ABSTRACT
The constitutionally derived meaning of federalism suggests that it is a formal system of governance, mostly two-tier (today a sub-State tier is also more or less accepted), national and the State/provincial/Cantonal, each enjoying its constitutionally demarcated powers and performing its responsibilities, and so on and so forth. A formalist-legalistic, or in political science what is literature ‘traditional approach’ would have us believe that this is the basic nature of a federal system. The real fact of the matter, however, is that the above view only suggests at best how such a system ought to function, rather than how it functions in reality. Before proceeding any further, we need to clarify two related issues here. First, however clearly demarcated the powers and responsibilities between different tiers of government in a federation, the evolving reality never neatly matches that, so that modifications, adjustments and adaptations are always needed in actual operation. Second, the newer needs and aspirations of the people are articulated and aggregated by political parties and other groups in order to create pressures upon the system, for recognition, autonomy and power. Thanks to these pressures, the federal system is compelled to respond, democratically, if it is a democratic system; or violently with the means of repression if it is an authoritarian/military regime, if it seeks, as it were, to lose further its legitimacy, and collapse. As Ronald Watts notes (Watts 1999), the operational reality of federalism is more important than what is constitutionally designed, if federalism as a political equilibrium is to be produced. The term ‘operational reality’ may consist of two components. First, it may refer to the institutional operation of the system. Second, it may refer to the surrounding societal reality, comprising the values, identity and the interests of the individual, and groups, and regions. Livingstone (1956) highlighted the societal aspects of federalism a long time ago, although looking at federation from a functionalist standpoint. Be that as it may, a federation, being a compound polity, needs to reflect the values of diversity as well as the unity to be achieved institutionally as well as politically. Needless to say, federations, unavoidably, are difficult to govern. The previous paragraph has already hinted at where the role of political parties and ethnic movements figures in a federation. To be more exact, they perform very important ‘input’ functions – to use a phrase from the systems approach to politics. While this is vitally important, the constitutive role of
political parties and ethnic movements in federations are as important, if not more important, because the federations most often bear the imprint of the dominant political reality, comprising the political parties, political alliances, coalitions and ethnic movements. In modern democracies, political parties are indispensable. Political parties are also indispensable in federations. Federations, like democracies, need to be operated, and they are better operated by the appropriate party systems than by a bureaucratic system. The relation between the federation, on the one hand, and the political parties and ethnic movements, on the other hand, is, however, twoway. While the federations determine and condition the nature and patterns of political parties, the latter also impact upon the former, structurally and functionally, and shape the real state of the federation. K. C. Wheare (Wheare 1953: 86-90) considered a ‘good party system’ to be of ‘primary importance’ in a federation, as a factor in the ‘organization of federal government’:
And a good party system is one in which sectional differences of interest and opinion have their opportunity and their due weight but where also an integrated organization can be created capable of effective political action on a nationwide scale.
