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Federalism

Overview​

Federalism distributes governance across multiple levels — local, regional, and national — with each level having defined powers. It is one mechanism for maintaining diversity in governance while establishing minimum standards across a larger territory.

Benefits of letting local communities decide​

  • Allowing local communities to determine matters for themselves enables experimentation. Communities observe which governance experiments work best and compete to attract residents and investment by improving their frameworks.
  • People naturally prefer places that are safe, free, and prosperous. Jurisdictional competition creates incentives for better governance.

See also: subsidiarity, jurisdiction, self-determination.

Mitigating the risks of local decision-making​

  • Judicial review to invalidate laws that overstep fundamental rights is an indispensable tool in federal systems.
  • It is vital to have a vertical check on government actions. Federalism provides the appropriate mechanism to invalidate laws when local communities generate rules that obviously breach fundamental rights.
  • It should be the responsibility of the federal level to guarantee that smaller communities do not obviously violate individual rights.
  • A reasonable mechanism to appeal local community decisions to a tribunal with appropriate authority is necessary. Having a written constitution establishing fundamental laws is necessary but insufficient.
  • As the United States founding fathers observed, pure majority rule equates to the tyranny of the majority over the minority. Constitutional republics were designed to guard against this.
  • Federal or higher courts are likely needed to strike down bad-faith or unreasonable interpretations of constitutional rights.