Routledge Handbook of Regionalism & Federalism

John Loughlin, John Kincaid, Wilfried Swenden

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136727696
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Almost all states are either federal or regionalized in some sense. It is difficult to find a state that is entirely unitary and the Routledge Handbook of Regionalism and Federalism necessarily takes in almost the entire world. Both federalism and regionalism have been subjects of a vast academic literature mainly from political science but sometimes also from history, economics, and geography. This cutting edge examination seeks to evaluate the two types of state organization from the perspective of political science producing a work that is analytical rather than simply descriptive.

The Handbook presents some of the latest theoretical reflections on regionalism and federalism and then moves on to discuss cases of both regionalism and federalism in key countries chosen from the world's macro-regions. Assembling this wide range of case studies allows the book to present a general picture of current trends in territorial governance. The final chapters then examine failed federations such as Czechoslovakia and examples of transnational regionalism - the EU, NAFTA and the African Union.

Covering evolving forms of federalism and regionalism in all parts of the world and featuring a comprehensive range of case studies by leading international scholars this work will be an essential reference source for all students and scholars of international politics, comparative politics and international relations.

Part I

Theoretical and comparative approaches to federalism and regionalism

1

Reconfiguring the nation-state

Hybridity vs. uniformity

John Loughlin

Introduction

This chapter argues that the nation-state became the primary form of political organization from about the end of the 18th century and that it reached its culmination in the form of the welfare states constructed in Western Europe and, to a limited extent in the United States, after the Second World War. Furthermore, the nation-state model, based on the premise that nations should have states and that states should be co-terminus with nations, while originating in Europe spread across the world through imperialism and colonialism. The ‘Westphalian’ system of international relations exemplified by the United Nations (UN) is really a collection of nation-states rather than simply ‘nations’. The success of the nation-state model can be seen from the growth of the UN from its founding in San Francisco in 1945 by 50 states to its current membership of 193. In fact, so widespread is the nation-state model that we tend to take it for granted as being the ‘natural’ form of political governance.

However, the nation-state is the product of an historical development that lasted several centuries and some authors have argued that we are today witnessing its demise (Ohmae, 1996). Both nations and states existed before they became twinned at the time of the French Revolution and they co-existed with other forms of political organization which they came to dominate but which never quite disappeared. The emergence of the nation-state as the dominant political form was largely co-extensive with the arrival of ‘modernity’, however difficult it is to define that concept (Chernilo, 2007). This chapter will begin by examining some of these pre-modern and early modern forms of political organization which, as will become clear, were marked by diversity, asymmetry and hybridity. The modern nation-state swept away much of this complexity and created standardized, uniform and symmetrical political and administrative systems in the name of the modern nation. This process was true of both ‘unitary’ and ‘federal’ states. The archetypical example is France after the Revolution (see the chapter by Loughlin in this volume) but it may also be seen in federations such as the United States (see the chapter by Kincaid in this volume where he describes how ‘coercive’ federalism finally defeats ‘bi-communal’ federalism by the late 1950s).

We cannot really speak of the ‘end’ of the nation-state as if this is being replaced either by ‘regions’ as Ohmae thought or by some cosmopolitan and globalized system as is sometimes suggested by authors such as David Held and his colleagues (Held et al., 1999). However, it does seem clear that, from the 1980s onwards, the central position of the nation-state or at least of national governments has, under the impact of the processes of globalization and neo-liberalism, given way to a more complex system of multi-level governance both at the level of international relations and within nation-states themselves. National governments today operate alongside international organizations such as the UN, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank among many others and, internally, regions and cities have become more prominent in recent years as political actors. Furthermore, the old Westphalian system has given way to a more complex, interpenetrative system in which regions and cities of different kinds have taken on new international roles and activities which is sometimes called ‘paradiplomacy’ (Duchacek, 1986). While it is exaggerated to speak of the ‘demise’ of the nation-state or of ‘new medievalism’ (Bull, 1995), it can be argued that some of the older forms of territorial organization such as regions and cities have re-emerged and the result has been a situation of territorial governance that is more diverse, non-standardized and ‘hybrid’.

The term ‘hybrid’ is used here, not in the biological sense of the creation of a new entity from two separate species, but rather in a looser way to designate the co-existence of several competing models of institutional organization and policy approach within the same political system. This will be elaborated further with examples later in the chapter.

Pre-modern and early modern forms of political organization

The nation-state was preceded by a variety of pre-modern forms of political organization. Hendrik Spruyt distinguishes six categories of these: older forms such as the papacy, the Holy Roman Empire and feudal arrangements which emerged after the fall of the Roman Empire; and later forms which began to appear from about the 10th century: cities, city leagues and what he calls territorial states, which were, in effect, centralizing monarchies such as France, Sweden and Tudor England (Spruyt, 1994). Spruyt interprets the rise of the modern state as a ‘victory’ of the territorial state over the others although, in practice, some of them, such as the Holy Roman Empire or independent city-states lasted right into the modern period and we can even recognize vestiges of them today.

Pre-modern and early modern Europe

The Barbarian invasions (AD 400–800) had brought about the end of the Roman Empire and Roman cities and roads fell into ruin. With the collapse of the old Roman civil service, the Church was almost the only form of organization through its system of monasteries, dioceses and parishes, many of which were based on the old Roman administrative boundaries. The Barbarian tribes later formed kingdoms, of which the most important was that of Clovis (481–511) who founded the Merovingian dynasty. Co-existing with these monarchies was a system of feudalism (from the Latin foedus which is also the root of ‘federalism’), which took several forms across Europe but they shared in common the basic idea of a personal relationship between ‘fiefs’ (lords) and ‘vassals’ (subjects), where the latter provided services of various kinds in return for protection by the former (Brown, 2012). Feudalism was dominant up until about the 12th century but survived in attenuated forms right up to the 19th century. The Merovingian dynasty of Clovis was replaced by the Carolingian dynasty of Charlemagne (AD 742?–814), who was crowned Emperor by the Pope in AD 800, thus founding the Holy Roman Empire which would take many shapes and cover many territories within Europe until it was finally wound up by Napoleon I in 1806 (Bryce, 1864). From about the 11th century there was a revival of city life as cities became centres of commerce and trade with new burghers and guilds becoming wealthy and politically powerful. Some of these cities evolved into veritable city-states as in Florence, Milan and Venice. Others grouped together into ‘leagues’ of which the most famous is the Hanseatic (ca. 13th–17th centuries), which was a group of cities engaged in trade from the North Sea to the Baltic.

Underlying this great variety of political forms was a Christian religious culture which was shared by all of the protagonists of mediaeval Europe. All of Western and most of Central Europe were united under the religious system of Catholic Christianity. The East (the Russian lands and most of what we now call the Balkans) was also Christian but following the Byzantine Orthodox traditions and the division between the two was consolidated by the Great Schism of 1054. Despite the common religious heritage of Catholic Christianity, however, political life in the West was dominated by struggles between the different groupings which we can describe here only in a very summary fashion (see Burns, 1988). First, there was the struggle for spiritual and political hegemony between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope which dominated much of the late mediaeval and early modern period. Second, there were conflicts between the monarchs who were consolidating their ‘territorial states’ and the feudal barons who were determined to retain their autonomy in the provinces. Third, the cities also struggled against the neighbouring noble or episcopal overlord and often became allies of the monarch or the Emperor. In northern Italy, they were also divided by the famous conflict between Guelphs and Ghibellines which began in the 12th century as a division between city-states that supported either the Emperor (Guelphs) or the Pope (Ghibellines).

What is striking about this history is that there was no single, uniform model of political organization but a great variety of forms (Burns, 1988). It was also a system of overlapping orders of law, sovereignty and jurisdiction. Individuals and groups living on the same territory might be subject to ecclesiastic law, feudal arrangements, imperial law, etc. The system was also marked by a great deal of asymmetry in power relationships ranging from the powerful positions of Pope, Emperor, King or Prince-Bishop to small city-states, abbeys or provincial barons. However, even the most powerful entities were constrained by each other and by ecclesiastical or legal bonds, which meant that their sovereignty was never absolute – even during the period of the ‘absolute’ monarchies.

The Reformation and the modern state

A key turning point in the evolution and, ultimately, radical reconfiguration of this system leading to the emergence of the modern nation-state was the Protestant Reformation initiated by Luther in 1512 (Burns and Goldie, 1991). It would take us too far outside the scope of this chapter to describe the vast, complex and contradictory movements of change that occurred in 16th-century Europe (Ozment, 1980). What we can say is that by the end of the 16th century, the political and religious landscape of Western and Central Europe had been almost completely transformed. The previously existing religious unity which underpinned the political, social and economic structures was now shattered and replaced by competing versions of Christianity with quite distinctive understandings of church, politics and theology. Wars of Religion between Protestant and Catholic rulers had broken out all over Europe but principally within the Holy Roman Empire. They finally ended there with no clear victory by either side in 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia. This adopted the principle (already promulgated at the Peace of Augsburg in 1555) of cuius regio, eius religio – the religion of the ruler shall be the religion of the state. This applied only to Catholic and Lutheran states and excluded Calvinists, although the latter did later achieve statehood in Scotland and the Netherlands and in the imperial city of Geneva.

The significance of this is that there appeared, for the first time in Europe, confessional states each with a distinctive way of understanding the relationship between church, state and civil society. This is the origin of the different state traditions in Europe (Dyson, 1980; Loughlin and Peters, 1997), as well as of modern notions of internal and external sovereignty. Among the Protestant states of northern Europe outside the Empire such as Sweden, Scotland or England, it is henceforth the ruler of the state who exercises sovereignty over the territory within the boundaries of that state and not an external power, whether Emperor, Pope or any other state. Within the Empire, the position of the Emperor was greatly diminished vis-à-vis the Protestant states. With regard to external sovereignty, there developed henceforth what became (and is still) known as the ‘Westphalian’ state system of international relations based on the principle that no state can interfere in the internal affairs of another. Originally this meant that Catholic princes could not interfere in the affairs of Protestant states and vice versa but eventually it meant a prohibition on any kind of interference. The form of political organization that could most successfully adapt to these new circumstances was what Spruyt had termed the ‘territorial states’ and these eventually dominated and absorbed the other forms.

The other important development that followed the Reformation was the link, explored by historians such as Greenfeld (1992) and Colley (2005), between a particular variety of the Christian religion and the nation. Previously, the term ‘nation’ referred simply to individuals born (natus in Latin) in a particular place and speaking a particular language, but it had little political significance. With the arrival of the Westphalian state, characterized by a particular form of Christianity and newly emerging from the Wars of Religion, nationhood became political in a new way. This was particularly true of the Protestant nations of northern Europe but the Catholic nations also made the link as in Gallican France or Bourbon Spain. Eventually, this religious identification would become secularized as the period of the Reformation gave way to the Enlightenment and anti-religious and anti-clerical movements developed throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.

The distinctive forms of the modern state¹

A further development in the configuration of modern territorial governance came in the 17th and 18th centuries. In this period, there were three distinctive historical ‘moments’:

• The first was the English ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688, which led to the installation of a constitutional monarchy and the hegemony of the Westminster Parliament, followed by the Industrial Revolution which laid the basis of modern industrial capitalism and society.

• The second was the American Revolution, when the 13 British colonies in North America overthrew English rule and established first a confederation and then the federation of the United States of America.

• The third important historical moment was the French Revolution.

Each of these three sets of historical events resulted in distinctive understandings of the state, its administrative structure and its relations with society. From the British constitutional and industrial revolutions emerged the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, built on a series of Acts of Union between England and the other three nations. This became a multi-national ‘Union’ State. The United States of America was the first modern federal state (see the chapter by Kincaid in this volume). France produced the unitary state par excellence characterized by ‘unity and indivisibility’ (Hayward, 1983; Loughlin, 2007). Each of these state forms – union, federal and unitary – would be imitated by almost all other modern nation-states. As already mentioned above, it was the French state that invented the idea of the ‘nation-state’, from which developed modern nationalism and, in turn, affected both the British state form and modern federations. It is appropriate, then, to begin with France, even if it came chronologically last (Alter, 1994; Guibernau, 1996; Smith, 2010).

The French Revolution, beginning in 1789, was a vast, long-drawn out series of events, the protagonists of which held several contradictory positions regarding the kind of state that should be adopted. Their ideological battles were fought out against the background of a state which was already, in some respects, highly centralized. This was a result of the efforts of the French monarchy which, in previous centuries, and especially during the reign of Louis XIV, had sought to bring under control the nobles who dominated the provinces. The revolutionaries were divided into two main groups with radically differing positions with regard to the territorial organization of the new France: 1 the Jacobins, led by Robespierre, who wished to continue and complete the centralizing tendency of th...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Part I Theoretical and comparative approaches to federalism and regionalism
• Part II Case studies by region: North America
• Case studies by region: Europe
• Case studies by region: Asia
• Case studies by region: Asia-Pacific
• Case studies by region: Africa
• Case studies by region: Latin America
• Case studies by region: Middle East
• Part III Failed federations
• Part IV Transnationalism regionalism
• Index