(from the Conlawprofs Listserv)
Taking your invitation to cite 'any literature' broadly, rather than just re: 'democratic interests,' there is Niall Ferguson's Empire, Basic Books/Penguin, 2002, in bookstores now, particularly the last chapter, and final page (370), where he's summing up lessons to be learned from the former British Empire, and citing John Buchan, WWII Director of British Intelligence, who wrote in 1940:
"...There are on the globe only two large-scale organizations of social units, the United States and the British Empire. The latter is [no longer] for export...But the United States...is the supreme example of a federation in being...If the world is ever to have prosperity and peace, there must be some kind of federation -- I will not say of democracies, but of States which accept the reign of Law. In such a task she seems to me to be the predestined leader."
The British experience with imperial federation, and our own since 1898, particularly our latest efforts in projecting power abroad, deserve comparison. Ferguson nicely recounts the British experience from how they absent-mindedly backed into empire, dealt with it, and lost it in conflicts with competing empires:
Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union.
Of particular interest is the distinction between the white dominions (America, Canada, Australia, N. Zealand) and (what Ferguson calls) the nonwhite (Ireland [I KNOW!], India, Burma, the Mideast, various African controlled states - Egypt, S. Africa, etc.
Some were destined for democracy some day far off in the future and others weren't.
Federation, it appears, exists along a long continuum of different power relationships ranging from loose alliance to client state to partnership of a sort to total control. As for democracy, good luck, and to keep our esteemed host happy, see Bush v. Gore.
Bob Sheridan
SFLS
***
On Behalf Of Robert Justin Lipkin
Sent: Friday, May 30, 2003 2:08 PM
To: CONLAWPROF
Subject: Federalism and Democracy
I'm interested in any literature--in law, political science, or history--that discusses the relationship between democracy and federalism. Specifically, I have in mind this issue. Federalism, arguably, can be reconceptualized as the relationship between two democracies or two democratic interests. Under which circumstances should one democracy's interest trump the other's? My hunch is that much of the language of federalism, to mention just one example, "dual sovereignty," is problematic, though fortunately not irreducible; indeed, conceptual clarity might be achieved by dropping this term in favor of the idea of cooperative democracies, warring democracies, take your pick. At any rate, does the literature contain any proposals for reducing our common parlance about federalism into the terms of democratic theory?
Bobby Lipkin
Widener University School of Law
Delaware