Tag: Federalism
Canadian Provinces & German Länder

Canadian Provinces & German Länder

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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…

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United Federal Britain – Local Government

United Federal Britain – Local Government

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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…

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Optimising Federalism

Optimising Federalism

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Epistemic Status: 3/4 - Considered Opinion

This post follows on from In Support of Federalism.

There are many countries around the world that use Federalism as a system of government, and some work better than others.  It would be good to improve the standard of democracy around the world, and so if any countries were considering becoming federal, it would be good to know what features get the best results.  Given an existing federation, any changes will necessarily take a significant amount of time and effort to make, so again, knowing what features get the best results would be very useful in determining what changes to focus on.

Ideally, it would be good to realise all of the benefits listed in the previous two posts – legibility, antifragility, greater freedom, political incubation, a distributed economy, closer proximity to the government and less conflict.  What we need is to isolate any factors that get in the way of these benefits, so that existing federations can pursue reforms, and unitary countries can avoid predictable future issues…

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In Support of Federalism

In Support of Federalism

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Epistemic Status: 3/4 - Considered Opinion

This post follows on from Legibility and Democracy.

Finding the best way to govern a country is an ongoing struggle throughout the world.  The introduction of the concept of legibility suggested that federations might be a good middle ground providing both legibility and democracy for the electorate.  Widening the scope beyond this, there are many other advantages of federations over unitary states…

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Legibility and Democracy

Legibility and Democracy

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Epistemic Status: 3/4 - Considered Opinion

I. The Importance of Legibility

Legibility in the context I am using it here refers fundamentally to the understandability of a system.

It might seem obvious that more understandability is better, but understandability also implies simplicity, and simplicity is not necessarily always good.  For example, with governmental policy, as addressed in James C. Scott’s book “Seeing Like a State” (Archive), a drive for legibility can result in adverse situations such as city planners neglecting important complexities that are necessary for a healthy society, or agricultural reforms that promote monocultures and deplete the soil.  This idea of legibility can be applied more widely, to cover any kind of system, process or theory – there is a balance between a theory being legible enough that it can be understood, and being nuanced enough that it gets the correct answers…

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