FEDERALISM AND A RETHINK OF TRADITIONAL OPTIMISM: A COMPARATIVE NOTE

Abstract

 An early generation of students of inter-ethnic or plural societies considered federalism an effective way of achieving and preserving both integration and stability in plural and deeply divided societies. No doubt, early generation of federal scholars see it as a ‘catchall management formulae’. That once a society is plural, federalism comes handy as a panacea. The thrust of this paper however is a challenge of the capability of federalism to perform the expected ‘magic’ as traditionally assumed in terms of seamless integration. Or put differently, experience has shown that it has not proved to be a particularly good device for integrating plural societies into a single political entity. The paper interrogates the two contending positions and takes a dim view of various federal arrangements – in both developing and developed democracies - and infers that for integration to be attained each federal system should be reinforced with federal instrumentalities if it will not eventually go the way of the defunct Soviet Union (USSR) amongst others systems.