Territorial Justice and Devolution

The concept of territorial justice has a long history in studies of the spatial distribution of welfare state services in the UK. Since the inception of the devolution process, territorial justice has maintained support as a principle to guide policy and has been promoted recently as an objective for the reform of the financial arrangements for the devolved administrations. The first part of the article argues that the standard version of territorial justice is premised on the UK as a unitary state and is unworkable as a political principle of justice after devolution. An alternative version of territorial justice is developed to accommodate a union state. The final part discusses several policy issues post-devolution in terms of different versions of territorial justice: intergovernmental fiscal relations; health care policy including access to medicines; and free community care for the elderly.     

Federalism: Fuzzy Global Trends

This article examines the operation of federalism from the perspective of complex evolving socio-political systems. Emerging forms of governance that operate through a mix of formal statutory instruments, culture and the effects of fuzzy logic rather than in accordance with formal constitutional provisions are examined. The paper will canvas the implications of this approach for certain specific areas of public administration within the Australian federation.     

Value Pluralism and Multinational Federalism

This article is mainly concerned with the notion of value pluralism. In the first section I present it as a theory of the structure of moral normativity in liberal democracies, and defend its greater suitability compared with rival theories in attempting to revise democratic liberalism from the perspective of the cultural, national and normative pluralism of present-day democracies. In the second section, I link value pluralism with multinational federations in order to discuss its role in establishing the recognition of national pluralism, a plurinational division of powers, the participation of the different national collectives in the processes of constitutional reform, and the constitutional regulation of the right of self-determination, following the 1998 decision of the Canadian Supreme Court.     

Federalism and Governability in Brazil: Oil Royalties in Dispute

This article discusses the relationship between governability and federalism in Brazil, analysing the dispute among Brazilian states for oil royalties. This conflict features an unusual pattern in federal legislative voting, leading to regional alignment, rather than the usual party political configuration. This study explains the phenomenon by showing how this organisation makes it possible to align the preferences of national party leaders, regional party leaders, parliamentarians, and each state's voters. The political influence of governors and mayors is also underlined, and the Union's role in the process is described in detail.     

Central Weakness and Provincial Autonomy: Observations on the Devolution Process in Russia

A specialist on regional politics and center-periphery relations in the Russian Federation examines the process of devolution of authority from Moscow to the regions in the 1990s. A discussion of the process by which federal treaties were negotiated is followed by an examination of types of de facto policy autonomy that have emerged at the regional level by default. Research sources include Russianlanguage documents and interviews with a range of central and regional officials. There follows a discussion of the impact on the devolution process of the institutional structure of the Russian state.     

Asymmetrical Federalism and State Breakdown in Russia

A distinguished American specialist on Russian politics summarizes factors, both domestic and international, pushing for and against regional separatism from the Russian Federation. Attention then turns to factors influencing the further devolution of authority from central to regional officials. A typology is offered of types of issues animating conflict in center-periphery relations. The article then discusses the impact of the August 1998 crisis on these trends and on prospects for the future.     

Russian Federalism in Comparative Perspective

A specialist on the comparative analysis of states and polities provides a framework for investigating the extent to which federal states are democratic in their operations. The article outlines propositions derived from data on eleven continuously democratic federal systems in the world during the 1990s. Russia is then compared systematically with these systems with respect to the federal legacies of pre-Soviet and Soviet power, the distinctiveness and democratic viability of its current “asymmetrical federalism,” and the roles of presidential, legislative, and party-system power. Aggregate data and a case study are presented that bear on the difference between levels of democracy in republics as opposed to oblasts. The dynamics of central “power creation” since August 1998 are explored.     

Federalism,Party Organization and the Australian Greens

The influence of federalism on the organizational arrangements adopted by Australia's parties endures. This study examines the organizational structure of the State and Territory divisions of the Australian Greens through an analysis of their local party constitutions. It shows that there are important areas of difference in the organizations of state and territory Greens, despite their shared ideological commitment to inclusive internal party structures. These variations are a function of institutional and political factors, especially those induced by the Australian federal system. It is argued that differences in the organizational formats of state and territory party divisions reflect the historical circumstances in which they emerged and variations in the institutional (regional) setting in which they are located.     

The Australian Welfare State: Has Federalism Made a Difference?

This paper examines the historical development of the Australian welfare state with a view to identifying the role that Australia's federal constitutional arrangements have played in shaping that development. Theoretical paradigms have been unanimous in their prognoses: that federal states are likely to be slow in developing welfare state programmes and typically spend less on them than unitary states. But recently it has been argued that federal institutions may have a “ratchet effect” of slowing down the pace of change, irrespective of its direction. The purpose of this chronological account of significant stages in the development of the Australian welfare state is to use the unfolding of historical events — far too rich in nuance and detail to be captured in quantitative modelling — as a test‐bed for establishing whether, and, if so, to what extent, federalism has impacted on the trajectory of Australian welfare state development.     

The Parade of Sovereignties: Establishing the Vocabulary of the New Russian Federalism

On the basis of extensive on-site interviews and documentary sources, the author interprets the dynamics of the collapse of the Soviet Union by analyzing the cascade of sovereignty declarations issued by republics of the USSR as well as by autonomous republics and other subunits of the Russian republic, in 1990-1991. Interrelationships among the declarations, and other putative causes of their content and timing, are explored. A case study of Tatarstan is provided. The study also analyzes the impact of the process on subsequent Russian approaches to federalism.