DEMOCRATIC BACKSLIDING IN FEDERAL STATES

This chapter investigates whether federalism affects the way that authoritarianism spreads in a backsliding liberal democracy, and more urgently, whether a federal structure either insulates subnational liberal democracies from the effects of an authoritarian takeover of the central government or impedes democratic backsliding at the national level. It concludes that federalism provides no such protection except perhaps in unusual circumstances. Federal systems are complex and contain many interpenetrating mechanisms that together make it very difficult for the two levels of government to seal themselves off from one another. Recent experience in the United States illustrates one such mechanism: when political parties in a federal state enjoy strong vertical integration, a significant driver of subnational authoritarianism is co-partisanship at the national and subnational levels. As a result, Republican Party control of the apparatus of subnational governance is strongly associated with the deployment of commonplace strategies of democratic backsliding. Similarly, although the autonomy and power enjoyed by subnational units can sometimes allow them to mount initial resistance to nationally authoritarian measures, experience shows that such resistance typically is met with strong and usually effective counter-measures.