 Good evening, good afternoon and good morning. Welcome to this panel on federalism and democracy, meeting the challenges of political polarization. It's a pleasure to have you all join us this morning, this afternoon or this evening, depending on where you are, to discuss and reflect a little bit on the place of federalism in democratic settings and the challenge that federalism has to meet in terms of political polarization and how successful federations are in dealing with political polarization or not. Let me start by introducing our very distinguished panel this morning. We have with us from across the world, a range of experts who've all worked in and thought about issues of democracy and democracy building and who also have very professional backgrounds. Professor Arthur Benz is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany, Monica Leroy, advisor to the Secretary-General of the Organization of American States and a former advisor to the Canadian Foreign Minister, Professor Nico Staitler, who is South African Research Chair in Multilevel Government and Law and Development at the Dala-Omar Institute at the University of Western Cape and also a former commissioner of the South African Finance Commission. And last but not the least, Professor Rekha Siksenna, Professor of Political Science at the University of Delhi and Vice-Chair of the Center for Multilevel Federalism in Delhi and a senior advisor to the Forum of Federations. We have here this panel in order to provide a diversity of views on the subject of federalism and democratization and the role that federalism can play in buttressing democracy. As you all know, the second half of the 20th century has seen an expansion of democracy and federalism on multilevel governance around the world. Indeed, more and more people have been demanding freedom of human rights and the right to participate in politics. However, democratization has also revealed deep divides in society and rising conflicts threaten democracy, particularly as we've seen the stresses around COVID that have read to polarization along so many axes in so many parts of the world. Against this background, federalism has been expected, at least theoretically, to help stabilize government in divided societies and to accommodate the claims of minorities. Democratization has fostered federalization as it allows repressed groups, sometimes minorities, sometimes majorities, to express themselves politically in the countries that they live. In turn, federalism has supported democracy by constraining the concentration and centralization of government power. Thus, federalism and democracy at least had the promise to advance and stabilize each other. And federal democracy seems like an ideal political system in a liberal and pluralist society. However, as I've noted, the stresses and strains that we see around the world raise the question of where federalism is appropriate and where it may not be appropriate. According to the Economist Intelligence Units Democracy Index in 2020, only 24% of 25 federal countries are rated as full democracies, 32% are rated as flawed democracies, 16% is hybrid regimes, and 28% is full 28% are authoritarian. And in this context, I think, as we go into the discussion, we have to consider whether federations are more prone to authoritarianism or more likely to be democratic than non-federation. And indeed, whether federalism is an asset or a liability for democracy-building. How can democracy be constructed in countries that have deep national, racial, ethnic, linguistic, or religious cleavages? And in turn, how can a system of federal democracy be constructed that reasonably accommodates the deep diversity while at the same time not stoking secessionism not stoking further polarization? So in this webinar, what we've tried to do is to bring you perspectives from around the world. And I hope that as the discussion progresses, you, the audience will have questions, queries, comments to contribute to our understanding of this subject. The webinar is organized into four parts. The, I'm sorry, into three parts, where we first will have a round of opening remarks from our panelists, who will also be addressed, who will be asked to address around the three questions. And then as the discussion progresses, we'll see where it ends up. We will then ask the audience to open up for question and answer, ask the audience to raise the questions, queries they may have. And we have some attendees who are on a live stream, some on a YouTube stream. And depending on where you are, please put your questions in the chat boxes. The question, I'm sorry, the question and answer boxes. And our technical team will feed them to me so we can put them to the panelists. And of course, then we will end by reflecting a little bit on the discussions we have today. So let's jump into the discussions. So I'm first going to pose a question to each panelist and each panelist will have five minutes per question. And then we will take off from there. So the first question I have for our panelists this morning is, are federations prone to more or less democracy or prone to be more or less democratic than non-federation? Arthur, let's start with you. Thank you, Robak. Well, if you look at a few data, there is a certain tendency towards federal democracies compared to federal autocracies. In a recent book, Robert Inman and Daniel Rubenstein counted overall 26 federal countries and among them they identified 17 democratic federations and nine federations with the labeled as autocratic. When we look at the quality of the federation and you provided some data in the introduction to this panel, then we also find variations in equality of democracy in democratic federations. Now, this is so to speak the data part that we can discuss about typologies and indicators. But I want to point out another issue. Federations combine different governments at different levels and these governments can be democratic or non-democratic and of course, more or less. And in general, we assume that in a federation we have the same regime type. We have either democratic governments at the federal and sub-federal level or we have autocratic regimes at different levels. And this is in general also true. However, comparative research has still found out that there are variations between levels and also within the sub-federal levels. There are variations in democracy. There are variations in regimes. So we have to consider that a characterization of a whole federation as either democratic or non-democratic only provides as a very rough picture. So on the one hand, we have to be aware that political regimes are determined on the different levels in a different ways and there can be variation. This is one point. The other point is that of course, federalism and the way federal systems work affect either democracy or autocracy. We are well aware of this because federalism is not only division of power, division of levels, but it is also a coming together, a holding together of federations and it's in particular a working together of federal and sub-federal governments in order to cope with interdependence of complex tasks that governments usually face in modern democracies. There is interdependence between level in a federal system that affects the way governments work. If we take this into account and if we start so to speak from a two-dimensional view of regimes in a federation, which combine the structure of a government and the structure of the federation, we can understand the results which we find in literature on comparative federalism and this literature provides us quite different and more diverse and differentiated picture. First of all, we can explain why we have indeed non-democratic federations. Many people believe that federalism necessarily needs to be democratic, but indeed we have non-democratic federations and the reason why is that autocrats can profit from a division of power although a division of power constrains their power, which they don't like of course. But autocrats also can use so to speak a sharing of power in order to control opposition at the different levels. Autocrats can also profit from a sharing of power in order to shift blame when they are not able to provide the services that citizens expect from them. So there is a certain advantage of federalism for autocratic rulers and autocratic leaders. This is one point that explains why we indeed have federal autocracies. The second point is that even in democratic or democratizing federations, it is possible that we have autocratic regimes at the sub-federal levels at individual constituent units at sub-federal levels. Research has found this in particular in presidential regimes, for instance for the US in the deep south in the 19th century or for some Latin American federations in the 20th century. Whereas still find some autocracies at the sub-federal levels and the reason why they can persist is that autocratic leaders at regional or local levels can control the access of politicians to the federal level and they can profit from the support, the financial support or the financial autonomy in order to maintain their power. So this variation of democracy and autocracy can in turn persist in reality. Third, even in democracies in federal democracies we all know that we have the problem that the democratic governments which claim to autonomously define issues and policies have to cooperate in intergovernmental relations and we all know that intergovernmental relations lead to some dominance of executives because it is executives that coordinate policies. Of course this does not mean that democratic federations become autocratic but in any case we have to be aware of this democratic deficit which can occur in even democratic federation. So to conclude and to summarize in general I would say of course federalism supports democracy and democracy supports federalism but we should also take into account that the mutual support of federalism and democracy is not taken for granted. Political actors can always exploit the need to coordinate policies between governments as well as territorial limits of their power within democracies and democratic control in order to strengthen that power and this always goes to the profit of executors. Thank you. Thank you very much Arthur for that summary. Monica, same question to you. You're muted. Yeah, inevitably I wanted to start the trend for us today. Rupak thank you so much to you in the form of federations for hosting this panel today. Arthur Niko Reka it's a real honor to be sharing this platform with you for this very interesting discussion. I think I'd probably start by just commenting that federalism in and of itself is about decentralization of power and helping to ensure that governments are directly representative to the communities that they represent. This is particularly acute in scenarios where there's distinct regions within a country particularly with relation to ethnic or cultural communities whether or specific geographic differences or industry. But at the core of it it's about ensuring there's better representation of the different interests across a particular country. In Latin America and specifically through the organization of American states countries have made a very concerted effort to define democracy as what they actually phrase as representative democracy. And on September 11th in 2001 OAS member states unanimously approved a document called the Inter-American Democratic Charter which ultimately provides a clear definition of what democracy is for its countries and tries it as a right for the people of the hemisphere and creates both incentives for adherence to it but also tools and mechanisms for enforcing democracy throughout the region. Article 2 talks about representative democracy as something that requires permanent ethical and responsible participation of the citizenry within a legal framework conforming to the respective constitutional order. Article 3 describes the elements including respect for human rights access to power in accordance with the rule of law, universal suffrage free and fair elections. Article 4 is the components of democracy which is what is relevant to what we're talking about transparency in government activities probity responsible public administration respect for social rights and freedom of expression. But at the end of the day it actually comes down to explicitly it is the right and responsibility of all citizens to participate in discussions relating to their own development. This is a necessary condition for the full exercise of democracy promoting and fostering diverse forms of participation strengthens democracy. On the surface I think the answer to the question appears like it should be a straightforward yes. However, as Arthur pointed out and I'm sure Niko and Rika will get into it's a much more convoluted answer to that. Latin America only has four examples of countries that have adopted or named themselves as federal state structures and that would be Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. All of these countries are notable for their size and scale the diversity of geography that within the country but as well with different cultural communities that they represent. In and of itself there's been little change to the number of federal systems in Latin America over the past century. At the same time if you look at these four countries I'm not sure that we would want to look at this list as the most stable representatives of democracy that you would see in the region. However, this is where I want to caution where what are we talking about is it an issue of structure or are there other issues attached to this and that the challenges democracy in these examples really shouldn't be attributed to the structure of the government that they've outlined or named in their constitutions. Democracy is not a one-size-fits-all initiative. Every country has to develop and consolidate its institutions in a manner that are reflective of its unique history, its unique cultural and social makeup and as well as its decision, its custom of decision-making processes. Systemic transformation also doesn't and can't happen overnight and any attempts that we've seen around the world to do so generally failed quite miserably. Federalism is a success when the structures within the system have been able to mature and consolidate their independence of power within the larger structure while at the same time demonstrating that they actually can in fact engage and deliver for its citizens. Modern data-ships are created by co-opting or dismantling democratic institutions. It is increasing consolidation of power within the executive and eliminating the pre-existing power structures at a very basic level. A federal system with a greater number of centers of power make that transition not much harder. If you look at key examples such as Venezuela and Latin America it's transition to a complete authoritarian regime system over the past decade is one that would happen very slowly and very progressively. But the last bastions of defense to preventing a full authoritarianism government were governors and governments that were controlled by opposition leaders. It was local mayors that were refusing to reinforce unethical and illegitimate laws that were put into place. So creating different structures and different systems that can place a check and balance on the power of the central system is one of the strengths that federalism has in defending democracy. But at the end of the day if someone wants to consolidate power it doesn't particularly matter which system that they want to have they're going to work on impeding those particular systems. I'll leave that there for now. Thank you very much Monica for your perspective. Nico. Thank you Rupa for the opportunity. Fascinating that we can look at a topic from all sides of the world. My perspective will be based on Africa and very interesting development since the end of the Cold War the third wave of democratization taking place in Africa which is closely coupled with decentralization and the rise of a new number of new federal or hybrid federal countries and the big five is here Ethiopia, South Africa and Nigeria, Kenya and also the DRC the Democratic Republic of Congo which are the major countries in Africa. Now there's nothing particularly nothing Arthur was very clear on that that makes federations prone to democracy rather than not authoritarian regimes are both in unitary and federal states and one of the giveaways I always see is if you put the name of a country starting off in the Democratic Republic of Ethiopia then you know you're in trouble because it's neither be democratic nor federal and we see it across the world. One argument that it will be better for multi-party democracy or that federation would be better is that it will promote multi-party democracy in the real sense that there are winners and winners. It is not a one party take all as the case in a unitary state and so the prospect then is that federations with multi-levels of multiple centers of power could be governed by different political parties and giving real effect to multi-party democracy and we've seen a case here in South Africa in Kenya important but you can also see a very dominant party that hollows out this prospect of multi-party democracy and usually we find them or it's an exhibit or indicator of authoritarian rule is Ethiopia one party which at one stage had 100% of seats in national, regional and local government councils and there was a bit also in South Africa when a dominant party would govern eight of the nine provinces leaving only one province open to some truly multi-party democratic experience that is a change now with the loss of the ANC now for the first time in the local elections 20% of the vote with a number of municipalities now governed not by the municipality by the by the by the center and the ANC the other question that you ask or just shown up is the problem of what we understand of under democracy and how fidelism impact on that is whether where regions are regarded as equals although they don't have the same number of people in there. So in South Africa for example the largest geographical area in the country it's got one million people it's got 10 seats in the second house of parliament with the smallest geographical area but 15 times of population of Northern Cape has also got 10 seats so when your decision making is then affected you see the the popular inequality being trumped by regional equality and that becomes a strain on democracy and we saw in the US as how the federal system allowed Trump to beat Hillary Clinton the latter having the majority of votes so it's both that I would say can be advanced democracy particularly multi-party democracy on the other hand there's also a constraint on what we regard as more popular and I think what Monica is referring to representative democracy thank you very much Riko for your perspective Rikha Hi, thank you Rufa for this invitation and it's an honour to be part of this distinguished panel now I think generally in modern times federations and democracies they are congenial with each other in the sense that a federation in modern times is almost invariably democracy as well and I think among the extent federations practically all are democratic though as pointed out by other colleagues the degree may vary depending on different contexts political cultural historical context and examples are United States America Canada Switzerland Germany Australia India etc on the other hand I think both USSR in the past and also the Russian Federation in the present claimed or claimed to be federal but in strict conceptual and theoretical terms neither can be accepted as either democratic or federal and this is largely because the Communist Party of the USSR was thoroughly under an authoritarian leadership and even the Communist Party in the Russian Federation I think is also that's organization and leadership as far as India is concerned even in ancient times there were federations which were democratic called republics like the Vishali and like in ancient Greece but gradually they were conquered and by monarchies now having said that I think federations are likely to be less democratic because such a system may constitutionally give more powers to some communities unjustly at the cost of other communities for example in India until this article 370 was abolished with regard that gave special status to German Kashmir often it was criticized by a Hindu Hindu majority that Muslims enjoyed you know minority rights in the state of German Kashmir where they were in majority though within the state German Kashmir Hindus should have enjoyed these minority rights for the simple reason that they were minority within minor in that state despite being a national majority so in this instance I think pedilism is born to be a liability because minorities within minorities they feel vulnerable and so but Indian constitution has tried to protect the minorities within minorities by providing making some provisions in the constitution like article 350 a and b where it provides that every state you know must provide primary education in mother tongue and also provide for special officer for linguistic minorities and which is to be appointed by the president at different at regular intervals so but generally I think pedilism is an asset for India because it tries to reconcile diversity and thereby helps in national integration and promoting nationalism that's what I thank you. Thank you very much Shreya I mean already I can you know some ideas that are coming up I'm going to proceed performer with the next question but I just wanted to answer some of the issues that have already started coming up what is the issue of democracy in the center versus democracy in periphery the other is that of group right versus individual right that I mentioned and related to the to the former is an idea that Charles Tilly brought up in the 1980s early 90s of the state has organized crime and so thinking of the periphery as being a structure of federalism but we'll return to those in a minute I'm going to reverse the order of questioning at the next question so you know so the question is how can democracy be constructed in countries that have deep national racial ethnic linguistic or religious cleavages given that that you want a system that is democratic both in the center as well at the sub national level and I guess this relates a bit to the issue of individual versus of group rights so Monica why don't we start with you so I mean the framing of this today is about federalism and polarization and what I would describe of what we've seen in the United States over the last five years what we've seen across Latin America is that polarization has caused by marginalization by inequality and exclusion yes it definitely can be fueled by religious fundamentalism and social media but those at its core are not the root cause of it it's the underlying issue that these individuals whether they're individuals or groups feel that they've been left behind or cut out of a system that's supposed to actually be representing their particular interest and views and a federal system as much as decision making is designed to diffuse power unless a political grouping controls the political system it's not a guarantee that everyone's voice will in fact be represented at the decision making table if decisions are made against the interests of a particular group particularly if that group is not represented in that conversation the very legitimacy of the process and therefore the very legitimacy of the system itself can easily be called into question I actually think probably the most obvious example for this could be Canada in Canada's parliamentary system when we established the cabinet which is the foremost decision making body in our government system there's no set rule but informally every single prime minister and every single government does its best to ensure that there is a geographic representation from different regions of the country gender representation and ethnic and cultural representation wherever possible sometimes that's not possible where you've seen a lot of polarization developing Canada over the last in recent years has been at West and Alberta and Saskatchewan which are provinces that are not represented in the government governing party and therefore not represented in decision making processes so therefore you see a segment of the population that does not feel their voice is included in any of the discussions that are happening whether that's true or not is one question but the perception of it is a very tangible reality in Latin America one of the key issues that we've been seeing fueling populism and kind of polarization within the political communities is the endemic corruption that we've seen impact a number of the governments that Latin America which may surprise some people actually has the highest rates of inequality in the world and prior to the pandemic which kind of creates another layer of these particular discussions you already saw a number of widespread protests across the region when Odebrecht scandals relating to kind of Odebrecht the Brazilian construction company or the Panama papers came out where you're seeing vast pools of wealth within a tier of elite that there doesn't really change what the public ultimately wants is they want a government that actually delivers for them they want an economy that works they want job opportunities they want personal safety and personal security they want basic healthcare access to basic healthcare education for their children these aren't really high standards to set to but when you struggle to deliver these basic services whether it's a federal system or any other system it calls into your trust in any sort of governing factors it calls that into a particular question again coming back to the the first conversation that we had one of the advantages of the federal system is that you're not expecting one particular body or one particular group to solve all of those problems and give an answer to every single one of those questions you're not expecting a government in Sao Paulo to be responsible for the school district in a small district in the southwest tip of Brazil so you're divulging that power diffusing that power to people that are better suited to understand the needs of that particular community and to know where to build the school and to know what that education needs to require and in that sort of where the strength needs to be it's not just about is the system the right system but have we actually built the capacities within these particular systems to deliver the services to their individual communities that will in turn give by and ensure the trust and interests of the government itself thank you Arthur, if you would address the question please Yes, thank you and I think I can follow the statement of Monica but let me first try to understand what means deeply divided societies divided according to national racial and ethnic conflict I think the most serious problem of these societies is that one of the communities feels dominated by the majority in the society for different reasons for historical reasons or for structural reasons whatever it is and this leads to the fact that these societies lack something which is essential for democracy to work namely the mutual acknowledgement of citizens and communities as equal and the mutual trust of citizens and communities that they are able to determine their common fate there is mistrust and there is domination or perceived domination and that's the problem and the question is how can we solve this I'm not really an expert on this but it comes more from the western states including Canada where we can learn a lot how these things are solved because these are federations that struggle for a long time with these divides and I think there are two basic kinds of solution we can discuss one has to do with democracy and democracy can provide different ways to compensate the perceived or real dominance of minority communities for instance by providing special representative rules by providing veto rights on special issues which can protect the rights of these communities by providing participation right in particular policies and so on so democracy can provide ways to solve these problems these cleavages and this arbitrary domination but all these solutions require that these groups are organized that they can speak by representatives and that they can form a common will and now this is where federalism comes in my understanding federalism can provide an organization for these communities because federalism either on a territorial or on a personal basis can provide a structure where these communities, these minority communities can have their own government and can organize their own political processes so federalism is obviously important an important solution for these problems of deeply divided societies however federalism is not a solution because federalism is usually a solution which is based on the ideas that powers are divided and that these disadvantaged communities can autonomously decide on the affairs the problem is that in all particular in these federations in divided societies the problem is that autonomy and the division of power is always contested it's always contested when it comes to solve policy conflicts policy conflicts are always linked with power conflicts and in particular in these divided societies and the consequences we can only find a kind of balance or a kind of processes of balancing if the division of power and the relation between these minority and majority communities between federal government sub federal governments and minority governments so to speak have not fixed powers which are contested but that they can continuously adjust and negotiate the allocation of power this is clearly expressed by in a recent article where he said that multination federation has to be flexible a flexible dynamic federal arrangement this is a citation from flexible and dynamic arrangement require either constitutional amendments or renegotiation of the actual allocation of power now the problem is that these negotiations are increasingly difficult under the condition of polarization and as Wanika has clearly pointed out these societies suffer from polarization so how can we deal with this usually I will argue then we have to to separate power the emphasis would then be on autonomy but I don't think this is a solution because autonomy not only is contested autonomy leaves open the problem of a federation of every federation to deal with interdependence and even these minority communities if they deal with their their specific concerns they have to coordinate their policies with the majority society so they have to be linkages they have to be communication the only solution is in my view not so to speak established intergovernmental negotiations with always can run into a trap of confrontation the only solution is to find multiple linkages between parties in multi-party systems in integrated party system including regional parties and minority parties, ethnic parties in a common framework of a party system one solution could be inter-parliamentary relations committees of parliaments that have been discussed in Canada for instance which cannot decide of course but which can provide communication and which can provide a kind of structure that loosely links these different levels and different communities so what I think is that we should not only discuss these problems of divided societies in terms of a federalism which is based on autonomy and separation of power we have to find a federal system which can provide communication and linkages between these different societies so that they can overcome their polarization and their linkages Thank you, Arthur B. In Africa has been to use federalism as a problem solving device for deep not ethnic cleavages but civil war if you think of the most recent cases where they are busy trying to write a constitution is Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia this is born out of civil war and this will be what we are to look at the future for Ethiopia now the first answer and that's the autonomy answer is let democracy be devolved let there be self-rule in the classical federal term and so accommodation but then the problem of democracy is then the growth of chauvinism of ethnic chauvinism exclusive areas of accession all these problems rising so that per se cannot be the answer just accommodation of ethnic groups or religious groups so it's the context of trying to de-emphasize these cleavages by having soft borders for one so that a country of a region do not have clear ethnic rules cleansing and may also lead to secession the other counter one and this is where I want to join with Arthur is back to the old split self-rule and shared rule and very little attention is being paid to this notion of shared rule and this shared rule should run throughout and what I call the centralization of democracy is how do you share in legislation through the second chamber operationalize that as one angle of co-determining certain laws critical but then equally critical is the sharing of democratic institutions like the presidency where in a number of African countries Kenya and Nigeria you only get elected as president if you have widespread support in the number of regions at least half so that you are representing not an ethnic group but that you are at least claims 25% of half of the counties in Kenya must support you so that's the fact that the critical part which are also overlooked is that democracy is one thing a vote is another cooperative governance is a further one but it is the benefit that the regions the people from the regions have in the center where all the action is so it is the visualization in a sense of your central administration so that it reflect what they call in Nigeria the federal character and very little attention is paid about how do the regions join in common loyalty to the country not to the nation but to the country and that is through inclusion so the classical self rule and shared rule and shared rule being undervalued then the other one is because of unclean unclear boundaries dispersed groups is the notion of personal federalism as some people express it how do you as a group which is dispersed across the country can exercise and that's back to where you call the group rights in terms of education in terms of culture or can there be sufficient support for a group that hasn't got a territory and that could be a group or in person not being discriminated against because of your language or ethnicity thanks thank you Niko Rekha I think the only way democracy can be constructed in a deeply diverse and divided country is through federal accommodation of conflicting identities and interests and in my view these diversities cannot be suppressed by the centre because this approach would rather aggravate them and lead to untimely breakup and the examples are again aptly provided by the Indian subcontinent like India is one of the largest federal democracies and we have remained united because India has tried to strictly follow democracy and federalism as far as possible so we did not suffer to that and of course there have been aberrations but Indian constitution I would say has tried to accommodate diversity by providing individual rights in terms of fundamental rights for individuals and then group rights as pointed out by Niko and my other colleagues in Indian constitution also in article 29 and 30 with respect to cultural and educational rights for minorities and also there have been provisions for excluded groups and policy of protective discrimination and there have been institutional mechanisms to deal with instances of discrimination for minorities and most importantly the political provision of power sharing with regard to some states some regions like we had this article 370 with regard to Jamun Kashmir then article 371 ANG with regard to Nagaland and Mizoram then the entire family of article 371 except ANG for hinterland tribal populations and some other provisions and fifth and sixth schedules of the Indian constitution with regard to northeastern states so I think India has to a great extent you know these political provision of power sharing have been holding the nation together and if you see Nepal that is the nearest entry to the federal family so federalism tries to accommodate diversity and therefore though Nepal is not a large country but it is a very diverse nation however Pakistan in 1971 when the Punjabi dominated West Pakistan sought to ruthlessly suppress the Bengali majority in East Pakistan with you know even created into a separate nation of Bangladesh so I think as pointed when Iqo, Arth and Monika I think it is important also important to strengthen shared rule institution besides the self-rule institutions and developed communication linkages you know so that's what I think thank you Rika in the context of the self-rule given that many federations including the ones that Niko has talked about less so in Latin America but certainly in Africa and Asia given that many federations are constructed as compromises based on group identities within the context of shared rule how do you ensure full participation or democratization by groups who do not represent an identified community at the sub-national level I think there's need for in every federation we need some kind of provisions for protection of minorities within minorities like in India as I pointed out earlier though Muslims they are in majority in the state of Jammu and Kashmir but they are national minority similarly Hindus they are national majority but they are in minority in the state of Jammu and Kashmir or six for that example they are national minority for provisions for to protect the rights of these minorities within minorities and to some extent I think in I don't know about other federation but as I pointed out India there are of course minorities within minorities really vulnerable and that is one of the major I think problem in India how to protect the interest of these minorities within minorities but some there have been abrasions also so I think we need to do more in that direction to protect though there are some provisions in the constitution but the reality is different so we have to I don't justify it I think we need to stop it and to protect the interest of these groups I'm not going to say you're justifying it I'm just asking you a question and Nico the same question to you because I mean this is an issue in Africa as well where the question of minorities within minorities enfranchised minorities within minorities is something that many countries are grappling with so I'd be interested to hear your perspective on this you're muted unmute yourself please thank you we're tracking the moment with this very problem in Ethiopia where they built the federal system based on ethnicity which of course and they drew boundaries but none of the boundaries are complete or are linguistically pure so now they've got some minorities in a minority so at local government level but that again becomes a little fifter so the only way that I'll argue that you can proceed out of this is to make ethnicity not be governing or the overwhelming or the only criteria in proceeding and that's why coming used to the concept of soft boundaries meaning anyone in a given area has to stake in it as opposed to being outsiders not being able to get work because you only have jobs for the sands of the soil as they call it in Nigeria and you also have it very springing up in Kenya this notion that if I'm from this county I'm entitled to work and we exclude anyone else so it is a political shift and you can also probably in various mechanisms which move it away de-emphasizing ethnicity but talk about the economic unity of a particular region how it works and that there's space for others it's trying to not to unravel but to tone down this direct linkage between a minority and a territory so that there's space for others and you can do it with legal rules, non-discrimination in Ethiopia there were cases where in a particular area only if you spoke that language could you be employed which excluded anyone else next Arthur this is of course particularly pronounced in Africa and Asia but Europe is not or indeed North America this issue of dealing with minorities within minorities is not unknown if I heard you correctly when you made your opening statement you noted that the issue of interdependence in a federation allows sometimes for the persistence of shall we say less or the tolerance of less than totally democratic norms at the sub-national level how does one in your view in the context of the transatlantic federation deal with something like that well I have of course no solution this is a very difficult problem the general answer would be which you find in the older literature you should avoid majority rule majority democracy both at the federal and at the regional level the problem of course is deciding by negotiations can lead to deadlocks or can end up in compromises that don't really solve the problem I would point out to an interesting example we have in Europe which is you know it very well because it's a famous federation Switzerland nowadays doesn't count as a multinational divided federation but it was in the 90th century as you might know there was a Catholic part and a Protestant part in 1848 they even had a war and when they formed the federation the Protestants dominated so they had to solve this conflict and how did they do it the first solution was in a way a consensus or a representation of all parts of the federation in the government step by step they included representatives from the Catholic part in their government that's the reason why they have a council government but the other way they solved the problem was by introducing a pure majority democracy to come to the final decision which they made by referendum and referendum is a pure majority democracy however the effect of this referendum democracy is that all representatives of political parties and groups want to avoid the risk to become a minority in the majority decisions therefore they started to invent pre-negotiations and found agreement in order to avoid a final majority decision that's the reason why in the shadow of a majority democracy the Swiss invented a consensus democracy which is really a democracy aiming at a consensus, not a pure conflict this is a bit an idealization of this case but it probably shows that the solution which we have to find should always combine different elements of coming to solutions of conflicts because there are different ways to solve these conflicts and I think the other speaker in a way have also pointed out this argument Thank you very much Arthur Monica I'm going to turn to you and ask you two questions possibly both related but it's sort of a thread that's coming out through the discussion we just had given the hemisphere that you work in and the discussion around democratic backsliding in some countries in that hemisphere do you think federalism has acted as a break in some of these countries against democratic backsliding what do I mean by that had they not been federal countries would we have seen a greater degree of democratic backsliding or less so that's the first question the second question comes out of what Arthur said in the context of Switzerland about reaching majority decisions that are pre-negotiated and in this context I want to draw on your experience as somebody who's been in government in politics to reflect a little bit on the importance and utility of proportional representation or a mixed a system with mixed representation that's a mixed system to think about how one might overcome polarization so over to you those aren't dramatically different questions so I mean I alluded to I believe in my first answer that I genuinely believe the federal structure in Venezuela helps slow down the process of Maduro's transition to kind of a full blown dictatorship in failed state that we now see in Venezuela whereas you had different governors controlled by opposition parties that were able to withstand some of the early directives I mean by nature the transition from democracy to authoritarianism in the modern age to the incremental process that happens in plain sight we all see it happening but it's done with these small steps that its international community is very reluctant to engage and intervene until it's sort of well down the path of authoritarianism and I mean this is what we have seen in Venezuela and we're starting to see this pattern happen in other countries in the region as well or at least this trend which hopefully but the effort is to first is to consolidate power in the hands of the executive and initially those steps are about consolidating the military, the judiciary, the branches of government weakening any legislative capacity in any legislative authority I mean these are the first measures that Venezuela took and then after that you have to tackle the particular regions in Latin America generally both in South America and in Central America part of the advantage of decentralization is the development the geographic development number of these countries makes it very difficult to govern particular regions this is one of the greatest challenges with the peace process in Colombia where you have certain segments of the country that don't actually have a functioning government that has maintained control over certain territories one of the most prominent programs run by the OAS is something called the international judicial facilitators program about creating sort of these ad hoc unofficial but official judicial procedures that can have these trained judges go out to communities where they don't actually have a court system or access to a police service in some of these more rural communities but then they can still get access to justice despite the fact that the government programs and government capacity doesn't exist in these particular scenarios I mean the geography of Mexico of Brazil of Argentina like it's a very very physically large countries with a lot of unruly territory that it's difficult to govern now that's an advantage to kind of scapegoating you can kind of pass the blame to states but at some point if you want to control power you have to eliminate those as well and this is what you saw happen in Venezuela where governors began to be removed from office and banned from running for office mayors began to target whenever the kind of consolidation of power to the executive that process probably would have happened much faster if you didn't have kind of these last boundaries in place as well I want to be very careful how I phrase my next example but I think you've seen some interesting tension points taking place in Brazil under the current administration where you're seeing particularly in response to the COVID crisis where you're seeing some governors determined that they want to respond differently than the executive of their country and so they're engaging in different policy practices to provide support services and gain access to vaccines and deliver programs in the country then the national government would be in that particular scenario some of these tension points definitely hold true in Mexico as well although their challenges are very different in terms of kind of a lot more based on security and interest the opportunity of federalism in these scenarios is that again you are creating different centers of power and accountability when the federal executive is not responsible for everything other people have capacity to run their societies, create freedoms and create structures that don't necessarily have to adhere to the different systems so you can kind of create these pockets within a broader society where democracy continues to function in a stronger fashion than it would be if we were to define early about democracy in the center versus on the edge and on the margins there have been many discussions about path back to democracy in Venezuela and what that could potentially look like and a number of those scenarios actually include looking at particular states that might be able to reestablish more democratic structures rather than starving at the actual center to your point about reaching a majority and reaching a majority of decisions is this is the beauty of the Canadian political system I need to preface this with I actually am a huge proponent of the first pass the post system I think Canada has probably not a perfect well imperfect democracy it's one that works pretty well and while yes we can definitely speak on the margins I don't believe in transforming a system when it's not really proven to be particularly necessary but this is also what I think is the beauty of the system as a true democrat even though I come from one particular political background I genuinely believe that you need to actually have a transition back and forth between those holding power so you can actually have a reflective society and by nature the political system will shift to the left at one point and it will shift back to the right at another point in that sort of how you maintain balance of those particular structures but I think what you've seen in Canada I think the public is quite content with the government that is perceived to have to engage with all the other parties in order to create a decision we just went to an election where the outcome was a second minority government where the message to that is we want a coordinated collective discussion between the different groups and the different interests of government in your decision making process I don't think this is a bad thing no good decision comes when you're in isolation and surrounded by a group of people that all think the same way and perceive the same way when you're looking at the wake of the Covid crisis these are not isolated issues that have to be tackled by a particular community it's a whole global community that has to deal with this so for Canada that means you have to figure out a rebuilding and a response that's going to work for British Columbia as much as it will for Atlantic Canada as much as it will for the territories and Ontario in Latin America you kind of have this similar pattern on a geographic scale with the human flow of people from one state to the next with the informal economy transcending borders by having one particular country try to create a solution that's going to work for them that's not actually going to respond to resolve the Covid crisis or focus on rebuilding it is about creating these building consensus and finding interests in different groups where there's a win for everybody or maybe not a win for everybody but an advantage for everybody that they can see the net gain in what the outcome is going to be even if it isn't their best case scenario because increasing we're looking at what we're faced with and particularly as governments we're faced with challenges that aren't tailored to our particular community but a piece of it's going to affect us to address. Thank you very much Rekha just to take off from the question I asked Monica about in the context of South Asia in the context of the Indian subcontinent in the context of India do you think electoral systems may have some bearing on representation in the context of the country that you know best? Definitely I think as Monica also pointed out in case of Canada and in Nepal also you know there have been combination mixed electoral system with regard to FTPT and proportional representation and in India we have first party post electoral system but since 1989 there was a lot of discussion about switching over to this proportional representation system that is its due but after this there was a commission which in its terms of reference mentioned that the reforms have to be suggested within the basic without destroying the basic structure of the constitution that is parliamentary form of government but since 1989 I think we have switched over from one party dominance to multi-party system and so within the first party post electoral system effects of proportional representation are visible in the fragmented party system since 1989 and we are seeing many no parties getting absolute majorities except till 2014 no party got absolute majority and we saw minority coalition governments coalition of 24 parties and so I think there is no need to switch over to proportional representation system because effects of proportionality are visible in the fragmented party system and so I don't think there is some mindless means to switch over to proportional representation because we have seen coalition of 24 parties we will switch over to proportional representation we will see coalition of 50 parties so it has a bearing on this representation so but till 2014 we had this multi-party coalition government but since 2014 till date we are seeing one party majority government so of course this representation has become a big challenge but I hope in future again this multi-party system is not going to go away it's going to stay here and yeah thank you Nico staying with the issue of parties and given the context in which you work does the presence of a dominant party necessarily reduce the level of polarization do you think in a country like South Africa certainly and that goes again about the nature of the party if it's an open democratic party and it seeks to be inclusive fantastic the ANC was always known as the broad church everyone felt belonging to and in a sense it was highly necessary that we didn't have a fragmented party system which you can't get government we now pass that so we are now facing the reality of multi-parties coming through a system of proportional representation which we added all three levels and now the major cities must be governed, metros are being governed by minority groups by minority parties all voting against now the advantage of this would be you have the strange bedfellows now I would almost call right wing white dominated party official opposition plus an Africanist party governing now in Johannesburg the biggest city with a massive budget larger than many provinces and they are only united to the extent that they don't like the ANC and can these two groups somewhere get a level of governance and principles compromises together to make the economy grow in Johannesburg because we are in the dismal state which is actually back to an earlier point that Arthur was making about the Swiss system now in South Africa the concept of democracy was 50% plus one is the norm and if you get 50% plus one you take everything after the exclusion of everyone else and it was then in the first five years that you only had a transition a transitional government of national unity for five years because the norm is there shall be 50% plus one and the ability of a country and then I talk with most countries in Africa the ability to govern as coalitions with minority groups there is lot to say because it's again the story of the feeling excluded the feeling of marginalised knowing that there's a permanent majority and we will never get any look into resources won't be spread to us we will have to fight for those resources in a more or less a federal setting so the investment of trying to bring in a notion that shared rule at the centre as government and this is what happened in Switzerland as Arthur was telling us to stop the war with the Catholic and the Protestants that you developed this council and it's worked and it works now we're right-wing parties the people's party must govern with the left-wing with the greens somehow there's a collective responsibility now if you can get that working in highly divided society which means that one has to get divorced with the idea that democracy is a straight jacket of 15% plus one Thank you very much Nico Arthur I want you to so in some of the questions that I've raised so far I've woven in questions that we've had from the audience and in turning to you Arthur I'm asking you if you could reflect a little bit on the paper that you did for us recently on federal democracy and the challenges of polarization on whether you think the erosion of democracy can lead to the failure of the federal system and or the erosion of federalism might lead to the end of democracy Well, thank you Indeed there is a certain tension between federalism and democracy because federalism is a system of division of power between levels of governments which are in democratic systems necessarily organized on a territorial level and as I said the real problems that have to be solved don't so to speak are congruent with the structure of territories and the division of power so this is one issue in a federal system it divides power but also it requires power sharing in different modes of coordination this is a quite open question and on the other hand democracy has necessarily to be organized within these territorial constitutions constituencies because this is the only way that you bring together the government the scope of government and citizens that are able to control the government that is exerting power over them so in a way democracy has to be organized in a territory and federalism is more or less functioning between territories so to speak so these are two dimensions of institutions which are linked the processes that go on in these institutions the actors that are involved the patterns of interactions and the mode of decision making are different so there is a kind of tension always in a federal system and these tensions can of course lead to not only conflicts they can also lead to deadlock situations in policymaking they increase conflicts over power they can lead to a vicious cycle of thrust and repost in policymaking or in contests about power so there is a certain risk in these kinds of federal democracies and this risk increases of course with polarization polarization is really a bad situation for federal democracies because these federal democracies have a big advantage compared to autocracies and to unitary systems in their diverse structure in their multi-dimensional structure they allow to express different conflicts they represent different groups and they in a way also institutionalize conflict and the managing of conflicts of societies and these tensions not only are the disadvantages of federal democracies they are so to speak also the driving forces of democracies and federal democracies because these tensions as well as the conflicts and the contestation of power are so to speak elements of the democratic process and the multi-dimensional institutionalization of these conflicts allows to bring different matters on the agenda of politics they drive responsible political actors to respond to these different demands to take into account different interests to take into account the interests of others that are expressed in these complex political systems and always to search for compromises and to search for agreements of course we should also be aware that because nobody is finally supreme even if there is majority democracy or if there is separation of power nobody is supreme in these complex systems and if there always has to be a search of agreements under the condition that power and decisions can always be contested these federal system require always to search for a balance of power and interests however there is never a final balance of power of interest so federal democracies in a way has processes of managing conflicts and of searching balance of continuing searching of balance polarization can of course seriously damage these processes they can be serious problems and in particular for federal democracies because as we know from literature on democracy the lash of democracy polarization usually materializes as in democracy as ideological conflicts between parties as conflicts between extremist parties however in a federal democracy it can in a way shift and transfer to the relations between levels of governments it can affect the coordination of policies and environmental relations I think the American system is currently a good example that this problem in a way reinforces the polarization within the federal system so there is in a way a certain risk of polarization within federal democracies however I strongly believe that federal democracies provide also solutions that can reduce and mitigate polarization and the reason why is and we have discussed about it the reason why is that federal democracy in a way compels actors to deal with these continuous tensions and if you look at the solutions that has found in real federations for these conflicts you find that in practice there are many ways to manage these conflicts not so much in organizing or reforming democracies because election systems, patterns of democracies are quite difficult to change they have usually to be as given the chance that we discussed about this the chance to deal with this polarization is to find modes of multi-level governance modes of multi-level coordination that support democracy that bring people together in communicative structures not in decision making decision making has to be left finally to the democratic institution within governments but the organization of federal systems has to be in a way so that this coordination between levels has to be made in a democracy preserving way leaving opportunities for parliaments, for citizens to make the final decisions by considering external effects and consequences of these decisions to others and there are many solutions and ideas to find this democracy preserving coordination mainly they are so to speak soft processes, communicative processes where there is no final decision where there is continuous adjustment of coordination so to speak a mutual adjustment a continuous mutual adjustment and mutual respect so this is a way to let's say flexibly combine the different institutional conditions that we have in federal and democratic systems which create tensions which enforce so to speak actors in a pragmatic way to deal with tensions and that can in the last resource also reduce tensions and polarization these are very abstract and probably not clearly practical idea these ideas always have to be applied to very specific situation that vary between different countries but I at least do hope that they could probably provide some guidelines for further discussions and for creative actors in particular federations and democracies Thank you very much Arthur before I close the panel we do have a question specifically that came up while you were talking about the issue of the issue of ethnic polarization soft waters so I'll open this question up for anyone who wants to answer and the question is with the suggestion of soft waters between federal entities especially those that embody ethnic differences to combat polarization how should threats of secession be managed so whoever wants to take this Nico go ahead I just think the federation is in the end a compact and and you stay in this compact if it's attractive if it becomes unattractive people want to get out and in Africa there was attempts to federalize Sudan to make it attractive for the South to remain in Sudan and nothing was done. So it's the notion of this common citizenship the notion of substantive equality of citizenship so it doesn't really matter where you live you go entitled to a certain level of conditions of living, of education, of health so that it is an attractive proposition to remain there and that you share in the benefits and the resources of a country so and that goes back to my earlier point if in fact you think all your benefits will come only from your unit then I think one do not share in the benefits of the entire country it sets the unit on course for secession and so the emphasis again build the center build the attractiveness of being together and there are a number of techniques to do so thank you anyone else like to go ahead Monica I just kind of want to build on that point I mean I mean the advantage for a democratic system generally whether it's federal or not is that there was a positive incentive for people to participate I mean democracy is founded in a social contract or individuals at a very basic level give up certain rights to be part of a broader community because there's interest that's personal security it's economic opportunity it's like border security and whether it's an ethnic group or a particular segment or state population or geographic population what matters is that they actually feel that their voices are heard and there's a difference in their voices it doesn't mean that the decision has to go their way every single time but they have to feel themselves represented in not only in the discussions but in the outcome of those decisions as well democracy inevitably needs to be organic and federalism in and of itself its opportunity and its strength lies in the fact that it actually has the capacity to offer this unique specialization that unique specialization that they understand the interests of this particular ethnic community or they understand this geographic or industry related particular issue that they have that particular expertise to benefit that community the tensions and the divisions and appetite for succession frustration with governments generally come from the lack of communication and when that dialogue starts being one sided when people are calling and demanding things from government and then there's no response on that other particular side so the key answer to that is essentially making sure that these federal structures actually function and can actually deliver for their particular citizens Thank you very much Can I come in? Just to add to what my colleague said I think one of the advantages of federal democracy especially in case of India is that like in other federation also that groups that are aspiring for a greater tonic would bargain with the federal government and that has happened there have been several commissions which have been set up in India from time to time and different state governments they have sent their memorandums their demands and they have been the like Sakaria commission and the Panchi commission and they have tried to accommodate their demands so it depends I think it's not the other side it's not only about power sharing political power sharing but also sharing the commonwealth of the nation so and India has, Indian constitution has provided for equalization of payments and through for poorer provinces and of course there's a lot to be achieved but I think in India federalism and democracy they are synonymous and it has helped in achieving national unity in a deeply divided quality like India and thanks to the freedom struggle against the British colonial rule and also to the nationalist leadership in the narrow and I would say post narrow era which could not have been possible on the basis of just one man one boat to begin with so I think federal principles of power sharing helped in holding the nation together but of course there it can be there are disadvantages also in Indian case also as I pointed out earlier with regard to some commentaries getting more privileges and some ethnic groups like 35A that was discriminatory to women in case of German between residents of the state and other Indian citizens but also between two state citizens on the basis of declaring some as prominent residents while other losing it out but on the whole I would say that in India it has been advantages and they go together democracy and federalism go together because with diversities and complexities that India has would not have been united into a nation without the federal principle and if India survives as a nation it's I think mainly due to the role of federal constitution thank you thank you I think we're going to wrap up the session now there are a couple of other questions that we won't we won't be able to answer particularly given given the time at hand so I want to thank the panelists for their time and contributing to this discussion I know we deviated a bit from the script that that we had circulated but I think it was very important to touch on some of these points because some of the questions that are incoming and have come in the past through the course of the discussion touch on some of these issues that are directly related to conflict management and federalism and the complexity of managing a federal system and of course I always say that he has federal systems that are more complex than unitary systems but one of the reasons in the federation is because they're dealing with complex issues of diversity of complex societies divided societies and that just is the nature of the beast so thank you everyone who participated watched us and a special thanks for the panelists who took time out of the very busy schedule to be with us across many different time zones and we hope to see you back at a future discussion. Thank you