflecting the trend towards globalization and greater supranational and sub-national governmental decision-making (Painter 1992, 1997; Brown 2002). As one observer astutely put it, during the early 1990s, federal and intergovernmental reform proposals began to be implemented in Australia by both Labor and National Governments. The institutionalization of Canada’s intergovernmental system of “executive federalism”, which was well ahead of Australia’s during the 1980s, had become less comprehensive and complete than those of both Australia and Germany during the following decade (Brown 2002). Germany The West German federal system established by the Bonn Basic Law in 1949, although also a major component of its parliamentary democracy, was quite different. During the constitutional discussions, there was some initial debate about whether to model this system on the intergovernmental structure prompted by the American federal constitution of 1787, or the pattern of Lander intergovernmental relations established by the German constitution of 1871. In the latter document, the Bismarkian centralized form of authoritarian government was limited by a Bundesrat or provincially-appointed legislative chamber in which the executive representatives of the traditional German Lander (territorially-based units) engaged in regular consultations (Benz 1999:58; Lehmbruch 2006). The German constitutional model prevailed, in what was wryly described as a “late victory of Bismarck” (Lehmbruch 1979). But it was actually a deliberate design of the postwar German political leaders that was also supported by the western occupying powers (the US, UK and France). It was intended to ensure that through the appointed upper house, the Bundesrat, the Lander governments could limit the power of the German federal government and the popularly-elected lower legislative chamber (the Bundestag). This established the basic framework characterized as “interlocking federalism” in the subsequent operation of the German intergovernmental relations system, in which the dominant pattern of negotiation, compromise and cooperation between the two levels of government was firmly embedded. West Germany’s formal division of powers was also unique, since it assigned preponderant legislative powers to the national government and two-chamber legislature, and allotted the major implementation role to the Lander administrative structures.


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Similar trends in the practice of intergovernmental relations can be detected in West Germany and (later) reunited Germany in the decades after the Basic Law of 1949 was implemented. From 1950-1990, according to one leading analyst of German federalism, the pattern of West German intergovernmental relations tended to “imitate that of parliamentary federations that operated under the Westminster model,” like Canada and Australia (Benz 1999: 58). He also observed that during this period, the federal government and Parliament and the Lander executives tended to exercise increasing power, whereas the Land legislatures lost power. Therefore, under the system of “interlocking politics established in 1950, West Germany began to manifest the contradictory traits of what Konrad Hesse had aptly characterized as a “unitary federal state” and a process of “unitarization” (Benz 1999: 56, 61, citing Hesse 1962; also Lehmbruch 2006). After reunification of West and East Germany in 1990, and the subsequent integration of the latter into the constitutional structure created under the German Basic Law, there was little formal constitutional change in Germany. However, an asymmetrical form of federalism began to evolve, due to greater divergence in the composition and ideological orientation of the party systems in the two former German entities. Moreover, in conjunction with the European Union, but to a greater degree, intergovernmental relations in Germany began to exhibit many of the characteristics of what Fritz Scharpf has identified as “the joint decision trap”. This is the tendency for the negotiating actors in a federation in which intergovernmental decisions require unanimous or near-unanimous consent to make policy compromises based on lowest common denominator politics, and thereby sacrifice policy-making capacity and effectiveness (See Scharpf 1988, 2006). Aware of the adverse political consequences associated with this pattern of intergovernmental decision-making, German political leaders attempted to negotiate a constitutional reform measure designed to make the voting procedures in the Bundesrat more flexible, but this reform, when finally adopted in a watered-down version, “did not fulfil expectations” (Benz 1999: 68). Moreover, proposed efforts of “refederalization” (i.e. giving more autonomy to Land governments) also failed. Thus what both Benz and Lehmbruch have described as Germany’s unique pattern of “executive federalism” or “institutionalized negotiation”, with its notable emphasis on “joint decision-making”, has been increasingly under attack by German federal specialists in recent years. Many of them call for either a more competitive federalism among the Lander (Lehmbruch 1998) or a closer integration of German intergovernmental relations with a system of multi-level governance (MLG) that differs in its functioning from the interlocking politics of the German federal state. One major reason for the latter proposal, according to Benz, is that increased vertical and horizontal coordination of federal bodies had been established early on in post-World War II Germany. A second reason is the increasing ability of the Lander to bypass the federal government and influence patterns of informal cooperation between them and the European Commission as a result of MLG in Europe, since paradoxically, this is thought to strengthen rather than weaken the workability and performance of internal intergovernmental relations and executive federalism in Germany (Benz 1999: 77). India The Indian federal system was established in its 1949 Constitution, which was adapted in large part from the pattern of indirect rule or dyarchy established during the British Raj in the Government of India Act of 1935. Both of these Indian constitutions were heavily influenced by the 1867 British North America Act, Canada’s founding constitution. But the Indian constitutional framers studiously avoided any direct reference to “federalism” or “federal government”, since they were anxious to establish a highly centralized and politically dominant central government in order to ensure a modicum of unity for what was a very large and extremely diverse population comprised of numerous religious, caste, ethnic and linguistic groups. The system of federalism and intergovernmental relations that the Indian Constitution brought into being was at best a “quasi-federal” rather than a “federal” one, in which the Union Government could completely overawe the state governments. Central to this pattern of intergovernmental relations was Article 356, providing for President’s rule, which gave the Indian President, on the advice of the Union Cabinet, power to combat alleged political instability or breakdown


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in a state by removing the premier and government from office and dissolving the elected state legislature at will. It was further enhanced by a provision enabling the Prime Minister to exercise emergency powers and limit the principle of executive responsibility to the elected legislature at both the union and state levels. This “quasi-federal” constitutional status was reinforced by the central role in economic planning and management assigned to the Planning Commission, an arm of the federal government whose members were entirely selected by and composed of Union Government appointees. And Article 263, providing for regular intergovernmental consultations through the Inter-State Council (ISC), remained a dead letter until the 1990s (Saxena 2002:3). Indian working federalism today is a byproduct largely of subsequent socio-economic and partisan political developments since the promulgation of its original Constitution. As in Canada, the 1947 Indian Constitution assigned exclusive jurisdiction in foreign affairs and defence, and major economic powers to the Union Government. As we noted above, India’s evolving pattern of intergovernmental relations was a highly centralized one until the early 1990s, and did not resemble very closely evolutionary trends of “cooperative federalism” in post-World War II Canada, Australia and Germany during this period. The Union Government was completely dominant over the states in all areas of intergovernmental decision-making during the period of one-party dominance under the Congress Party from 1947 to the late 1980s, particularly during the first thirty years of this period, when the Congress Party was able to form majority governments both at the Union level and in most of the states. This center-dominant pattern was reinforced by the frequent resort to President’s rule by the Union Government during the same period, often for purely partisan reasons. Perhaps the most obvious political event reflecting this strong centralist bias was the invocation of Emergency Powers by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her Congress cabinet between 1974 and 1976, in response to a serious threat to overturn her government (Singh and Verney 2003: 17). But the gradual decline of the Congress Party at both levels of the Indian federal system and the emergence of a multiparty and coalition pattern of government by the late 1980s produced a watershed change in the pattern of federalism and intergovernmental relations, beginning in the early 1990s. In the first place, the Inter-State Council, the organization that was intended to conduct regular meetings of first ministers, was finally established by the President of India on a regular basis in 1990, and it continued to meet intermittently after that. But “despite there being this enabling constitutional provision, constitutionally-entrenched inter-governmental agencies…have not been all that important and functionally consequential in India.” (Saxena 2002: 36) Secondly, although the Indian Supreme Court had been quite deferential in its federal rulings toward the Union Government until the early 1990s, it departed from that pattern in a case involving the invocation of President’s rule in 1994. This was the pathbreaking judgment in S.R. Bommai vs. The Union of India (1994), in which the Court declared that the power of the President to exercise President’s rule on the advice of the Union Executive was not absolute, but could only be done legitimately “on the basis of certain determinable criteria that should bear relationship with the objective realities of the case concerned.” It also established that the elected legislature of a state whose government had been dismissed by the Union government could not be dissolved until the Union Government had won majority approval of that decision in the Indian national Parliament (Saxena 2002:33). Thirdly, the permanent shift from one-party dominance to multi-partism in the 1989 Union elections enabled the state governments subsequently to strengthen themselves politically vis-a-vis the central government. Since then, “India has witnessed a strong spell of federal governance that seems likely to continue in the foreseeable future.” (Ibid., p. 35). Finally, the joint Union-State intergovernmental economic agency, the National Development Council (NDC), that, like the ISC, was established outside the constitutional framework by the Nehru Government in 1950, “has become more significant in many ways in the field of economic policy-making and planning than the ISC has been in the political field.” The supporting evidence for this is the fact that “the NDC has met more regularly [in recent years] to approve five–year plans and annual plans on behalf of both the Union and State governments.” (Saxena 2002:36). In short, as Singh and Verney have written “India is widely believed to have become more of a federation.” And “more federalism means that power is wielded by other


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institutions than the Center, notably by the states, but also by numerous interest groups from business to farmers.” (Singh and Verney 2003: 20). Thus even India appears to be more open in the future to adapting and implementing new forms of multi-level governance. Section 3B: The Presidential Federations Mexico Watts (2008: 119) describes Mexico as a presidential federation with a strong executive up until 2000. Mexico is similar in some respects to the U.S. federal system. According to the constitution, Mexico has three autonomous branches (executive, legislative and judicial). However, Rodríguez points out that in Mexico up until 2000, “there [was] no tradition of real separation of powers… the Mexican system comprises a sharing of powers rather than a separation of powers” (Rodríguez 1998: 248). The executive essentially controlled both the legislative branch and the judiciary. Indeed, a key feature of Mexican federalism, noted by many scholars, was the “extreme centralization” of power in the hands of the executive, and specifically, the President (Rodríguez 1998: 238). In his comparative analysis of intergovernmental relations in Mexico and the U.S., Hopkins (1990) suggests that a fundamental difference between federalism in Mexico and the United States is that, “[f]ederalism in Mexico as an artificial creation, whereas in the United States, the federal arrangement reflected the essentially uncentralized nature of the original English colonies” (Hopkins 1990: 405). The centralist principle of government was accepted almost unanimously in Mexico, and centralization was in part a vestige of the Spanish colonial system. While in the US there was historically a “steady pressure” for an increase in the authority of the federal government at the expense of the powers of the states, Mexico has always experienced “centralist” tendencies (Hopkins 1990: 405). According to Schiavon (2006: 403) an understanding of Mexico’s powerful executive needs to take into consideration the relationship between the two key actors: the president, who is head of state and head of government; and the governing party. In Mexico, presidential power rests on four elements: first, the constitutional powers of the executive, second, the legislative power of the president’s party; third, the extent of party leaders’ exercise of discipline over party members; and fourth, the extent of party rivalry and leadership competition faced by the president (Schiavon 2006: 403). This system has been described as “presidencialismo” (presidentialism) in which the president is able to control the legislature (Diaz-Cayeros 2005: 10, citing Weldon 1997). For example, Garrido’s (1989) study of “presidencialismo” suggested that in addition to constitutional powers, the president also held “metaconstitutional” powers, which are the unwritten norms of the system (as cited in Rodríguez 1998: 235). This changed after 2000, as shall be discussed below. Until recently (2000), the authoritarian nature of the Mexican system, including noncompetitive elections, sustained the dominant Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) majority in both of the houses of Congress. The PRI sustained a majority (at times comprising over 90 percent of the seats) from 1929 to 1994. The president was also the de facto leader of the party (Schiavon 2006: 403). Furthermore, the party delegated to the president the power to designate his successor and to make party nominations. When combined, these powers gave the executive an “effective supremacy” over both the legislative and the judicial branches (Schiavon 2006: 403). The President’s control extended over lower levels of government, through the power to nominate party candidates to state and local governments. The party nominees chosen by the President often won state and local elections uncontested. The President also had the power to remove governors from power. This could be achieved through a negotiated resignation or constitutionally, through the party-controlled Senate (Schiavon 2006: 403). These powers were used relatively frequently and even towards the end of


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the authoritarian regime. For example during the administration of President Salinas de Gortari (1998-94), sixteen elected governors were removed from office (Schiavon 2006: 403). As the Mexican president was the leader of an extremely disciplined party that held a qualified majority in both Houses of Congress, the office thus had significant “extraconstitutional powers.” Schiavon argues that although there are several constitutional “veto points” in the Mexican system, the president nonetheless is able to exert control (Schiavon 2006: 404). Constitutionally, the powers of the Mexican president are not as strong, and there are certain constitutional “checks and balances”. The President has the power to initiate legislation and to veto most legislation with a qualified majority of two-thirds in both houses of Congress. However, the president does not have the power to issue unilateral decrees or executive appointments, and although s/he has the power to appoint Supreme Court justices, the attorney general, ambassadors, and high level finance cabinet ministers, these appointments require Senate approval (Schiavon 2006: 404). Historically, it was the strong link between the president and the PRI that granted the president extraconstitutional powers. Thus, significant changes occurred after the 2000 victory of the opposition Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) (Schiavon 2006: 404). The strong role of the president at the federal level was mirrored by the role of governors at the state level. Diaz-Cayeros (2005: 9) suggests that Mexico’s state politics was characterized by “mini-presidencialismo.” State governors are directly elected for six-year terms, and they are not allowed to seek reelection (Diaz-Cayeros 2005: 7). He argues that “historically, and well into the current period of democracy,” the state-level executive has lacked checks and balances (Diaz-Cayeros 2005: 10). State congresses are weak and there is little professionalization of state legislators (unlike in the U.S.). Even in states with divided governments, more common since 1990, state legislatures exert limited control over the executive (Diaz-Cayeros (2005: 11). Diaz-Cayeros (2005: 11) suggests that, due to informal practices rather than a lack of formal institutional powers, state legislatures have relatively little power relative to governors. With respect to governors’ formal powers, the formal organization of states is characterized by a

very strong executive with substantial decree authority, and the possibility of producing legislation through implementing legislation which often is more decisive than the legislation approved by the assembly (the so-called reglamentación authority) (Diaz-Cayeros 2005: 11, citing Blanco 2000).

There exist no state-level Supreme Courts; thus the judicial branch in the states deals primarily with civil, criminal and administrative disputes, and does not play a role in limiting or reviewing state legislation (Diaz-Cayeros 2005: 11). The acceptance of such limited checks on gubernatorial power in the Mexican states raises the issue of accountability. As Diaz-Cayeros (2005: 13) notes, state executives are the primary actors who pursue state interests, rather than Congressional representatives or Senators. However, governors “do not have the right incentives to truly pursue the interests of the majority of the citizens in the states, and the structure of checks and balances within the states does not limit their behavior in any meaningful way” (Diaz-Cayeros 2005: 13). Thus, state executives may negotiate to be granted greater financial resources from the federal government; however these resources do not always benefit all state citizens (Diaz-Cayeros (2005: 13). Historically, and in part as a result of the system’s extreme centralization, many scholars rejected the federal aspect of Mexican politics as “false or insignificant” (Diaz-Cayeros 2004: 1, citing Riker 1964). Diaz-Cayeros argues that political scientists were in part responsible for perpetuating a “centralist


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myth” with respect to Mexican federalism. His own work calls this myth into question, by pointing to trends towards decentralization in the 1980s (Diaz-Cayeros 2004: 1). Indeed, some scholars (e.g.. Rodríguez 1998: 239) point to Mexico’s extreme centralization until 1990 as a key reason for the lack of scholarly attention to intergovernmental relations in Mexico. However, the changes after 1990 brought the study of IGR in Mexico newfound attention, as the moves towards democratization were expected to change the character of intergovernmental relations. Indeed, even in the 1970s and 1980s the idea of decentralization was emerging in Mexico’s political discourse (Rodríguez 1998: 240). In the 1970s, moves towards “deconcentration” (rather than devolution)1 under Presidents Echeverria (1970-6) and Portillo (1976-82) reinforced administrative, spatial and economic decentralization. However, in the 1980s, moves towards decentralization shifted in focus to the constitution and the federal nature of the system itself, emphasizing the role of state and local government in intergovernmental relations (Rodríguez 1998: 240). For example, President de la Madrid (1982-8), although originally advocating devolution, instituted an act of Municipal Reform in 1983, which was primarily a deconcentration of power. President Salinas (1988-94) devolved more power to local government through the “National Solidarity Program”, which gave municipalities greater autonomy (Rodríguez 1998: 242). However, Rodríguez notes that paradoxically, in order to devolve power, President Salinas had to further strengthen control of the executive, and presidential power (Rodríguez 1998: 242). Indeed, under President Salinas’ leadership, the introduction of a “targeted” social welfare programme (“Solidarity”) was a key “decentralizing force.” The programme’s funding came with minimal conditions, and allowed impoverished local governments to decide which projects to fund (Rodríguez 1998: 244). However, the Solidarity programme later became more centralized as it was brought under the control of the new federal Ministry of Social Development in 1992 (Rodríguez 1998: 245). Centralization in the sphere of political authority was also mirrored in fiscal authority. The constitution provides exclusive tax rights to the federal and local government, limiting states’ authority in this regard (Courchene and Diaz-Cayeros 2000: 203).2 While in Canada, Australia and Germany, “the constitution informs the design of intergovernmental transfers,” Mexico’s constitution does not specify the role or design of such transfers (Courchene and Diaz-Cayeros 2000: 203). Although Article 124 of the Mexican Constitution assigns residual authority to the states, this has little substantive meaning as most other provisions in the constitution limit states’ authority. More significantly with respect to the question of intergovernmental transfers, the constitution refers to the formal division of powers within the federal system, and does not make reference to the “living conditions of citizens within the federation” (Courchene and Diaz-Cayeros 2000: 203). The constitution, however, does make some references to revenue sharing. For example, Article 73 assigns excise taxes exclusively to the federal level, and specifies that states may receive a proportion of these revenues, and Article 115 provides that states should provide a share of electricity revenues to local governments. However, there is no specific mention of revenue sharing as a result of federal taxation, which remains the most important source of funds for lower levels of government (Courchene and Diaz-Cayeros 2000: 204).

1 Rodríguez (1998) suggests that, during the 1980s and 1990s, Mexico’s presidents pursued administrative, political and economic decentralization. This included on the one hand, moves to deconcentrate and delegate power to the states and local government, and on the other hand, devolution by way of granting full autonomy to the states/local government. However, Rodríguez suggests that devolution was generally less desirable for the President, because it would threaten his control over lower levels of government (Rodríguez 1998: 241). 2 As Courchene and Diaz-Cayeros note, it was only in the 1940s that the federal government was granted exclusive authority over import taxes. In 1983, a reform of the constitution assigned rights of taxation to the local level of government (Courchene and Diaz-Cayeros 2000: 203).


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Zamora and Cossío (2006) analyze changes in Mexico’s executive, legislative and judicial branches of government since the election of President Vicente Fox in 2000. Presidencialismo has been replaced by a “new constitutional order” – a changed role for the key institutions, including a newly “disempowered presidency and a divided Congress.” The Supreme Court has taken on a new and more powerful role and there is a new relationship between the president and Congress (Zamora and Cossío 2006: 413). Zamora and Cossío (citing Nacif) suggest that, faced with the constraints of a divided Congress and the challenges “of building a legislative coalition when competing political parties have no incentive to cooperate,” the Mexican president has taken on a new role as the key “coalition builder” and “veto wielder” (Zamora and Cossío 2006: 420). Beginning with President Zedillo’s reforms in 1994, constitutional changes which modified the process for the appointment of federal judges, including those on the Supreme Court, when combined with the decreased power of the President, resulted in a more powerful and independent judicial branch (Zamora and Cossío 2006: 420-1). Indeed, the Supreme Court has taken on a more activist role along the lines of the U.S constitutional model (Zamora and Cossío 2006: 420-1). These changes have resulted in a more balanced relationship between Mexico’s executive, legislative and judicial branches than existed before 2000, and each of the three branches now play a role in the policy process (Zamora and Cossío 2006: 413). Combined with recent moves towards decentralization these changes have implications for intergovernmental relations. Indeed, Courchene and Díaz-Cayeros (2000: 226) note that, as the Mexican federal system decentralizes, it will need federal-state intergovernmental institutions to ensure the continued benefits of decentralization. They suggest that such “institutional evolution” could result in a formal organization, such as Australia’s Commonwealth Grants Commission, or a more informal mechanism, such as Canada’s “federal-provincial diplomacy” or “executive federalism” (Courchene and Díaz-Cayeros 2000: 226). Brazil Intergovernmental relations in Brazil have evolved through several distinct phases, alternating between periods of centralization and decentralization (Selcher 1989: 167). The first phase, from 1889 (the year of Brazil’s establishment as a federal system) until 1930 (the end of the “first republic”), was one of “dual federalism” (Selcher 1989: 168). Modeled on the American system, Brazil’s states had extensive autonomy, however this gradually gave way to a “quasi-centralized” system in which the two most powerful states (Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais) were dominant. These two states defined the direction of national politics, and the presidency alternated between them (Selcher 1989: 168). The second phase of Brazilian federalism was the 1930-1945 dictatorship of Getulio Vargas. Vargas’ first presidency from 1930-45 began the trend towards centralization of federal power. During the “Estado Novo” dictatorship from 1937-45, President Vargas suppressed the opposition, abolished political parties and legislative bodies, and appointed all state governors (Selcher 1989: 168). During this period Brazil was considerably more centralized (Samuels 2000: 44). In 1945, a democratic system was instituted, popular elections were reintroduced, and the powers of the states were increased. During the “Military Republic” from 1964 to 1985 centralization once again prevailed (Samuels 2000: 44). The military regime reduced the political and fiscal autonomy of state and local governments, limiting the importance of federalism, and Brazil became a “quasi-unitary” state (Selcher 1989: 169). The year 1985 marked the return to civilian government and the beginning of a period of democratization and decentralization. Scholars of federalism and IGR (i.e. Afonso 2004; Montero 2001a, Souza 1997) point to Brazil, after the adoption of the 1988 constitution, as one of the most decentralized federations, both in terms of fiscal policy and the division of political power (Afonso 2004: 136). Montero (2001a) also points out that Brazil has a very decentralized party system, in which state governors act as party brokers (Montero 2001a: 17). Souza (1994: 606) suggests that decentralization served to strengthen the legislative and judicial branches, as well as the state and local governments, while at the same time weakening the federal executive. Decentralization in the 1988 constitution also led to an increase in the common


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responsibilities of the federal, state and local levels of government, and gave the lower levels of government a key role, both in policy-making and implementation. In terms of fiscal policy, decentralization led to increased revenues for state and local governments, and a related reduction in federal revenues (Souza 1994: 606). Currently, the Brazilian system can best be described as one of “cooperative federalism” (Shah 2007: 371). It has three levels of government; both state and local governments are independent units within the federal system.3 It is noteworthy that local government is recognized in the 1988 constitution (Shah 2007: 371). Both the state and local governments have independent powers of taxation and shared responsibilities for the provision of public services (Rezende 2007: 77). Alternatively, Souza (1997) argues that decentralization has led to what she terms a system of “peripheralised federalism,” in which subnational issues prevail over national ones (Souza 1997: 6). Rezende (2007) points out that, in practice, most of the responsibilities in the federation are shared. In social policy, apart from pensions and benefits for private sector workers, which is the exclusive responsibility of the federal government, the responsibility for providing education, health care and other social services are shared by state and municipal governments on relatively equal terms. The federal government has shared responsibility for tertiary education and some aspects of health care (Rezende 2007: 77-8). Echoing Kelemen’s category of “fragmented federations,” Souza (2002: 20-1) refers to Brazil as a “fragmented polity.” She suggests that Brazilian federalism is

characterized by the existence of multiple power centres… [it is] a complex system of political and financial dependence among governmental units, [with] varying routes for influencing and delivering policies, and [with] great disparities among its regions. Since 1988, several competing, although unequal, power centres [in the form of state-level actors] have had access to decision making and to policy implementation, especially in the delivery of social services (Souza 2002: 20-1).

As in Canada and the U.S., the influence of the federal government on state government is weak in Brazil (Shah 2007: 371). Samuels describes the current era of Brazilian federalism in terms of the “‘New’ Politics of the Governors.” (Samuels 2000: 44). During the transition to democracy, he suggests that it was state interests, rather than national interests that dominated the concerns of key political actors. State governors emerged as powerful national actors in Brazilian politics (Samuels 2000: 45). Samuels contends that although negotiations between the executive and legislative branches at the federal level determine the outcomes of policies,

…some of the most important political actors who… influence national politics work through the legislature, but are not members of the legislature. Executive-legislative relations in Brazil today involve a ‘fourth branch’ of the presidential system: state governors (Samuels 2000: 45).

The strong influence of governors in national-level politics means that federal and intergovernmental disputes spill over in federal level executive-legislative relations. Brazil’s governors are “institutional ‘veto players’ who act from outside the halls of Congress, yet who exert influence within the halls of Congress, and whose primary interest is in subnational, not national politics” (Samuels 2000: 45). Thus, many issues on the agenda at the federal level are influenced by the state governors (Samuels 2000: 45). This is in stark contrast to the relatively minor role of state governors at the federal level in the U.S. context, despite the modernization of the states’ institutional capacities in the 1980s and 1990s, which

3 Brazil has 26 States, one Federal District “and over 5500 municipalities which enjoy federative status and political, administrative and financial autonomy” (Miranda 2007: 187-88).


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resulted in a stronger role for the governor within each state’s political structure (Stein and Turkewitsch 2008b). Stepan (2000) describes Brazilian federalism as “demos constraining,” meaning that states which represent a minority of the population can block the desired policies of states representing a majority of the population, as a result of the “overrepresentation” of states with smaller populations in the upper chamber. He argues that the “equal representation of the different states in the federation produces a system of massive over- and under-representation” (Stepan 2000: 148). According to Stepan’s Gini index of inequality to measure the principle of representation to the upper or territorial legislative chamber, Argentina, Brazil and the U.S. (in that order) are the countries in which this “malapportionment” is the most extreme (Stepan 2000, as cited by Souza 2002).4 Generally in federal systems the upper or territorial chamber has less legislative power than the lower chamber. This is true in Germany; in India the upper chamber has comparatively even less power. In terms of its legislative power, Brazil’s Senate is modelled on the U.S. system of “relative power symmetry” between the upper and lower chambers, but Brazil’s Senate actually has “more unilateral power to kill a bill passed by the [Chamber of Deputies] than in any other federal democracy” (Stepan 2000: 149-50). As Stepan notes, “in Brazil there is no policy area that is beyond the policy-making competence of the Senate” (Stepan 2000: 149-150). In terms of constitutional review, Brazil is comparable to the U.S., which also has a “diffused system” in which “judges, at all major levels of the judicial system, can challenge the constitutionality of laws passed by the federal legislature” (Stepan 2000: 152). However, the U.S has several principles that limit the Supreme Court’s right to challenge the right of Congress to “pass laws that are considered binding” (Stepan 2000: 152). Brazil’s system, on the other hand, has a set of legal procedures for constitutional review that makes it easier for judges at all levels of the federal system to challenge the constitutionality of laws than in any other federal system. The system has resulted in a situation in which the Supreme Court is overwhelmed by cases (Stepan 2000: 152). As described above, many of the responsibilities in Brazil are shared across levels of government. In the area of fiscal policy, the “absence of a clear definition of the functions to be performed by each order of government is a major source of continuing [intergovernmental] conflicts” (Rezende 2007: 78). In terms of taxation, federal-state conflicts often arise when the federal government adopts measures, which have the effect of reducing the revenues from manufacturing taxes and income taxes on which Brazil’s revenue-sharing system is based. Another source of intergovernmental conflict between the federal government and the states is federal legislation which affects state tax autonomy. This often results in demands for financial compensation by the states, and the amount of such compensation becomes a source of continuing conflict (Rezende 2007: 78). Rezende argues that Brazil needs a “well designed institutional arrangement” to help the coordination and functioning of IGR and intergovernmental fiscal arrangements, in particular, and to help mediate conflicts of interest (Rezende 2007: 91-2). Brazil has a “constitutionally-mandated revenue-sharing mechanism that automatically delivers a fixed proportion of income and federal manufacturing tax revenues, plus other minor taxes, to state and local governments, on the basis of predetermined fixed rates” and a number of “specific purpose grants,” rather than a formal equalization programme, such as that in Canada (Rezende 2007: 91-92). The Brazilian system of fiscal transfers results in a high level of

4 He notes that, “Brazil's system of representation to the Upper or Territorial House is … extreme. There, one vote in the sparsely populated state of Roraima has 144 times the weight in producing a Brazilian senator as does a vote cast in the densely populated state of Sao Paulo” (Stepan 2000: 148).


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horizontal disparities in the distribution of financial resources, and this hinders intergovernmental cooperation in a variety of policy areas (Rezende 2007: 91-92). While the English-language literature on IGR and federalism in Brazil has tended to focus largely on issues of democratization, decentralization, and/or fiscal policy, more recently, scholars have turned their attention to empirical studies of Brazil’s institutions for IGR in specific policy areas. For example, Miranda (2007) provides a largely descriptive, empirical study of Brazil’s joint health management committee (the “Tripartite Committee”) which was created in 1991 by ministerial decree “to formalize intergovernmental decisions about the implementation of policies of the Brazilian Unified Health System” (Miranda 2007: 186).5 Each of Brazil’s three levels of government is represented in the committee, which has 15 permanent members. The members include five officials appointed by the Health Minister, five appointed by the national directorate that represents the health management state agency and five appointed by the national directorate that represents municipal health management agencies. The state and municipal representatives are chosen by criteria that distributes membership across Brazil’s five main regions (Miranda 2007: 188). Miranda finds that, overall, the process of decision making within the Tripartite Committee has been characterized by cooperative strategies, negotiation and mediation (Miranda 2007: 190). However, he also suggests that the Committee is characterized by a “predominance of informal decision-making arrangements (Wright 1990, cited by Miranda 2007: 190). Miranda makes no mention of wider public consultations or the involvement of non-governmental groups in the Committee’s decision-making process. These findings mirror descriptions of executive federalism and “federal-provincial diplomacy” (e.g. Simeon 1972) in the Canadian context. However, the Tripartite Committee may not be characteristic of intergovernmental relations in all policy areas. For example, it appears to be in contrast with moves towards participatory policymaking and the participatory budget (see, for example, Nylen 2002). Argentina Argentina’s history as a federal system has alternated through periods of democratic and authoritarian rule. After independence from Spain there were internal disputes between two main factions over the issue of whether the state should take the form of a confederation of independent provinces, or a federation. In 1853, a constitution was adopted that created a federation with leadership at the national level. However, conflicts remained over the question of provincial autonomy (Cetángolo and Jiménez 2004: 121). Between 1880 and 1930, the liberal and Radical regimes centralized power from Buenos Aires (Gustafson 1990: 166). After 1930, there was continued instability and a series of major military coups.6 Between 1930 and 1982, there were twenty-one years of military government,7 thirteen years under the populist rule of General Perón, and two short periods of formal democracy from 1932-43 and 1958-66 (Gustafson 1990: 168). Although there were major differences between the democratic and military regimes, the period from 1930-83 was characterized by a trend of centralization. In 1983 after the return to civilian rule and democracy, a reaction towards the authoritarianism and centralization of the past led to calls for greater decentralization (Gustafson 1990: 168-9). Many recent studies of intergovernmental relations in Argentina point to a relatively high degree of decentralization in terms of fiscal policy (i.e. Tomassi et al 2001; Gordin 2004; Montero 2001). Indeed, provincial and local governments are together responsible for almost half of “consolidated public sector 5 This was mirrored in 1994-95 when State Joint Health Management Committees (referred to as “Bipartite Committees”) were created in each of Brazil’s 26 states, which included equal representation for “municipal and state health managers” (Miranda 2007: 188).

6 The coups were in 1943, 1955, 1962, 1966, and 1976. There were also a number of attempted but unsuccessful coups (Gustafson 1990: 168). 7 From 1930-1932, 1943-1946, 1955-1958, 1966-1973, and 1976-1982 (Gustafson 1990: 168).


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expenditures and over two thirds of public sector expenses (excluding pensions)” (Tomassi et al 2001: 160). This relationship is similar to that in Canada, but in contrast with that in Australia. Argentina’s constitution gives the provinces a high level of responsibility with respect to tax and expenditure decisions. The only areas in which the federal government holds “exclusive competence” over expenditures are in defence and foreign policy (Tomassi et al 2001: 159). Federal and provincial competences overlap with respect to the provision of most social services. However, there has been a trend towards more decentralization to the provinces in terms of providing these services. The provinces are therefore responsible for most social expenditures, including education, health care and social security, infrastructure such as roads, and the environment and natural resources. However, the federal government retains “significant regulatory power” in most of these areas, and is directly involved in some programmes, such as social security (Tomassi et al 2001: 159). Argentina also has a system of intergovernmental transfers, which includes a revenue-sharing regime, referred to as “co-participation,” which received formal status in the constitution in the reforms of 1994 (Tomassi et al 2001: 162).8 However, as Falleti (2004: 342-3) points out, in Argentina fiscal decentralization did not initially go hand in hand with political decentralization. In 1994, President Menem instituted constitutional reforms, which granted Buenos Aires political autonomy. However, other decentralizing reforms requested by provincial representatives to the constitutional assembly, such as a larger share of revenues, control of natural resources, and autonomy for local government, failed to pass, and were not included in the constitutional reform (Falleti 2004: 342-3). As in Brazil, governors of Argentina’s provinces have a powerful role in the federal system. As Tomassi et al (2001) describe, the role of governors in Argentina is more powerful than that of legislators at the federal level. This is because legislators usually have brief careers, which is associated with their high turnover as a result of the party-list system. In contrast, governors have a powerful role in influencing the make-up of the lists of candidates for the national party lists for Congressional elections (Tomassi et al 2001: 192). Their influence in this system means that governors “have a disproportionate amount of power since they can exert substantial influence through national legislators” (Tomassi 2001: 192). Governors are thus constantly involved in policy making at the federal level, and this affects intergovernmental relations. Tomassi et al suggest that federal-provincial negotiations on agreements that require the approval of the federal Congress “may give rise to opportunism” by governors (Tomassi et al 2001: 192-3). At the federal level, there is a weak horizontal separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches. The strong role of the president vis-à-vis the Congress is in part the result of “certain constitutional capacities and practices, … budgetary practices and …the historical political alignment of the Supreme Court with the president,” and the absence of a “strong, independent and professional bureaucracy” (Tomassi et al 2001: 193).9 Furthermore, Argentina’s Supreme Court does not play an active role to the same extent as its equivalent in the U.S and Germany (Gordin 2004) in terms of judicial review. Tomassi et al (2001: 194) describe IGR in Argentina as “weakly institutionalized,” that is the system lacks institutionalization of the mechanisms through which IGR take place. Intergovernmental 8 See Cuevas 2003: 5-10 for a detailed discussion of the formulas which determine the respective amounts allocated to each level of government. A set amount of income and profit taxes, VAT and personal assets taxes, and excise and other taxes are redistributed to the provinces (Cuevas 2003: 6). A series of fiscal pacts (see below), negotiated between the provinces and the federal government, made changes to the co-participation scheme. 9 For example, “[s]ince 1983, the executive office has frequently made unilateral moves on matters previously settled by Congress without being challenged by the courts. Specifically, the president has used his decree authority to ‘regulate’ and alter the content of bills passed by the legislature” (Tomassi et al 2001: 194).


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relations are mostly conducted on an ad hoc basis. The federal Congress is an insignificant arena for IGR, given the weak role of legislators. IGR have tended to be primarily informal, although there have been some formal agreements, such as the series of federal fiscal pacts in 1992, 1993 and 1999, agreed upon by the federal and provincial governments.10 For the most part, however, IGR in Argentina have been informal. For example in the area of fiscal policy, between 1983 and 1988 decisions regarding the “co-participation laws,” that allocated transfers from the federal government to the provinces were largely the result informal negotiations. More recent negotiations on co-participation have also

taken place either in the executive quarters or in ad hoc meetings between the president and the governors. This reflects the separate political power of the national executive office and the provinces and the lack of institutionalization of the mechanisms to carry out these agreements (Tomassi et al 2001: 195).

The co-participation scheme is one of the many features that differentiate IGR in Argentina from that in the United States. As we noted in our earlier work (Stein and Turkewitsch 2008b; Stein and Turkewitsch 2009), in the United States, intergovernmental transfers are more commonly known as grants, grants-in-aid, federal aid or state aid. In terms of intergovernmental relations, the key outcome is that different types of grants tend to produce different types of relationships amongst the participating governments (Stein and Turkewitsch 2008b, citing O’Toole 2007: 12). Over the years, the use of grants has resulted in substantially increased federal influence over state and local governments, and this has had significant political consequences (O’Toole 2007: 11). As O’Toole (2007: 11), notes “[g]rants have developed as the prime instruments to promote bargaining and jockeying for advantage among governments; they frequently stimulate both cooperation and conflict among such governments.” In the U.S., which is characterized by a separation of executive and legislative powers at each level of government, the primary arena for resolving issues of federal finance is Congress, in contrast to the minor role of Congress in Argentina in intergovernmental negotiations. In the U.S. negotiations over the allocation of grants-in-aid programs among representatives of different states occur in Congress, while “representatives of state administrations act as lobbyists” (Watts 2008: 112-3, as cited in Stein and Turkewitsch 2008b). As Tomassi et al (2001: 190) point out, “executive federalism” is a notable feature of IGR in Argentina. According to their definition of this term, the president and the governors play a predominant role in IGR. Intergovernmental relations in Argentina are also characterized by a bargaining process. The nature of the country’s political structure means that agreements made between federal and provincial leaders can be easily changed when it comes time for legislation or implementation (Tomassi et al 2001: 190). Also, during the implementation stage, the President can “easily unravel” intergovernmental agreements that were agreed upon or ratified in the federal Congress. Intergovernmental agreements are therefore usually reached beyond the confines of the federal Congress, and often include strict rules so that they cannot be easily changed at a later point (Tomassi et al 2001: 190). Nigeria Watts (2008) cites Nigeria since 1999 as a notable example of a presidential regime with a “strong executive.” He notes that, “[i]n a number of these cases the presidential power has been derived from the dominance of a presidential party that is in control of the federal executive” (Watts 2008). Nigerian federalism and IGR have gone through many changes over the past five decades. Frequent constitutional reforms or changes have taken place since independence in 1960 - in 1963, 1975, and 1979 (Ugwu 1998: 10 As Tomassi et al note, “[i]n 1994, important elements related to fiscal intergovernmental relations were included in Argentina's revised Constitution, which established that a new co-participation law had to be drafted before 1996, on the basis of agreements between the central government and the provinces. This remains unsolved to date, however” (Tomassi et al 2001: 195)


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87) and most recently in 1999. The nature of Nigerian federalism changed during military rule in 1966 and the subsequent creation of additional states in 1967, 1976, 1987, 1991 and 1996 (Ugwu 1998: 84). According to Suberu (2001: 1), Nigeria’s federal system has always been characterized by “peculiar” and “irregular” features. A distinctive feature of Nigerian federalism is the military elite’s dominance of the country’s politics. Centralizing and interventionist military elites have ruled Nigeria for more than two-thirds of the period since independence (Suberu 2001: 1). However, the “interventionist tendencies” of Nigeria’s military elites are only one of several “pathologies” of Nigerian federalism (Suberu 2001: 2). Williams (1980, as cited by Suberu 2001) describes Nigeria as a “unitary state in federal disguise” and Suberu (2001) refers to Nigeria as “overcentralized.” During the years of British colonial rule, Nigeria was politically unitary, although its administration was decentralized (Eliagwu 1988: 174). Colonial rule was administered by the Northern and Southern protectorates, which were virtually independent of each other, apart from the coordination of the central government. The separate protectorates left an institutional legacy that created later problems of integration in the early years after independence (Eliagwu 1988: 175). Even before independence, a federal structure was adopted in Nigeria. A federal system with three regions was created in 1954. Until 1966, the constitution provided the regions with control over “a substantial portion of the national wealth.” The regions were therefore quite powerful, and the relationships between the regions and the federal government were interdependent. Regional governments had the power to create (or abolish), control and supervise local government (Ugwu 1998: 84). Nigeria is also a multi-ethnic federation. The major ethnic groups are Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, and Igbo, along with numerous smaller ethnic groups (Afigbo 1991: 28).11 However, state boundaries were not defined on the basis of ethnic make-up. Rather, the three major regions each comprised many ethnic groups. Ethnic divisions fueled the creation of additional states, but even as more states were created, their boundaries did not always follow ethnic divisions; currently some states are homogenous, while others are an agglomeration of numerous ethnic groups (Afigbo 1991: 15). From the time of its independence from British colonial rule in 1960 until 1966 Nigeria was a parliamentary federation, which Watts (1989: 8) suggests displayed characteristics of executive federalism. The Nigerian First Republic (1960-66) was “an asymmetric three region federal system.” The new federal system faced many problems, including a structural imbalance between the three regions (both in terms of their population and geographic size), and ethno-regional competition (Eliagwu 1988: 175). Federal-state relations during this period were described by General Gowon, Nigeria’s military president in 1966, who stated that Nigeria’s “regions were so large and powerful as to consider themselves self-sufficient and almost entirely independent. The federal government…was relegated to the background” (as quoted by Eliagwu 1988: 180). The First Republic failed after civil war (Suberu 2001: 4) and was later replaced with a presidential system. After the civil war, “military federalism” was introduced by decree in 1966, followed by another decree in 1967 which created a system that was virtually confederal, and included twelve states (Ugwu 1998: 38). “Presidential federalism” was enshrined in Nigeria’s 1979 constitution (Eliagwu 1988: 179). During Nigeria’s period of “presidential federalism” the president was elected by popular vote, as were the state governors. There was a clear separation of powers. “The president could not be removed by the National Assembly through a vote of no confidence, but only through impeachment for gross misconduct 11 Although there is no general consensus on the total number of ethnic groups in Nigeria, the most commonly cited number is 250 groups (Adamolekun 1991: 7).


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in office” (Eliagwu 1988: 180). The legislature was bicameral, and government ministers were barred from membership in it. The federal and state judiciaries were constitutionally autonomous, although the judicial process was subject to corruption and abuse by political leaders (Eliagwu 1988: 180). There were differences as well as continuities between Nigeria’s civilian administrations of 1960-66 and 1979-83. The primary difference was, of course, the operation of Nigeria’s federal system within a parliamentary and, subsequently, a presidential constitutional framework. Constitutionally, “[p]ower was as non-centralized in the presidential system as [it had been] in the parliamentary system, and component units were still autonomous” (Eliagwu 1988: 180). However, in practice, under the presidential system, the new states had less autonomy than the old regions, in part because the new states, being more numerous, were smaller and had smaller resource bases. Furthermore, the intervening years of “military federalism” and the centralization of power under the military were difficult to reverse (Eliagwu 1988: 180). In other words, the nature of the federal system – parliamentary versus presidential – appears to have been of little consequence in shaping this process of centralization. In terms of intergovernmental relations, there were some continuities between the First Republic and the presidential republic. Confrontation between the federal government and the states persisted, although federal-state conflicts were less intense than they had been during the parliamentary era, probably tamed by the experience of nearly three years of conflict and civil war during the intervening years. Yet some serious conflicts remained. The federal government challenged the power of the states to create local governments, sparking the state governments to threaten to take over federal institutions and even establish their own airlines (Eliagwu 1988: 180). Rather than playing a unifying role, political parties tended to generate and fuel intergovernmental conflicts and crises, particularly when the ruling party at the federal level differed from the party in power in a particular state (Eliagwu 1988: 181) Despite the change from a system of parliamentary federalism to one of presidentialism, there were some interesting and perhaps unexpected continuities in political culture. During the Second Republic, Eliagwu suggests that most of Nigeria’s politicians “operated the presidential system in the context of a parliamentary political culture.” For example, at the state level, one legislator suggested that a “vote of no confidence” be passed against the Governor (Eliagwu 1988: 181). Although this example reflects the limited political understanding of a single individual, there may be other, deeper aspects of Nigerian political culture that override the differences between Parliamentary and Presidential political institutions. Ugwu points to several problems of IGR in Nigeria. Conflicts have arisen over issues of tax jurisdiction, revenue sharing, and intergovernmental fiscal transfers. The federal government has control of income from customs and excise taxes on oil. State governments control personal income tax. In terms of redistribution, there is a system of direct transfers from the federal government to local governments. To supplement this funding, local governments are able to generate their own revenue from sources such as poll taxes and profits from the operation of mass transit (Ugwu 1998: 90-1). However, most of Nigeria’s states and local governments are not able to raise more than ten percent of their annual budget from these internal sources and they are thus heavily reliant on federal aid (Ugwu 1998: 92). As Suberu (2001: 10) notes, economic resources as well as political power are concentrated at the federal level. In terms of fiscal policy, “extreme centralization” of control over the nation’s revenue flows has caused intergovernmental conflicts. Without true political and fiscal autonomy, states and local governments have competed for federal funding, and competition among them for this funding (derived largely from oil revenues), has tended to be “vicious and destabilizing” (Asiodu 1993, as quoted by Suberu 2001: 10-11). Indeed, conflict among Nigeria’s regions over control of oil revenues has long been a major source of friction. Diamond (2001: xv) argues that centralization of control over revenue flows


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has “virtually erased a fundamental principle of federalism – that lower levels of government have some areas of autonomous authority that cannot be overridden by the center – and robbed subordinate units of any significant incentive to generate revenue of their own” (Diamond: 2001: xv). Overlapping responsibilities are a further source of conflict. Ugwu calls for more “intergovernmental consultations and negotiations and more institutionalized mechanisms for developing cooperative developmental objectives” (Ugwu 1998: 92) as well as the introduction of “stream-lined agencies for the efficient management and implementation of developmental projects.” (Ugwu 1998: 91) Section 4: Analysis and Conclusions: In this section, we will attempt to frame some theoretical generalizations about the patterns of intergovernmental relations in parliamentary and presidential federations based on the empirical information summarized above. We have found some commonalities manifested exclusively in the parliamentary federations we analyzed and some exhibited only in the presidential federations considered. However, we have also found some shared features and patterns encompassing both parliamentary and presidential federations, which we will attempt to explain below. We will also discuss in this section the question of whether the distinction between parliamentary and presidential (“fragmented” or “separation of powers”) federations is the most useful one for understanding different patterns of IGR. It may be more appropriate to categorize varying forms of IGR in federal systems according to broader and more overlapping criteria. On a theoretical level, our conclusions involve a synthesis, despite some inherent contradictions, between historical, rational choice and sociological institutionalism approaches, path dependency notions, and some elements of other contemporary theoretical approaches in political and social science. As the parliamentary federations have become more involved in its economic and social sectors through its post-war policy expansion (e.g. Keynesian and development economic management and, welfare state policies), the scope and complexity of the patterns of intergovernmental interactions between the two levels of government in “parliamentary federations” have increased greatly, and the degree of intergovernmental institutionalization has also expanded and become more acceptable. In parliamentary federations, unlike in presidential federations, this has naturally assumed a form of increased executive and administrative interactions between the two major levels of government, because the fusion of their executive and legislative structures has meant that elected legislatures in those federations could not serve as a counterbalancing power or check on the executives. This has naturally generated problems of executive accountability and “democratic deficit” in these federations and they are increasingly apparent in all “parliamentary federations”, and it also holds to a greater extent in “parliamentary” than in “presidential federations.” In the parliamentary federations, the extent to which the constituent units have direct or indirect representation in second (upper) legislative chambers seems to have had some mitigating effect on this executive accountability and democratic deficit problem, particularly in those federations with patterns of executive federalism in which this type of direct state or provincial representation exists (e.g. the Australian Senate, the German Bundesrat, the Indian Rajya Sabha), in contrast to the situation of the appointive Canadian Senate. Here Kelemen’s ideas, drawing on Tsebelis’ concept of “veto players” in presidential and parliamentary systems (1995, 2002), are relevant. There also appears to have been an evolutionary causal linkage between the phases of “dualistic federalism”, “cooperative/administrative federalism”, “executive federalism”, “constitutional federalism”, “collaborative federalism” and “multilevel governance federalism”. This occurs in all “parliamentary federations” as their IGR systems evolve in response to changing socio-economic and political conditions


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associated with the limited 19th and early 20th century liberal state; to the post-World War II Keynesian welfare state; to a pattern of constituent unit “state-building” (1960-1980) and related demands for a genuinely coordinate (co-equal) federal state; to demands for constitutional reform of federal institutions, especially in fiscal and financial federal areas; to a desire for less conflictual, more collaborative intergovernmental structures in order to contend with the forces of global economic competition and globalization. Finally, the impact of this globalization has an effect of pushing economic/political power upward to the supra-national regional and global levels, downward to the sub-national regional and local levels, and sideways into partnerships with private and third sector structures, thereby making new MLG structures in intergovernmental relations increasingly attractive to both “parliamentary” and “presidential” federations. These trends are also shaped by specific historical experiences in national or regional institutions (e.g. German Lander cooperation in the Bundesrat structure during the Imperial Federation from 1872 until 1918, and the experience in India with dyarchy after the adoption of the Government of India Act in the 1930s). As a result, differences in institutional design, in patterns of evolutionary intergovernmental relations, and in the policy-making and performance success of different “parliamentary federations” are manifest. Socio-cultural and political party differences have also had an important impact on evolving patterns of IGR in both “parliamentary” and “presidential” federations (e.g. the pattern of bipartism or single-party dominance versus multipartism and coalition government in each federation), the identification of constituent unit governments with a particular ethnicity and language (e.g. Canada/Quebec and India). Furthermore, changing trends in the role of the public services at the two levels of government and in the role of the courts in judicial review of federalism must be taken into account in comparing and analyzing patterns of IGR in federations. What generalizations can we draw about patterns of IGR in the presidential federations under study here? Are approaches and theories of federalism derived in the context of western, developed states applicable in a developing context? What commonalities can we find across these culturally and developmentally divergent cases? Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Nigeria have in common an authoritarian past and instances of military rule, as well as a strong trend toward centralization during these periods. In contrast, in India although the periods under Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi occasionally invoked comparisons with authoritarian rule, although there were no instances of actual military government in India since 1947, and its earlier trend towards centralization has been reversed. Another commonality is that, historically rather than a true separation of powers at the national level, a strong party (i.e. the PRI in Mexico) or military rule meant that the executive and legislative powers at the federal level were more overlapping, weaker and more fused than in the United States. The significant changes in Mexico since 2000 resulting in a more typical “separation of powers” may eventually lead to the development of a system of IGR in Mexico more along the lines of that in the United States. This is an area for further research. The presidential federations also display differences in levels of institutionalization of IGR. For example, IGR seems to be most formally institutionalized in Nigeria, and less institutionalized in Brazil, and Argentina, both states that also display features of executive federalism. IGR in Argentina are weakly institutionalized, mostly informal and ad hoc, and are strongly suggestive of Watts’ “executive federalism.” Similarly, as we saw in the case of health policy in Brazil, intergovernmental decisions take place behind closed doors, again mirroring descriptions of executive federalism. Yet, IGR in Brazil may differ across policy areas, as we noted above in the area of fiscal policy. Rezende (2007: 91-2) argues that IGR needs a “well designed institutional arrangement to help the coordination and functioning of IGR” and to mediate conflicts (Rezende 2007: 91-2). There are a number of formal institutions for conducting


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IGR in Nigeria; some are provided for in the constitution, and others are ad hoc. However, not all IGR are formally institutionalized. Perhaps the major factor in Nigeria shaping its IGR is its political culture, rather than a lack of formal (or informal) intergovernmental relationships, or even, its pattern of executive-legislative relations or its type of regime. Mexico has begun its process of democratization more recently than Argentina and Brazil. Therefore, as Courchene and Diaz-Cayeros point out, while Mexico decentralizes and consolidates its democracy, it will need new institutions for conducting IGR. Perhaps it is still too early, then, to determine whether, as they recommend institutions of IGR in Mexico, they will take the form of formal structures or more informal mechanisms. Furthermore, it is difficult to use the concept of multi-level governance (MLG) in order to achieve greater understanding of patterns of IGR in developing federations, especially during the early phases of their institutional evolution. For example, Brazil, with its more multicentred and decentralized system, is probably the country most likely to benefit from an application of the MLG approach to an analysis of its pattern of intergovernmental relations. This also raises the question of whether an MLG approach is applicable at all in a developing context. Although the concept of MLG, as applied in the EU, is in our view a useful tool for analyzing the changing modes of intergovernmental relations during this phase of economic globalization, the concept may be best applied to some of the states under study here as a template or model for new forms and patterns of intergovernmental relations, or even as a normative ideal. As we noted in our earlier work, MLG should be viewed as a concept with both descriptive/empirical and normative attributes. It should be regarded as a device “designed to promote the value of pluralism and serve as an institutional check on the concentration of power in a single or major decision-making centre. It should, moreover, be seen as providing a more flexible mode of optimizing the policy-making process by allowing for multidirectional shifts both vertically and horizontally in decision-making authority and power” (Stein and Turkewitsch 2008a: 30). As we mentioned in the introduction, what is missing from both Kelemen’s and Watts’ approaches is a historical and developmental aspect to their theories of IGR. Can we understand the constantly fluctuating nature of IGR with static models? What is most striking from our examples of presidential systems are the changes over time – in terms of the constitution, degree of centralization, party strength, executive strength, presidential powers, and in Nigeria, even the political system itself. We have observed that modes of intergovernmental relations often change as these different aspects evolve and change. For example, as the work of Rodríguez (1998) suggests, few scholars paid attention to IGR in Mexico during the years of extreme centralization and PRI authoritarian rule. As we noted above, the systems of intergovernmental relations in the parliamentary federations evolved in response to changing socio-economic and political conditions and structures, and as a result of increasing globalization. Thus, we might expect a similar pattern of change in the presidential federations under study here. As discussed above, it is not clear whether Kelemen intends his theory of federalism to apply only to regulatory policy-making, or to be more broadly applied to include statutory legislation. It may be problematic to apply Kelemen’s approach to less-developed countries such as Nigeria, as these states may have not yet developed to a stage in which they rely on and implement a large number of regulatory policies, especially when compared to countries such as Germany or the United States. In terms of Asare, Cairney and Studlar’s critique of Kelemen, we agree with their emphasis on policy and contextual variation and their acknowledgement in this respect of the value of MLG both to political analysis and intergovernmental practice. Kelemen considers the United States to be an example of the ideal-type of a “fragmented” power federation because of the numerous veto groups in its governmental decision-making process. The presidential federations under study here do not fully meet Kelemen’s conditions, and they are not entirely “fragmented” in terms of Kelemen’s definition (although, in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, in contrast to


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the U.S., state governors have a strong role, possibly acting as “veto players” at the federal level). Rather, in presidential federations, the existence of a strong executive and/or a “weak” separation of powers tends to promote patterns of IGR more like that of executive federalism in parliamentary federations. Watts (1989; 2008) provided some brief theoretical insights concerning the pattern of intergovernmental relations in presidential federations, where there has been a separation of legislative and executive powers. Our more detailed empirical examination of several of the cases of presidential federations mentioned by Watts (namely the Latin American federations and Nigeria) tends to support his initial insights. Our findings also accord with Watts’ (2008) initial argument that Mexico until 2000 was characterized by a strong executive under presidencialismo, displayed features of “executive federalism”, and did not have a true “separation of powers.” Changes since 2000 resulting in a more fully separated and balanced relationship between Mexico’s executive, legislative and judicial branches point to the strong possibility of its moving in the direction of a more typical presidential federation pattern of IGR. In this paper we have considered patterns of intergovernmental relations in a number of relatively recent democratized presidential systems as well as those of older and more “mature” federations. We suggest that more comparative research is needed to consider their respective future paths of development. Research of this sort should consider recent changes, both in terms of the academic study of intergovernmental relations and in terms of the practice of IGR, if their democratic regimes are further consolidated and they mature as federations.


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