ABSTRACT
The study of federalism is enjoying something of a resurgence in the field of political science. At the center of this resurgence is the question of whether it is possible to design federal institutions that are stable over time (Filippov et al. 2004). This question is central to the ongoing debate over federalism in contexts as diverse as Iraq, Afghanistan, the European Union, Great Britain, Belgium, Spain, and Canada, to mention just a few. Perhaps the most basic challenge to federal stability is the threat of secession. But the prospect of designing stable federal institutions is complicated by “the paradox of federalism” – the contradictory finding that federalism seems to be able to reduce or prevent secessionism, but also that it has been found to be a contributor to secession and secessionist mobilization (Erk and Anderson 2009). There have been attempts to resolve this paradox, but there have been none that attempt to do so through an examination of variations in federal origins and federal institutional structures. There are significant variations between federal systems, and these variations are likely to play a role in whether federal institutions are secession-inducing or secession-preventing. That institutional variation has not been explored to resolve the paradox of federalism is particularly surprising given the recent attention paid to institutional influences on policy and political outcomes. In this chapter, I suggest that contradictory conclusions regarding the link between federalism and secessionism are a reflection of variations in federal institutions and origins. The implication, then, is that there is no paradox of federalism. The apparent paradox might simply be a reflection of the fact that there are different institutional configurations that lead to different policy and political outcomes.
