John Stuart Mill and Federalism

Porter, Roger Β.

doi:10.2307/3329591

Cited by 3 publications

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“…2 There is to our knowledge just one common argument for federalism that focuses on public responsiveness: Federalism fosters democracy by making it easier for citizens to monitor and exercise control over governments. One version of this argument, put forth by Mill (1991Mill ( [1861; for a discussion, see Porter 1977), relies on simple arithmetic: in smaller, more local governments, each individual's vote matters more. As a consequence, participation and engagement are more common.…”

Section: Why (And Why Not) Federalism?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Federalism and Public Responsiveness to Policy

Wlezien

Soroka

2010

Publius: The Journal of Federalism

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Public responsiveness to government policy is a crucial component of representative democracy, but may be far weaker in federal regimes. This paper explores the consequences of federalism for public responsiveness in one highly-federalized policy domain: welfare policy in Canada. Results suggest that citizens' preferences for spending at the federal level are affected by changes in both federal and provincial spending, and to an equal degree; they suggest, in short, that that federalism poses serious problems where public responsiveness is concerned. A concluding section considers the implications of these findings for the representation of public opinion in policy in federalized states. 1 Relatedly, Weingast has argued that federalism helps to preserve free(er) markets by limiting the powers of any single government (Weingast 1995; Qian and Weingast 1997). Levy (2007) also presents a related normative theoretical argument for federalism, arguing that federalism provides some protection against the abuse of power through the "separation of loyalties."

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Section: Why (And Why Not) Federalism?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Federalism and Public Responsiveness to Policy

Wlezien

Soroka

2010

Publius: The Journal of Federalism

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“…According to Osaghae (1998), Mills' law of federal stability states that a federation with such a composition will constantly experience instability and strife between federating units struggling for recognition at the centre of power. Porter (1977) in an analysis of Mills' views on federalism identified that Mill showed a preference for a unitary government as opposed to a federal government because of the difficulty in balancing federating units in a bid to eliminate destabilizing strives. The strife in the case of Nigeria was heightened by the small number of federating units (four regions only) leading to frequent inter-regional conflicts.…”

Section: The First Attempt At Civilian Rule (1960-1966)mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Character of the State in Financial Development and Economic Growth

Uzonwanne

2011

SSRN Journal

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Equalization transfers and convergence between federal and unitary systems: A contribution to their historical analysis

Brosio¹

2018

Economia Pubblica

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Equalization transfers, or grants, are a crucial component of modern federal and unitary countries. They also shape the evolution of different political systems promoting convergence in their effective working. The literature does not provide studies with a long-term and comparative perspective despite the relevance of this approach to the study of intergovernmental relations. The paper provides a contribution aimed at filling this void.It considers a small set of countries, including two unitary systems, Italy and the UK with a focus on English local government and three federal countries, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Federal systems are paying now more attention than initially to uniformity of policies and equality of access to the benefits of public policies, while unitary systems show now much more attention than in the past to reaching equality of access and benefits from policies through local autonomy and use of transparent intergovernmental grants, rather than with hierarchical command. Another way of illustrating this process is stressing the growing recognition of common citizenship in both federal and unitary states.

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John Stuart Mill and Federalism

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Federalism and Public Responsiveness to Policy

Federalism and Public Responsiveness to Policy

The Character of the State in Financial Development and Economic Growth

Equalization transfers and convergence between federal and unitary systems: A contribution to their historical analysis

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