Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Federations and the Theoretical Problem
- 2 Federal Bargaining
- 3 Two Cases of Uninstitutionalized Bargaining
- 4 Representation
- 5 Incentives
- 6 Political Parties in a Federal State
- 7 Institutional Sources of Federal Stability I
- 8 Institutional Sources of Federal Stability II
- 9 Designing Federalism
- References
- Name Index
- Subject Index
5 - Incentives
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Federations and the Theoretical Problem
- 2 Federal Bargaining
- 3 Two Cases of Uninstitutionalized Bargaining
- 4 Representation
- 5 Incentives
- 6 Political Parties in a Federal State
- 7 Institutional Sources of Federal Stability I
- 8 Institutional Sources of Federal Stability II
- 9 Designing Federalism
- References
- Name Index
- Subject Index
Summary
The Constitution of the United States is an admirable work, nevertheless one may believe that its founders would not have succeeded, had not the previous 150 years given the different States of the Union the taste for and practice of, provincial governments, and if a high civilization had not at the same time put them in a position to maintain a strong, though limited, central government.
Alexis de TocquevilleConstitutional rules are not crucial, independent factors in maintaining democracy…. Constitutional rules are mainly significant because they help to determine what particular groups are to be given advantages or handicaps in the political struggle … [and] to assume that [the United States] remained democratic because of its Constitution seems to me an obvious reversal of the relation; it is much more plausible to suppose that the Constitution has remained because our society is essentially democratic.
Dahl 1956: 134, 143The fundamental method to preserve liberty is to preserve ardently our traditional constitutional restraints.
Riker 1982: 252Institutional Enforcement
With its focus on representation and the selection of venues for federal bargaining, Chapter 4 discusses some of the more obvious parameters of federal constitutional design that, if set to the “correct” values, will hopefully encourage adherence to those Level 1 rules that seek to guide and constrain federal bargaining. Briefly, if a “within” rather than “without” bargaining format is preferred, then the reader can legitimately infer from our discussion of Canada that by “correct” in the context of a parliamentary system we mean an institutional arrangement whereby we avoid letting the imperatives of party solidarity wholly overwhelm the representative role of legislators, since, in that case, bargaining will occur outside of parliament.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Designing FederalismA Theory of Self-Sustainable Federal Institutions, pp. 142 - 176Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004