Adapting Federalism: Indigenous Peoples and Multilevel Governance in Canada and the United States
Year: 2009
Type: preprint
Abstract: A significant body of literature has recently emerged on federalism in culturally and ethnically diverse societies. In addition to theory driven work on institutional design in multinational federations, recent empirical analyses have focused on the impact of ethno-linguistic diversity on the working and evolution of federations. These analyses point to the relative plasticity of federal systems in adapting to the social fabric of a polity, thus ensuring both the stability of the federal union and its capacity to adapt to the ongoing tensions created by ethnic and linguistic divisions. They also provide an important insight into how multinational federations evolve by inviting us to shift our focus away from the “high politics” of constitutional design and pay more attention to the policy process as a space where institutional patterns are redefined and adapted to reflect ethno-linguistic divides in federations. Like most of the literature on federalism in multinational societies however, authors working on policy-level change assume national minorities have some degree of control over at least one of the constituent units of the federation. What happens in cases where territorially defined minorities do not control the institutions of one of the federated units? Indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States are a classic case of small, territorially defined, minorities who were excluded from the original federal compact of both countries. Can federalism adapt to Indigenous claims? If so, how? Building on theories of path dependent institutional change, I suggest federalism in Canada and the United States has evolved in light of Indigenous autonomy demands. This evolution, however, is largely taking place at the margin of the federal system, through processes of governance that are layered over, and often in tension with, the formal division of powers and intergovernmental regimes that characterize Canadian and American federalism.
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Author: Martín Papillon
Institution: University of Ottawa
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1491909362