Chapter Two: Some Common Features among federations

Cont’d

• Intergovernmental relations have two important dimensions.
• It can be described as vertical and horizontal.
• One is that of relations between the federal and unit governments.
• The other is that of inter-unit relations. Normally in federations both kinds of intergovernmental relations have played an important role.

Rule by law (west vs d-ing countries) –abuse/arbitrary power

Rule of law/due process

Democracy bus

Cont’d

• It is true that despite these common features some federations fail while others succeed. As a result it raises the question as to why this is so.
• Several factors have been mentioned in this regard.
• Livingston argued that federalism goes beyond legal institutions.
• ‘The essential nature of federalism is to be sought for not in the shadings of legal and constitutional terminology, but in the forces economic, social, political, and cultural that have made the outward forms of federalism necessary
• ... the essence of federalism lies not in the constitutional or institutional structure but in the society itself. Federal government is a device by which the federal qualities of the society are articulated and protected.
• By federal society he meant a territorially grouped diversity

Cont’d

• One other writer on the same line is Rufus Davis. He wrote ‘when at some moment federal systems resemble or differ from each other in some respect or the other, the reason though sometimes traceable to similarities or differences in their constitutional structure, flow more often than not from the things they share in common as societies or the things that distinguish them as societies

Cont’d

• According to him the federal institutions are reflections of the federal qualities of society.
• Livingston’s contri­bution was significant as he pointed out the fact that the study of federalism goes beyond legal institutions. But others have pointed out that his approach has its own short­comings.