In this political science course you will learn about the twin concepts of federalism and decentralization. You will develop an understanding of the core ideas that federalism and decentralization rest on, and study the building blocks that make them both work. Following a general overview of both federalism and decentralization, we will examine a number of case-studies from Africa where federalism and decentralization have been changing the continent’s political landscape in the last twenty years, coinciding with unprecedented levels of economic growth. What is federalism and how is it different from decentralization? What are the core ideas behind these concepts? Do federalism and decentralization enhance democracy, governance and diversity? Is that why virtually all countries south of the Sahara are now either federal or decentralized? We will be looking at Africa's track-record in order to answer these questions. By the end of the course, you will have acquired a general knowledge of federalism/decentralization and additional empirical knowledge of a number of African cases. Upon completion you will also acquire the ability to unpack and understand a variety of potential consequences of federalism/decentralization reforms in the developing world.
Overview - Three Scholarly Angles
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From the course by Universiteit Leiden
Federalism & Decentralization: Evaluating Africa's Track Record
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From the lesson
The Building Blocks of Federalism and Decentralization
In this module we will discuss the various legal, political, and social foundations of federalism and decentralization. As you can see, this topic requires a true interdisciplinary perspective.
Meet the Instructors
Dr. Jan Erk
Fellow, Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, (STIAS)
Greetings to you all.
This is the overview video that concludes Module 3,
on the building blocks of Federalism and Decentralization.
As an interdisciplinary course on Federalism and
Decentralization, we tried to ensure that all relevant scholarly anglss are pursued.
In order to bring a sense of order to what otherwise,
looks like impenetrable complexity.
After all, what we see is gonna be influenced from the way we look.
And as we had concluded in the last video lecture, none of these
academic disciplines, on their own, can provide a comprehensive, and
coherent picture that captures all aspects of Federalism and Decentralization.
And since,
the starting points of analysis rest on different intellectual foundations, and
since different scholarly disciplines have different goals and different aspirations,
the insights in findings do not seamlessly come together at the end.
Nevertheless, it is imperative that we employ these different
perspectives in order to reach the closest holistic approximation of
the workings of Federalism and Decentralization.
Now let's look back at Module 3's video lectures,
in the light of this perspective.
In Module 3, we looked at the building blocks of Federalism along different
scholarly angles.
This is the last thematic module we cover,
before jumping into the case studies in the next modules.
So it is important for us to look back, and take stock.
The video lecture 1 examined the Legal foundations.
Federalism studies has its origins in the studies of Constitutional law, and to
this day, especially in Africa, a number of legal scholars have been involved in
the design, and the implementation of Federalism, and Decentralization.
The legal angle remains an important approach in the study of Federalism,
in the West too.
In very basic terms, in the video in lecture 1,
we looked at the constitutions, courts, and a bill of rights.
And how constitutions distribute authority,
rest at the core of who does what.
And that is the basis for Federalism and Decentralization.
Without the legal foundations, we would not know where to start.
In fact, we would probably have no topic to discuss, at all.
As institutional, constitutional measures introducing the corporate
recognition of regional states, the collective representation of communities,
and across the board territorial evolution,
what is in the law is always the first step in the analysis.
But it might not always be, the final word.
We would need the political and social context to understand,
not the institutional aspects of formal design, but
to understand how formal institutions, constitutions really work.
Politics and society are the factors that determine the day to day working of
Federalism and Decentralization, as well as their long term historical trajectory.
Video lecture 2 on the other hand, examined the Political foundations.
Political approaches have become more widespread Internationally,
in the last few decades.
In political science the emphasis tends to be a little
more comparative than the legal approaches that we looked at in video lecture 1.
And particularly in the study of western federations, contemporary political
science works are more likely to adopt the variable-based approach, and
more focused on narrow research questions.
That is one zooms in one important explanatory variable,
say the number of votes regional states have in the upper House of Parliament.
And then adopts a cross-country comparative research design,
in order to explore this aspect of Federalism only,
with an eye to seeking explanations that are generalizable across cases.
For example, one examines a hypothesized causal relationship
between a number of regional states in the federation, and political stability.
In order to do this, focus is limited to this binary causal relationship
between what is known as the dependent and independent variables.
That is what is explained, and the explanation in other words.
One examines this hypothesized causal relationship across
a number of case studies of federal states to see, if the relationship holds.
The political foundations of Federalism and
Decentralization can cover various issues, that are not strictly of legal nature.
The representation of the regional states at the center was one of the key issues,
we examined in video lecture 2.
But also important is the type of political parties, and
the political system.
Do we see a nationwide parties cutting across regional state jurisdictions, and
campaigning nationally.
Or do we see political parties that are only active at the regional level, or
indeed, only active within one regional state.
Are there multiple parties competing for
the control of various orders of government, or is this a case where we see
one nationally dominant party controlling most orders of government.
Altogether, political factors that we look at,
play an important role in the foundations of Federalism.
These political factors are often uncodified, and
malleable to change over time.
Now this does not make them less relevant, of course.
We might be able to say exactly the same thing about the important, but
uncodified societal foundations of Federalism and Decentralization.
The video lecture 3 adopted this scholarly perspective,
that has so far remained a minority view in comparative Federalism.
That is a more society centered,
sociological perspective that looks at uncodified factors that
might not initially appear to be directly related to politics.
There is social cleavages in the country, be it economic, ethnic, linguistic,
religious, cultural, are indeed important, uncodified factors
that influence the workings of Federalism, and Decentralization.
Society-based approaches do not come and meet, technical, legal categories.
They are not open to easy operationalization.
These are not factors formally codified in legislation,
and enshrined in constitutions, proposed in reforms.
These are large scale macro structural characteristics
that are likely to evolve, gradually over time.
While remaining out of federal design and formal terms,
they nonetheless, played a central role in determining, how things work in practice.
The fact that they are hard to identify and operationalize should not mea,n
that we should exclude these society-based analyses from our investigation.
Now, I wanna leave you with a little joke on this matter.
You've probably heard this one before, but
it does have some relevance to what we're discussing here.
There is a drunker on his knees, looking for something under street lights one
night, and people passing by ask him, hey, what is going on have you lost something?
Are you looking for something?
And the drunk looks up, and replies that indeed, he is looking for
his car keys under the street lights.
People then ask, oh, so you drop them right here, under the street lamp.
And he says, no, no, no, no I drop them back in that dark alley,
but the light is much better here, he says.
So the next time, we'll be looking at our case studies, and
we'll make sure to put the spotlight on the well lit, as well as the dark corners,
in order to find the key that unlocks Federalism and Decentralization.
I'll see you then.
Bye.
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