Can the EU be a federal democracy? Assessing the horizontal and vertical dimension of the EU government from comparative perspective

The European Union remains an ambivalent polity. This uncertainty complicates the assessment of its democratic and federal quality. Drawing on comparative federalism research can contribute not only to making sense of whether, or rather which kind of federalism the EU has developed. It can also enable addressing such a compounded, but necessary inquiry into the federal and democratic character of the EU and how to ascertain which type of democratic government for which type of federal union may be appropriate. The article first elaborates a framework to assess the dimensions of federal and democratic government, drawing on comparative federalism research to delineate basic types of federal democracy. Here the democratic dimension of government is taken as referring primarily to the horizontal division of powers (among ‘branches’) of government, the federal dimension to the vertical division of powers (among ‘levels’) of governments. The framework is applied to the government of the EU in order to gauge its own type(s) of division of power arrangements and the interlinkage between them. Finally, the discussion reflects on whether or rather how the EU could comprise a federal democracy, especially in light of recent crisis challenges and subsequent institutional developments in EU governance.

Managing differentiated disintegration: Insights from comparative federalism on post-Brexit EU–UK relations

This article applies insights from comparative federalism to analyse different models for managing future EU–UK relations. The argument is that the stability of the EU–UK relationship before as well as after Brexit is best understood by examining the presence of federal safeguards. Drawing on Kelemen, four types of safeguards are identified as the means for balancing centrifugal and centripetal forces. During the United Kingdom’s European Union membership, the strong glue provided by structural and judicial safeguards was undone by the weakness of partisan and socio-cultural ones. However, each post-Brexit scenario is characterised by weaker structural and judicial safeguards. The most stable outcome is an indeterminate Brexit that limits the incentive to politicise sovereignty and identity concerns by ending free movement of people and reducing the saliency of European Union rules. Such stability is nevertheless relative in that, from a comparative perspective, federal-type safeguards were stronger when the United Kingdom was still in the European Union.

Health, federalism and the European Union: lessons from comparative federalism about the European Union

Bringing together the results of a large-scale review of European Union (EU) policies affecting health and a large-scale analysis of social policy and federalism, this paper uses comparative federalism to identify the scope and tensions of EU health policy at the end of the Juncker Commission. Viewing health care and public health policy through the lens of comparative federalism highlights some serious structural flaws in EU health policy. The regulatory state form in which the EU has evolved makes it difficult for the EU to formulate a health policy that actually focuses on health. Of the three faces of EU health policy, which are health policy, internal market policy and fiscal governance, health policy is legally, politically and financially the weakest. A comparison of the EU to other federations suggests that this creates basic weaknesses in the EU's design: its key powers are regulatory and its redistribution minimal. No federal welfare state so clearly pools risks at a low level while making markets so forcefully or creating rights whose costs are born by other levels of government. This structure, understandable in light of the EU's history and development, limits its health and social policy initiatives and might not be stable over the long term.

ABOUT THE BENEFITS OF FAILURE: RUSSIAN EXPERIENCE FOR THE COMPARATIVE FEDERALISM RESEARCH

In the 1990s, Russian federalism was the pride of Russian reforms, a convincing proof of the irreversibility of democratization. Today, only the formal shells of federal institutions remain. However, the lessons of Russian federalism have greatly enriched research on comparative federalism: for the first time, a country of such territorial scale and diversity consciously built federal relations, while in the conditions of an extremely unfavorable heritage, the presence of an ethnic "component" and pronounced asymmetries. The Russian case showed that federalism significantly complicates the transition to democracy if democratic and federal insti-tution-building develop simultaneously. In addition, the case of Russia once again confirmed that federalism could not survive without being supported by other institutions; a necessary condition for the survival of fed-eralism is the development of democratic competition in the direction of strengthening the role of political parties interested in federalism. The lessons of the 90s in Russia may prove useful both to other countries that have chosen federalism and to Russia itself, since any significant reforms will inevitably lead to a change in the nature of relations between the center and the regions.

Föderalismus

This is the third, thoroughly revised edition of the textbook on federalism. Based on the latest research results, it helps students to learn about federalism by offering them questions to discuss and answer. Comparative federalism is analysed in detail in the chapters on federalism theory, the institutional characteristics of federalism (including Second Chambers), financial federalism, electoral politics, direct democracy and party systems. The book reflects on challenges to federalism, such as the coronavirus crisis, federalism reforms and threats of secession. It also discusses decentralisation in the UK, France, Poland and the Czech Republic as possible alternatives to deepening federalism.

Transforming Unitary States into Federations: Path-Dependent Construction of Political Identities in Belgium and Lebanon

The theory of congruence in comparative federalism holds that institutional design will, eventually, reflect societal divisions by transferring central powers to new, autonomous entities. While this model helps to understand why many divided societies adopt federalism, it cannot explain why only certain unitary states transform into federal ones while others do not. We use a historical institutionalism approach to identify the critical junctures in the trajectory of two prominent plural polities, Belgium and Lebanon. We suggest that the politicization of identities during initial stages of state-building plays a major role in the transformation of a unitary state into a federation—which occurs in the former but not in the latter of our cases. The current contrast in both consociational democracies is explained here as a legacy of the late nineteenth century, which set in motion decisive logics of public governance that direct institutional dynamics until today.