Week 4 - Federalism, Ethnicity, and Nationalism

Causes of Federalism - Why Create a Federal System?

• Why create a federal system?

  • Share defense: Smaller territories can combine their resources to respond to external threats. For example, security concerns helped shape early U.S. and Canadian federal arrangements.

  • Increase geopolitical influence: A federation can unite smaller political units into a stronger state without giving all power to one central authority. Germany’s unification in 1871 is one example.

  • Build a common market: Federal institutions can help create shared economic rules and connections across regions.

  • Govern a large territory: A central government can coordinate national affairs while regional governments manage local needs.

  • Manage cultural diversity: Federalism can give distinct communities or regions a degree of self-government within one country.

  • Use existing institutions: Federalism may be chosen when established regional governments or political arrangements make it more practical than a unitary system.

Ethnocultural and Territorial Federalism

• Ethnocultural federalism:

  • Combines shared government with regional self-rule to protect culturally distinct communities.

  • can offer groups that might otherwise feel defeated or excluded a stake in the state, helping reduce conflict over ethnicity, language, or religion.

  • Switzerland and Yugoslavia are examples.

• Territorial (mononational) federalism:

  • Combines shared government with local self-rule to limit the concentration of power, without being designed primarily to protect regionally concentrated ethnocultural groups.

  • Germany and the United States are examples: their federal units are generally not organized as representatives of distinct national or cultural communities

Ethnocultural Federalism: Stabilizing for Destabilizing?

• Ethnocultural federalism as compromise: It can bridge the demands of secessionist groups and central governments by granting subunits meaningful self-government while keeping them within a shared federation.

• Checks on central authority: Regional autonomy, alongside representation in central institutions, can constrain the centre and provide durable protection against overreach

Paradox of Federalism

• The paradox of ethnocultural federalism: The autonomy meant to keep culturally distinct regions within a federation can also strengthen the forces that might pull them out of it.

• How this can happen:

  • Regional institutions give a distinct identity political expression and help sustain it.

  • Regional leaders can use those institutions and resources to mobilize support, presenting their political goals as the interests of the whole group.

  • Separate governments can pursue their own development plans and build institutions that reinforce a nation-building project distinct from the state’s.

• Example — Quebec: Quebec’s government has often emphasized the province’s distinct political and economic character. Its legislature, sometimes referred to as a National Assembly, gives regional leaders an institutional platform to advance that identity.

• The tension: Ethnocultural federalism may offer meaningful self-government and a check on central power, yet the same autonomy and institutional capacity can help a region build the foundations for successful secession

Watts and Kymlicka: Paradox of Federalism

• Ronald Watts: when multiple lines of division such as ‘language, religion, social structure, cultural traditions, and race’ reinforce federal territorial divisions, stresses grow to the breaking point

• Will Kymlicka: ‘the very success of federalism in accommodating self-government may simply encourage national minorities to seek secession

• Ethnocultural federations often fail: Malaysia, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, USSR

• Where hostility is already highly developed, federalism may offer no cure

  • Enormous amount of cases where the problem of aligning the federal territories can be a solution but can also lead towards a trek to secession and breakaway

Addressing the Paradox - O’Leary

• A very large, powerful region can make other regions feel dominated and increase the risk of conflict or separation.

• Federations with only two regions can become stuck in a rivalry; more regions make it easier to form different alliances.

• When ethnic groups live across several regions, they may compete within their groups rather than against other groups.

• A shared sense of belonging to one country can help unite people, but it cannot solve every problem on its own

Addressing the Paradox - Consociationalism or Power Sharing?

• Consociationalism shares power among major groups through tools like coalition governments, vetoes, fair representation, and local autonomy.

• Organizing politics around groups can strengthen group identities, but sharing power and allowing self-rule may reduce conflict and calls to separate.

• Coming-together federations form when independent regions join, as the American colonies did. Their strong independence may make separation more likely.

• Holding-together federations form when a unitary country gives regions more power to manage divisions and keep the country united.

Multinational Federalism - Gagnon

Multinational federalism

• In Gagnon’s account, it recognizes that a state contains distinct national or cultural communities, rather than treating everyone as members of one uniform nation.

• It can support stability by recognizing those identities, providing self-government, and giving communities a role in shared federal institutions. This may reduce the sense that a group must seek independence to protect its identity.

• The argument is that national or cultural identity can be fundamental to people’s lives, so denying it may deepen alienation. Recognition alone, however, does not guarantee stability: institutions must also protect minorities within each community and sustain cooperation across the federation

Ernes Gellner

• Foundational skepticism about human nature and  political borders

• Distinct cultural groups never resolve their differences peacefully, he believed that putting differing nationalities in one room is a recipe for conflict (one side will dominate, they will separate, no middle ground)

Federalism and Nationalism

• Federalism: a system of shared rule combined with self rule

  • Central governments hold a specific set of powers regarding broad strokes, while regional governments hold a specific set of powers to ensure that their unique needs are met

• Nationalism: a specific set of people (sharing culture, history or language) should have their own exclusive political roof 

  • They want to be ruled by their own co-nationals

• Politicians have tried to combine these concepts through different approaches

Federalism and Nationalism: Combination of these concepts through 3 Approaches

1. Assume they are mutually exclusive

   1. Take one and get rid of the other

   2. Ex. French Jackabins during the revolution, they despised federalism because breaking the country into federal regions was a roadblock to cultural homogenization

   3. Their goal was to make peasants into Frenchmen, they believed a unified strong nation could not survive with divided federal loyalties

   4. Pierre Trudeau: he viewed nationalism and federation as locked in a mortal combat, but believed federalism was the antidote to nationalism

      1. ‘Nationalism is the measles of mankind’

2. Did anyone try to use them together as a weapon? Marxist and Leninists did

   1. Lenin and Stalin treated federalism as a temporary tactical tool, a stepping stone - created distinct republics to placate nationalist groups long enough to eventually assimilate them

   2. Offered a fiction of territorial autonomy to kickstart a lengthy systemic process of erasing these national identities, working towards a single global communist identity

3. Federalism and Nationalism are perfectly compatible

   1. Mononational federalists: US 

      1. Uses a federal structure to unite people over a massive geographical space, ultimate goal is assimilation into one overarching culture (American melting pot)

      2. Federalism used for only a mechanism to build a single nation

   2. Multinational/ethnic federalists: Canada, Switzerland, India

      1. Federalism to protect and institutionalize multiple distinct cultures at once, on a permanent basis (mosaic), reject melting pot, want different nations to maintain their identities under a main structure

How does this work? (multinational model)

• Multinational model is a graveyard of failed states

• Broke down in communist world (Yugoslavia), in post colonial world (Francophone and British Africa - Kenya, Uganda; Asia - Pakistan, union of Malaya, secession of Singapore)

• When multinational federations attempts to democratize, elections turn into ethnic censuses (people vote for their ethnonational groups over political parties)

  • Being a minority in this federation means you are permanently outvoted at a federal level, majority will always win through voting and will control everything (laws, budget, military)

  • Because it is a federation, these minorities already have their own drawn borders, regional parliaments, bureaucracies - they have been given the tools to break away if need be

  • Fear of being dominated combined with the institutional capacity to actually leave creates an irresistible incentive to actually leave

• If this model is bad, why do we still talk about it? Canada, Switzerland, and India are all functioning democracies

What makes them different?

• O’Leary’s argument: Some federations have survived because one group is clearly dominant.

• Staatsvolk means the main “people of the state”—the group that is culturally and electorally dominant.

• In this theory, the dominant group has about two-thirds of the population, as in the United States or Australia.

• The majority feels secure because it can usually win elections, so it may be more willing to tolerate minority groups.

• Without a clear majority, groups may fear being outvoted, and competition for control can make the federation unstable

How do we draw the line for dominance?

• When is a group too small to provide this security

• ENENG: Effective Number of Ethno National Groups

  • Calculates stability based on population weight

  • ENENG score must remain under 2.0 for a majoritarian federation to remain stable

• A group of 60% vs 30% has exponentially more power in a state

• Belgium 1976: two main groups, Flemings and Walloons

  • Flemings 59%, Walloons 39.3%, Germans .64%

  • ENENG: 1.99, barely under 2.0 line for stability

• Nigeria: has hundreds of groups with no dominant majority

  • ENENG: 6.91

  • Functioning as if 7 distinct, equally weighted nations are all fighting for the same resources, total deadlock

  • This formula strips away bias, cultural histories, political rhetoric - proves countries with high diversity scores cannot survive under majority rules systems

What does this mean? (O’Leary argument) - Consociational Rescue

• O’Leary introduces the ‘consociational rescue’

  • If a democratic federation lacks a clear Staatsvolk (has an ENENG over 2.0) it cannot use 51% majority rule democracy

  • It must redefine its constitution to adopt consociational practices, force political cooperation and make minorities feel safe

• Tools to do this:

  • Proportional representation in voting: if a minority group makes up 20% of a population, they get 20% of the seats in Parliament

    • Minorities cannot be shut out of the room

  • Mandatory cross-community executive power sharing: federal cabinet cannot be formed by only the winning party, it must include leaders from all ethnic groups

    • Force everyone (rivals, enemies) to sit at the same table and govern together

  • Deep cultural autonomy: groups get total control over their own language, education and religious policies and practices

  • Minority veto right (emergency break): minority gets an emergency break that they can pull if the majority tries to pass a policy that threatens their core cultural identity or survival

    • A minority in a diverse state will never feel secure enough to stay in a federation, will always assume larger groups will try to strip them of their rights

EU

• European Union is putting its own future at risk by ignoring this Iron Law

• It is the ultimate test came, since there are many Euro federalists who want it to become a united federation (a United States of Europe)

• Demographics of the continent: UK with its own Staatsvolk has left, EU has no Staatsvolk at all

  • EU’s ENENG is 7.723, more fractured than Nigeria, including more countries means it will get higher

• Constantly hearing debates over EU’s democratic deficit: that citizens vote does not matter compared to the massive bureaucracy in Brussels

  • Many want to move to simple majority voting and get rid of national vetoes, arguing they can pass votes faster without allowing smaller countries to block this

  • O’Leary: this would be a disaster, there are not enough Germans for the EU to function as a majoritarian federation

  • Austrian, Dutch, Swedish people cannot be treated as ‘honourary Germans’

  • These vetoes are the ‘emergency breaks’ needed for smaller nations to protect them from being constantly and legally outvoted by a German led voting block

  • This would trigger the exact fears that tear federations apart, Greece, Sweden, Portugal will not accept being continuously outvoted by a majority identity they do not belong to

Structural Theory: Staatsvolk (Gagnon reading starts here) - between 3 authors

• The Staatsvolk argument: A federation is said to need a clear demographic and electoral majority to maintain unity and make decisions effectively.

• Majority dominance: The dominant group is expected to set the state’s cultural and political direction. Proponents argue that without this anchor, the state risks fragmentation and disorder.

• Critique of multiculturalism: Joppke treats the state as fragile and argues that protecting the majority culture is necessary for its survival. Barry warns that formally recognizing cultural differences may reward “ethnocultural political entrepreneurs”—leaders who mobilize identity for personal power.

• Gagnon’s response: Gagnon argues that this view dismisses minority claims and wrongly treats diversity as the main threat. In his account, relying on a dominant Staatsvolk can itself endanger the federation by alienating minorities and deepening conflict

Gagnon’s Pushback to this

• Relying on a dominant majority to forcefully assimilate everyone else imperils the state

• Real world consequences of this majority nationalism: the machine overheats

  • Myanmar: demographically dominant group Bamar has sought to forcefully impose its will on other constituent groups, has become a roadblock to achieving any democratic peace in a democratic and multinational federation

  • Spain: a modern european democracy where the government went to jail Catalan political leaders after holding an independence referendum

  • India: most populous federal democracy on the planet, central government in New Delhi has shown concerning signs of leaning away from federal democratic practices and leaned hard into a Staatsvolk approach

    • August 2019: government revoked Article 370 of constitution, which guaranteed specific political autonomy to the majority Muslim population, and downgraded the autonomous state into a union territory directly controlled by New Delhi

      • Article 370 originally allowed them to have their own constitution, a separate flag, independence over all matters except defence, communications and foreign affairs (a structural compromise)

    • This was done in the name of administrative efficiency and individual equality (classic Staatsvolk justification)

What are the structural alternatives to a Staatsvolk?

• How is a divided country actually supposed to be designed?

• Territorial or Mononational Federalism: used in US, Australia, Germany, Austria

  • Territorial: mechanically dividing a country in administrative units, everyone is seen as one nation

  • Defining characteristic: drawing borders while ignoring the cultural or linguistic makeup of the people living there, it is purely an administrative division of powers

  • You may live in Colorado or Ohio, but you are still under one American identity

• US held up as the yardstick for federal stability, but Gagnon points out a flaw in using the US as a blueprint for divided societies

  • Problem: stability in the US was derived through imposed federalism - displacement of Indigenous peoples and a bloody civil war

  • Taking a model forged through 19th century coercion and pasting it over a modern society with multiple historic nations is a recipe for disaster

Gagnon’s Structural Alternative and Critique

• Gagnon’s alternative: Multinational Federalism: used in Canada and Belgium

  • This model gives different peoples access to distinct administrative units where each can form a local majority.

  • This embeds diversity in the government’s structure: identities and regions are represented through self-governing units, rather than relying on one dominant group to define the state.

  • The aim is to let communities govern themselves in certain areas while remaining part of the wider federation

• Critique: Phillip Roeder

  • Does creating special homelands and granting specific powers give groups the exact tools for them to secede? 

  • Warned about Ethnofederalism

Multinational vs Ethno Federalism

• Clarification between Multinational and Ethno Federalism (more dangerous)

  • Ethno: assumes ethnicity is the only driving force behind political identity, assumes minority groups are biding their time, gathering resources, ultimate goal of playing a sovereignty card to break away - its managing waiting game for the country to split

  • Multinational: assumes humans can hold multiple overlapping identities

    • Ex. a person can be proud of their Catalan heritage and regional autonomy while also valuing their identity as a Spanish citizen

    • Treats citizens as sophisticated enough to manage dual loyalties

• Gagnon: there are massive forces working to break these systems down despite the benefits of multinational federalism

  • Scholar Joseph Marko: outlines four interconnected processes of ‘renationalization’ - trying to go back to Staatsvolk model

J. Marko’s Four Interconnected Processes of ‘Renationalization’

1. Post-Soviet fallout of 1990s

   1. Because those sprawling states had internal borders based on nationalities, blamed those ethnonational structures for the collapse (Valerie B

   2. Giving nationalities borders gave them the seeds of their own construction 

   3. Gagnon: corrects the record, the cause was not the federal structure itself (they were not federal at all to begin with), they were highly centralized dictatorships that slapped a federal label on a totalitarian system

   4. When communist parties vanished, the pent up oppression exploded

   5. You cannot blame ideals of democratic multinational federalism for the failures of a dictatorship

2. Minority pushback

   1. When subnational parties mobilize against the central state and demand for recognition

   2. Ex. Quebec independence and equality in 1960s, Catalonia, Scotland

   3. State responds with either a carrot or a stick

   4. Carrot - 1987 Meech Lake Accord, an attempt to bring Quebec into the constitutional fold by formally recognizing them as a distinct society, offered to negotiate

      1. This failed to pass and caused a huge political conflict

   5. Stick - Spain 2017 and push for Catalan independence, Madrid invoked Article 155, suspended Catalan institutions, imposed direct rule from the centre and did not try to negotiate

      1. Hardline reaction feeds into…

3. Right-wing populism

   1. Surge in anti-immigration forces in Italy, Greece, Austria, Hungary

   2. Populist unions weaponize Staatsvolk, frame minority autonomy as a threat to the national culture

   3. Mainstream political leaders fully participate in this, declare that multiculturalism has failed and is actively detrimental to Western democracies (David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel)

4. Forced symmetry or Re-symmetrization

   1. Central state forces regional units to adhere to identical uniform norms, claiming its for administrative efficiency

   2. Spain: asymmetrical autonomy, not allowing regions to adopt policies suited to their unique local realities

• Living in divided societies means governments tighten their grip, populism weaponizes majority culture, minorities are pushing back harder - a vicious cycle

How do we fix this? Gagnon’s three objectives to save the multinational state

• Gagnon’s three objectives for sustaining a multinational state

  1. Separate nation from state

     • A nation is a cultural community shaped by shared history, language, or values.

     • A state is a political institution, including its government, courts, bureaucracy, and military.

     • One state can contain several distinct nations without requiring them to merge into a single, uniform people.

  2. Recognize diversity through institutions

     • Gagnon calls for a “politics of recognition”: meaningful structural protection for different identities and communities.

     • Decentralization and asymmetrical arrangements can give regions different powers suited to their particular circumstances.

     • Fairness does not always mean identical treatment; it can mean providing each region what it needs to thrive.

     • Gagnon counters the concern that asymmetry inevitably breeds jealousy and instability by arguing that forcibly removing autonomy can also fuel secession. His examples include Serbia’s treatment of Kosovo and Ethiopia’s revocation of Eritrea’s federal arrangement.

  3. Balance self-rule with shared rule

     • Self-rule gives communities political autonomy; shared rule lets them participate in governing the wider state.

     • A federation must offer minorities enough advantages that remaining is preferable to separating.

     • This requires mutual adjustment, restraint, and trust between regions and the central government