Chapter Two: Some Common Features among federations

Cont’d

• Raoul Blindenbacher and R. Watts suggested that to consider federal institu­tions as mere expressions of federal societies is one sided.
• Federal institutions once created in turn shape and influen
• There is a complex relationship, which is not unilateral, between society, its institutions and its constitution.
• USA and Switzerland are two older federations emerged from an earlier weak centre and certainly the new institutions had an impact in trans­forming society.

Cont’d

• The post-1991 federal system in Ethiopia, too, has radically changed the political process since then. Thus, the specific society under which the federal system operates and the institutions matter.
• Nicolas Schmitt stipulates for a federation to be a successful political structure it must be honest to its proclaimed nature.
• That is to say, it should be a federation in form as well as in operational reality.

Cont’d

• Others have emphasized the importance of democratic pluralism and the existence of decentralized party system. ‘Federalism cannot exist without democratic pluralism which permits groups really to be autonomous.
• It is sometimes argued that an authoritarian one party system which by definition concen­trates all political power in the hands of one group at one central point, is incompatible with the federal concept of divided power.’

Chapter Three Federations and Second Chambers

• Bicameralism is correlated not only with the form, but also the size of the state.
• In many countries, such as Britain and France, the second chamber has developed from a system of class-based representation, where the “upper” and “lower” chambers represented the respective classes.
• In contrast, in many federal states - such as Australia, Canada and the US - the second chamber was designed to represent the regions or states involved in the federation, whilst the lower chamber represented the population as a whole.