ABSTRACT
Relationships between federalism and democracy can be examined empirically and theoretically; that is: how democratic are federal systems compared to other political systems, and is federal democracy, in theory, more democratic than non-federal democracy? This essay explores both perspectives, concluding that, empirically, federal polities compare well with non-federal systems on democracy and rights protection, but much better than other systems on quality of life. Furthermore, federal polities achieve these levels of political and economic performance under much more adverse demographic circumstances than those faced by non-federal polities. Theoretically, moreover, federal democracy is more democratic than non-federal democracy. Federal polities are defined broadly here as polities having constitutionally recognized constituent political communities that exercise exclusive and concurrent powers of self-government through legislative powers of their own and are also represented in the federation’s legislature. The following 24 polities are thus classified as federal for the analysis below: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Canada, Comoros, Ethiopia, Germany, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Micronesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, St. Kitts and Nevis, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United States of America, and Venezuela. One might, of course, quibble about the countries included in and excluded from this list. For example, Serbia and Montenegro has been excluded because it is too new (2003) to be useful for comparative empirical analysis, and it did not last long (Wood 2006). One might argue that such autocratically ruled countries as Ethiopia, Malaysia, and Pakistan do not belong on the list and that such countries as South Africa (cf. Steytler 2005) and Spain (cf. Agranoff and Gallarin 1997; Moreno 2001) are not truly federal. These countries have been included, however, because they are commonly classified as federal (cf. Watts 1999; Hueglin and Fenna 2006) and because this inclusive approach carries less risk of appearing to bias the comparative empirical analysis in favor of federalism.
