Equilibrium and Sustainability in Federal Systems

The sustainability of federal states depends heavily on their ability to maintain an acceptable balance between national and subnational power. Static models of constitutional design, in which the allocation of power among the different actors is considered fixed and permanent, are neither descriptively accurate nor normatively desirable. In fact, the allocation of competencies in federal states is subject to regular adjustment by constitutional actors in an ongoing process of intergovernmental contestation, in turn resulting, if things go well, in dynamic re-equilibration of the system. The specific tactics actors deploy in the course of contestation are shaped in part by the pathways that the federal constitution formally provides to each level of government to influence policy making at the other level. However, constitutional actors also from time to time create informal and extraconstitutional methods of influence when formal pathways seem to them insufficient. A dynamic, contestatory model clarifies that the real threat to the sustainability of federal states is not constitutional rigidity in the face of changing circumstances, but a failure of governments to engage in contestation of the kind and intensity necessary to keep the system in balance. This can occur when officials collude across the federal divide rather than compete; when asymmetries of power become so severe that one level becomes able consistently to overpower the other; and when non-territorial political cleavages become more politically salient than territorial ones. In short, a dynamic model of a constantly moving equilibrium provides a more realistic and insightful account of how federal states survive than the classic, contractarian account of national constitutions.