Epistemic Status: 1/4 – Flight of Fancy

Canadian Provinces & German Länder

By Mellivora | 9 September 2020 | Comments 0 Comments
Epistemic Status: 1/4 - Flight of Fancy

This post follows on from Optimising Federalism.

Once a country is already federal, it is much more difficult to make any sort of changes to either the structure of government or the states themselves – this is part of the point of federalism after all. It is still worth considering what changes could be made, whether they would be a desirable way of solving certain issues, and whether they would be able to garner enough support to be achievable.

As with the UK in the previous posts, I shall therefore detail a possible structure for Canada and Germany that follows the same principles. This is not intended to be a serious policy proposal, as such a change would need broad support from the populations affected, as well as buy-in from the existing state governments in order to make the necessary border adjustments and constitutional amendments. This is in contrast to the UK, which would simply need a government so inclined, and a population that wasn’t violently opposed to it…

United Federal Britain – Local Government

By Mellivora | 26 August 2020 | Comments 6 comments
Epistemic Status: 1/4 - Flight of Fancy

This post follows on from A United Federal Britain.

Having changed all of the borders it would make sense to tidy up all of the counties. As mentioned in Legibility and Democracy, the current state of the UK’s administrative areas is a mess. Some areas are two-tier counties that have a county council as well as multiple district councils within them, while other counties are purely ceremonial and have no government function, having been split into rural and urban unitary authorities. To make matters even more confusing, some counties are two-tier, but with some districts carved out of the original ceremonial county to be unitary authorities not governed by the county council itself (e.g. Nottingham and Nottinghamshire).

In the following map, I have split each state into unitary authorities, so that there is a single consistent level of government below the state government. In a similar manner to with the states themselves, I have tried to separate urban and rural areas into separate authorities, so that local government can also avoid the pitfalls of having to cater to constituents whose requirements are too much at odds with each other…

A United Federal Britain

By Mellivora | 12 August 2020 | Comments 16 comments
Epistemic Status: 1/4 - Flight of Fancy

This post follows on from Optimising Federalism.

(And Northern Ireland. I considered the title “Federal United Kingdom”, then binned that for obvious reasons. Seriously, after the whole North Macedonia thing, it should be clear that deciding what a country is called is just an absolute minefield.)

Currently, there are various levels of devolved power in the UK. There are the four main countries – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Devolution is applied inconsistently across these, with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland heavily devolved with their own legislatures (the Scottish Parliament, Northern Ireland Assembly and Senedd Cymru respectively). England does not have its own devolved parliament, and instead is governed directly by the national parliament at Westminster. This has given rise to what is known as the West Lothian question, which queries the legitimacy of a system in which a Scottish MP gets a vote in something that affects England but not Scotland, whilst an English MP does not have a reciprocal power as such matters are decided by the Scottish Parliament…