Juergen Rose and Johannes Ch. Traut (Eds.)
Federalism and Decentralization. Perspectives for the Transformation Process in Eastern and Central Europe
George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, LIT Verlag, 2001

In most countries, the level of autonomy and self-government that the local communities at city and regional level have come to enjoy is an index of the level of democracy that the country has reached in general, including in such areas as minority rights, economic initiatives for development, etc. There are exceptions to this rule, like France and England, where a strong unitary tradition is accompanied by an ethnic, religious, cultural homogeneity and by the presence of a political and administrative class with a long, deep-seated democratic culture and good managerial skills. But in most places in the world the conditions are not as fortunate: many nations are ruled (or have been ruled until recently) by centralized governments which often have bred a corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy; ethnic minority groups do not have their rights adequately recognized (or only lip-service is paid to them), causing tensions and conflicts; and economic development has almost no chance to take off.
Federalism in its various forms has often been proposed (and sometimes applied, more or less successfully) as an institutional cure in many cases where conflicts among different groups within a nation's boundaries are present, or in other instances as a political new formation uniting two or more nations into a wider and more advantageous polity, fostering economic development, security and democratic life. But are there some fundamental conditions to be fulfilled before federalism can be contemplated as a viable political choice? And what lessons can be learned by the practice of federalism in some Western countries?
These are the questions that the sponsor and the editors of this book have tried to answer in connection with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe which a decade ago came out of the Communist autocratic one-party system and are now looking for new economic and political models, most of them with the more or less distant perspective of joining the European Union. The book is a survey of 8 Central and Eastern European countries, and 8 Western countries, of which 6 have federal governments; it focuses on their history and their institutional arrangements and procedures in dealing with the regional or constitutive entities of their territories. Albeit the editors tried to set forth from the start some guidelines to the authors for having articles on the various countries as uniform as possible, in actual fact they are not, and it would have been an almost impossible task, as the reader will realize in grasping the enormous disparity of century-long histories, forms of government, composition of the population, educational and political levels reached, etc. However there are articles of great interest, including the ones of the editors, which give general overviews and draw some conclusions.
The examination of the systems of the Western federal or regionalized countries, intended to be an example of functioning democracies, takes almost half of the book, and constitutes a clever analysis of several systems condensed in one book, which can come handy to anybody interested in the subject. Harry N. Scheiber writes on the evolution of the US federal system, starting from the few "enumerated powers" originally attributed in the Constitution to the federal government, and taking us through the constant devolution of more and more competencies from the states to it as, one would say, a matter of necessity by history, notably after the Civil War with the 14th Amendment, then during the Progressive Era (1900-1920) with regard to the industrial and economic relations, to the New Deal with the assumption of a central role in almost every field by the central government to rescue the country after the Great Depression, to the recent years when fundamental decisions have been taken with regard to civil rights, environment protection, welfare, etc. One remark the author makes is particularly worth mentioning, i.e. how such a significant change could occur without the need of many formal constitutional amendments, but "through the ordinary process of law-making, together with a shift in the Supreme Court's doctrinal position on key elements of the original document".
Martin Grosse Hüttmann, in The practice of federalism in Germany, describes the apparently complicated system of co-decision involving the Länder, constituting a "cooperative federalism" in which the regions play a very important role and are also incredibly active. Every Land sends representatives to Bonn and Berlin to sit in literally hundreds of committees and lobbying groups, and to Brussels and Strasbourg to similarly protect their interests at European level. Although there is in the country some criticism at this huge bureaucratic apparatus, which may prove too slow for the pace of today's affairs, and, perhaps more painfully, at the domestic wealth redistribution system to the poorer Länder of former East Germany, the German federalism remains one of the best functioning examples of decentralized government. As to the diffuse presence of the Länder in institutions, one could comment that no doubt the best way to get what is deemed fair is to actively pursue and spend money on it, wherever decisions are taken that can affect you.
About Belgium, which only in 1993 became a federal state, the author is rather critical of the present situation of weakness of the central government vis à vis the constitutive three regions and three communities. This is actually the almost unique and interesting feature of this federalism: the presence of non-territorial, linguistic communities (Flemish, French and German) as components of the state, with right to autonomous governments and parliaments. This is something that in the second part of the book, dealing with the Central and Eastern European countries, where different ethnic and religious communities live mixed together over vast territories, is suggested as a possible solution for recognizing special rights to individuals of minority groups without having to create for them a territorial unit cut out in the nation's land. Time will tell if the Belgian case will prove successful; at the moment the situation in the country does not look very promising.
Other significant federal systems are presented (Canada, Switzerland, Austria), each with its own peculiarities, demonstrating that, as D. Elazar says, federalism is a genus with countless species, and each country has to find the one best suited for its needs, culture, historical background.
Of the non-federal Western countries, the United Kingdom is generally known as an example of unitary state, with little decentralized power except for the two significant cases of Scotland and Wales. (Northern Ireland, because of the well-known troubles, is now undergoing a very unusual process of re-centralization, wanted by the Protestant majority.) However, Scotland in particular, the author L. J. Sharpe notes, enjoys very special privileges, like a Scottish Parliament (1999), its own legal and education system, its own national Church, its own banknotes, its own national flag, its own national sport teams, and a greater share of seats in the British Parliament: much more than many states have in federal systems, leading the author to write that "the UK is in a sense more socially federal than most federal states". At government level, he illustrates the regional feature of the British system, i.e. the three Offices for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, whose respective Heads are Secretary of State and members of the Cabinet. A novelty that could have some impact on the UK's present decentralization policy is represented by the emergence of new big metropolitan areas and their leaders, as recently witnessed by the creation of a local government for Greater London and the election of a pre-eminent figure as its Mayor.
The second half of the book deals with the Central and Eastern European countries (360 million people, 48 states and nationalities), all of which were part of the Communist bloc; after its collapse they have fared on very different paths in modernizing their political structure and in dealing with their internal regions and minorities. The book's editor, Johannes Ch. Traut, conveniently defines three types of countries and regions, that are emerging from the first stages of basic transformation:
a) countries that sooner or later will join the EU
b) "independent" states, which are developing in an autonomous fashion, outside of the influence of the EU
c) regions which are in a latent state of war.
Poland and Hungary are examples of the first group. Poland (39 million people) is well advanced in the setting up of a decentralized administrative structure in its 16 Voivodships, and in the democratization of political life down to the local communities. Hungary (10 million people) is not so far ahead, still debating on what powers to devolve at lower level, and to which level (the historical twenty Counties seem too small to satisfy the criteria of the EU's regions for economic planning and control (the NUTS 2 level), and there is no tradition in the country of other regional groupings). But all nations in the group are progressing in the decentralization of the formerly centralized functions, which also brings with it an effective democratization of the political life. As to the perspectives of federalism in this type of countries, Ivàn Illés, in his notable article on "Federalism in Central and Eastern Europe", briefly illustrates the federalist thrusts and ideas in the course of the (little known) history of the area, from the times of the great empires (the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg monarchy and the Russian Empire), to the present day (with the failures of federalism in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and the USSR; but with the renewed presence of federal structures in Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), Bosnia-Herzegovina, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and the Russian Federation). He stresses that practically all of the present states have regained their independence about a decade ago, and concludes: "These relatively new and historically unstable borders confer an eminently sensitive character to the issue of national integrity. Consequently, the viability of federal structures both among and within the states of Central and Eastern Europe seems rather improbable in the immediate future. This does not mean, however, that regional self-government with its corresponding competences should not and could not be promoted as an immediate objective".
The second group of "independent states" is naturally centered on Russia. Russia (146 million people) will most certainly try not so much to reconstruct the former USSR, but to exercise "leadership instead of control, economic dominance instead of political responsibility" (from the article by U. Arnswald). "Prospects are good for the formation of a confederation consisting of the former Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Armenia; ... only under certain circumstances will Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Georgia and Moldova participate". Anyway it seems inevitable that Russia will again be the center of an integration region different from the EU, confirming Pierre Moscovici's, former French Minister of European Affairs, conviction that the real frontier of the EU is with Russia.
The most dramatic situation is offered by the countries in a latent state of war, as in the Balkans and the Caucasus. Here is where ethnic tensions, however covered up in institutional arrangements, nationalistic but also federal, are not resolved, and can blow up in bloody wars. An interesting article, if somewhat involved, by Ilija G. Vujacic, The challenges of ethnic federalism: experiences and lessons of the former Yugoslavia, examines the causes of the failure of federalism in that country. It was, as customary in the Soviet bloc, merely an instrument for manipulating the relations among ethnic groups, but it was lacking the two basic requisites for all modern federations: a political will to develop a truly federal association, and a constitutional debate. It was based on Communism and Nation, meaning that the six ethnic republics were all ruled directly by the centralized Communist Party (which "fundamentally impaired the essential legal characteristic of federalism"), and in them was the recognition of their being "nations", that is linguistic, religious or ethnic groups (so they were "the primary holders of sovereign rights"). When the integrative power of the strong Communist Party disappeared, this ethnic federalism was applied to the extreme by the political classes that were brought to power in the republics, prevailing also over the scarce powers of the federal state, and bringing about "the focusing of attention on their own territory, the resurgence of ethnic intolerance and the obstruction of the equality of civil rights at the federal level". ... "Ethnic federalism seems to be a good solution only if it is applied moderately, ... in an atmosphere of democratic political culture, mutual tolerance, and the sincere wish to live together in peace with other ethnic groups".
The sad and realistic conclusion that the author draws is that "in this part of the world the creation of a specific culture of federal relations ... will be a slow, painstaking, long-term and never sufficiently secured process".
And this is one answer to the question about the conditions for federalism, a mature democratic political culture. From the great number of country cases presented, the reader could derive other answers, like the disposition to provide the federal government with sufficient powers to defend the general interest against that of one of the constituent entities.
The book offers a wealth of informations and analyses by academics from and on many and very different nations; although the reading is not properly easy, it can be a good reference for getting insight on the institutional systems and the current transformation processes of both Western and Center-Eastern European countries.