Rethinking The Origins of Federalism: Puzzle, Theory, and Evidence from Nineteenth-Century Europe

Abstract

This article examines the paradox of how federal political institutions are created: how can a state-building core be unyielding enough to forge a union but accommodating enough to grant federal concessions to subunits? A comparison of the trajectories of national unification in nineteenth-century Germany and Italy indicates that the formation of federations does not come about exclusively through voluntary “contract”; instead, coercion and cooperation go hand in hand in the formation of all states, including federations. Whether the outcome is federal or unitary depends on the level of subunit infrastructural capacity at the moment of founding.The article finds that where the constituents of a potential federation are parliamentary and well governed, they can deliver the benefits of state formation, assuring their continued existence in a federation. Where such subunits are patrimonial and poorly governed, they are absorbed within a unitary model of governance. This institutional explanation supplements accounts emphasizing the cultural sources of federalism and revises arguments that only militarily weak founding cores make federal concessions to their constituents.