This timely book surveys nine diverse federal systems and their responses to contemporary crises. Expert contributors argue that the dynamics of federal governance across a broad range of geographic, political, and developmental contexts can be revealed by investigating how they navigate distinct subnational, national, and international challenges.
This timely book surveys nine diverse federal systems and their responses to contemporary crises. Expert contributors argue that the dynamics of federal governance across a broad range of geographic, political, and developmental contexts can be revealed by investigating how they navigate distinct subnational, national and international challenges.
Adopting a representative case-study methodology, contributors provide in-depth insights into the federal responses of Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ethiopia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Russia and the USA to challenges such as populism, migration, pandemic, inflation, climate change, resource distribution, and conflict. The book explores federalism’s cultural, social, and territorial dimensions, highlighting how these shape crisis management beyond constitutional structures. Chapters uncover why some federations succeed while others falter, emphasizing the delicate balance between unity and local autonomy, and underscoring the need to foster resilience through cooperation and balanced power-sharing.
This book is a vital resource for students and academics in political science, comparative constitutional law, public administration and management, and international relations. It is also a must-read for policymakers, government officials, and other practitioners in these fields seeking to understand the unprecedented challenges faced by federal systems in the modern world.
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Crises tend to magnify the inherent complexities of federal relations. One of the key strengths of this book lies in its ability to illuminate the challenges faced and the solutions devised by different federal systems in moments of instability and turbulence. It offers valuable contributions to deepening our understanding of how federal arrangements function, especially at the moment they are most severely tested. -- Roger Stiefelmann Leal, University of São Paulo, Brazil Is federalism a good plane to navigate turbulences? Much depends on the pilots, even more on the structure, and the materials used to shape it. Aroney and Costa magnificently take us through a wide array of contemporary challenges and responses in federal systems: when well-designed and responsibly managed, federalism can offer the flexibility, adaptability, blend of coordination and autonomy, and the level of experimentation necessary for institutional and political systems to withstand emergencies without breaking apart. In times of polycrisis, it remains one of the most reliable tools. -- Francesco Palermo, Institute for Comparative Federalism, Eurac Research and University of Verona, Italy This is a timely and significant work. As global politics seems to lurch from one crisis to another this is the first book to address the implications of these upheavals for federal systems. Addressing recent responses to crisis within federal systems both comparatively and comprehensively, Aroney and Costa and the contributors to their volume offer us a theoretically-informed and empirically rich snapshot of how able federal systems are to meet the challenges of our time. -- Stephen Tierney, University of Edinburgh Law School, UK
Contents
Foreword: Federalism in a Turbulent Era ix
Introduction 1
Nicholas Aroney and Renato Costa
1 Argentine federalism: economic crises, inflation, and central
banks 16
Jorge P. Gordin
2 Australian federalism: lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and the
Covid-19 response 40
Nicholas Aroney, Robert Clancy and Gigi Foster
3 Brazilian federalism: populism, emergency powers, and
political turmoil 67
Renato Costa and Bruno Santos Cunha
4 Canadian federalism: decentralisation, constitutional
conflicts, and climate change 93
Dwight Newman KC and Sarah Burningham
5 Ethiopian federalism: ethnicity, constitutional infidelity, and
civil war 117
Yonatan Fessha and Terefe Gebreyesus
6 Malaysian federalism: Islam, state jurisdiction, and criminal
law 136
Nicholas Aroney and Joshua Neoh
7 Nigerian federalism: political economy, petroleum, and state
fragility 152
Ambrose Ihekwoaba Egwim
8 Russian federalism: centralisation, autocracy, and war 177
Irina Busygina and Mikhail Filippov
9 United States federalism: partisanship, federalstate conflict,
and migration 201
Zachary S. Price
Edited by Nicholas Aroney, Professor of Constitutional Law and Renato Costa, Lecturer in Law, TC Beirne School of Law, The University of Queensland, Australia
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