Six Books in Search of a Subject or Does Federalism Exist and Does It Matter?

Riker, William H.; Bombwall, K. R.; Earle, Valerie A.; Franck, Thomas M.; Franda, Marcus F.; Friedrich, Carl J.; Shoup, Paul

doi:10.2307/421485

Cited by 50 publications

(25 citation statements)

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“…Also, to the extent that federalisms are contingent, it will appear to play no role in determining the allocation of responsibilities since that allocation is determined by other factors. Most theoretical models of federalism assume constitutional decentralization whereas most federalisms are contingent, and this fact explains Riker's (1969) conclusion that theoretical predictions about federalism's influence fail to be borne out empirically. The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States; a religious sect, may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy, but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it, must secure the national Councils against any danger from that source; a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts.…”

Section: Federalismmentioning

confidence: 97%

Constitutional stability

Ordeshook

1992

Constit Polit Econ

206

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Despite attempts to paper over the dispute, political scientists in the pluralist tra dition disagree sharply with public and social choice theorists about the importance of institutions and with William Riker in particular who argues in Liberalism against Pop ulism that the liberal institutions of indirect democracy ought to be preferred to those of populist democracy. This essay reconsiders this dispute in light of two ideas unavailable to Riker at the time. The first, offered by Russell Hardin, is that constitutions can more usefully be conceptualized as coordinating devices as opposed to social contracts. The importance of this idea is that it allows for a more theoretically satisfying view of the way that constitutions become self-enforcing. The second idea, which derives from the various applications of concepts such as the uncoveted set, argues that although institutions such as the direct election of president are subject to the usual inabilities that concern social choice theorists, those instabilities do not imply that "anything can happen" -instead, final outcomes will be constrained, where the severity of those constraints depend on institutional details. We maintain that these ideas strengthen Riker's argument about the importance of such constitutional devices as the separation of powers, bicameralism, the executive veto, and scheduled elections, as well as the view that federalism is an important component of the institutions that stabilize the American political system.We conclude with the proposition that the American Civil War should not be regarded as a constitutional failure, but rather as a success. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to controul the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to controul itself. Riker bases his analysis on the research of social choice theorists such as Arrow (1963), Plott (1967, Davis and Hinich (1966), McKelvey (1976), and Schofield (1978. This research reveals two things. First, coherence (in the form of a well-defined social preference order over feasible policy outcomes) in majoritarian processes without impediments to direct citizen control of policy requires a nearly-impossible-to-achieve balance of citizen preferences on salient issues, sufficient uniformity of tastes and perceptions such that preferences on all issues (potential or otherwise) can be mapped to a single "ideological" dimension, or the existence of a unique salient issue. Second, democratic procedures such as two candidate elections and committee voting are arbitrary in the sense that outcomes and the identities of winners and losers depend on procedural details, including the order with which election candidates announce their campaign platforms, the order with which alternatives are considered in a legislative voting agenda, the identities of persons who have access to an agenda, and the list of feasible policy alternatives.From these results Riker constructs the argument ...

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Section: Federalismmentioning

confidence: 97%

Constitutional stability

Ordeshook

1992

Constit Polit Econ

206

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“…Linguistic structure-as reflected in interest group politics-influences the direction of institutional change in Western federal democracies notwithstanding the formal differences between them. This follows William Riker's (1969) point that "in the study of federal governments, therefore, it is always appropriate to go behind the [constitutional legal] fiction to study the real forces in a federal system" (p. 146). But it is Carl Friedrich (1968) who best summarizes the benefits structural perspectives have in explaining the processes of federal change:…”

Section: Structuralismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As representatives of class interests, Australian political parties have been instrumental in bringing about nationwide politics. According to Riker (1964), "The divisions in Australian culture seem to be economic and religious with hardly any geographic base. .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

New Structuralism and Institutional Change: Federalism Between Centralization and Decentralization

Erk

Koning

2009

Comparative Political Studies

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This article aims to contribute to the debate on institutional change by introducing social structure as the basis for theorizing about the direction of such change. The empirical context is the long-term trends of federal institutional change in the federations of the industrialized West (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States). It is the authors' contention that institutions change in order to reach a better fit with the underlying linguistic structure. The direction for institutional change in federal systems with territorially based linguistic heterogeneity is decentralizing, for homogeneous ones the direction is centralizing. The argument is based on the growing importance of language as the provider of democratic space. It is through the less formalized interest group politics that the underlying linguistic base finds its way into influencing the direction of institutional change.

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“…Joint decision-making in an institutional decision-making structure of two or more levels can lead to systematically inefficient and inadequate decisions and to the incapability to change the institutional conditions that lead to 1 It is rather astonishing that Riker who devoted a lot of work to this topic (Riker 1964(Riker , 1987 on the one hand, attributes such negative traits to federalism, and on the other hand writes: ''Does federalism make any difference in the way people are governed? And the answer appears to be: Hardly any at all (Riker 1969)''. Several reasons are discussed in the literature (Volden 2004) but in the end it is clear that Riker revised his position towards federalism gradually during his lifetime culminating in: ''Considering all the federations there have been in the world, I believe that federalism has been a significant force for limited government and hence for personal freedom'' (Riker 1996).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Minimizing the losers: regime satisfaction in multi-level systems

2011

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The political blessings of federalism are the core of our discussion. These benefits can be operationalized as a decrease in the number of outvoted people in a federal system with majority voting which is an important source of regime satisfaction. The approach originates from the work of Roland Pennock who developed a similar methodology about 50 years ago. Measuring inverse regime satisfaction by the maximum of the outvoted, our results show that regime satisfaction decreases if total population rises. Additionally, the share of the maximum outvoted decreases if the top level cooperates with lower-level jurisdictions and if all jurisdictions of one level are included. However, while the inclusion of an additional lowest-level jurisdiction always reduces the relative number of the outvoted, the effect of including other levels depends on the structure of jurisdictions already intertwined.

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Six Books in Search of a Subject or Does Federalism Exist and Does It Matter?

Cited by 50 publications

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Constitutional stability

Constitutional stability

New Structuralism and Institutional Change: Federalism Between Centralization and Decentralization

Minimizing the losers: regime satisfaction in multi-level systems

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