Federalism model’s resilient --- US not key

At the beginning of the 21st century, federalism once again proved its resilience as an important form of government and ideological dispensation. This is despite recurrent scepticism about its desirability and appropriateness in a globalising world. In the period prior to World War II, some scholars doubted its relevance in an industrialising society. Harold Laski epitomised scholarly scepticism of the period. He in 1939 said, ‘[T]he epoch of federalism is over’ because of ‘its compartmentalizing of functions, legalism, rigidity and conservatism… [which made it] unable to keep pace with the tempo of modern economic and political life that giant capitalism had evolved’ (cited in Watts 2001: 2). Federalism emerged as an important instrument of nation/state building after the collapse of European colonial empires in the immediate post World War II period (Watts 1994a: 2). In this respect, many post-colonial multi-ethnic countries of Asia and Africa adopted federalism.1 Even if several of these federations failed in their infancy, the role of federalism in balancing the competing and perhaps conflicting demands for autonomy and unity in such countries as India, Malaysia and Nigeria could not be doubted (Rothchild 1966). Since the end of the Cold War, federalism once again emerged into the spotlight because of two contradictory developments. First, the disintegration of the socialist federations of the USSR, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia refreshed doubts about stability and durability of multiethnic federations. The continuing standoff in Canada over the question of Quebec’s independence and the frequent political stalemates that characterise federal Belgium strengthen uneasiness about the stability of multi-ethnic federations. Second, in spite of these problems, politicians used to reconstitute multiethnic countries through federalism after the collapse of authoritarian regimes and centralist nation-building projects. For instance, international powers imposed federalism to reconstitute Bosnia-Herzegovina after a bitter war and genocide that accompanied the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Russia adopted federalism to maintain what is left of the Soviet Union. Ethiopia adopted ethnic federalism in 1991 after the end of military dictatorship. Recently, the American led international forces caused the reconstitution Iraq as an ethnic federation following their invasion and occupation of the country in 2003. There are also calls for a federal arrangement for such countries as Sri Lanka and Somalia that were torn apart by decades of bitter conflicts. There is, therefore, a growing interest in the use of federalism as a way of managing ethnically diverse countries. In ethnically divided countries, the hope is that political recognition of cultural and ethnic pluralism through federalism reduces ethnic tensions and conflicts. That is why federalism has been presented as a compromise between ethnicnationalism, which like nationalism in its classical form advocates congruence between nations and states (Gellner 1983: 1; Hobswam 1990: 9), and assimilationist centralization by dominant ethnic groups in multiethnic countries.