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Federalist and Functionalist Projects in Recent History

Federalism and Democratic Peace Theory

Federalism in Foreign Policy

Federalist Documents

Federalist and Functionalist Projects in Recent History

John Fiske Manifest Destiny,  American Political Ideas viewed from Standpoint of Universal History, 1870-80

Baruch Plan, 1946

The Marshall Plan Speech, Harvard, June 5, 1947 by General George C. Marshall, Secretary of State of the United States

“European Recovery Program Basic Document No. 1”, October 31, 1947; Clark Clifford Papers.

Schuman Plan, Declaration of 9 May, 1950 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Founding treaties of the European Union [Full Texts]

Federalism and Democratic Peace Theory

J. M. Owen IV, Iraq and the Democratic Peace, From Foreign Affairs, November/December 2005

E. D. Mansfield and J. Snyder, Electing to fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War, MIT Press, 2005

(....) This last part of the puzzle is even more complicated than it first appears. Enter Mansfield and Snyder, who have been contributing to the democratic peace debate for a decade. Their thesis, first published in 1995, is that although mature democracies do not fight one another, democratizing states -- those in transition from authoritarianism to democracy -- do, and are even more prone to war than authoritarian regimes. Now, in Electing to fight, the authors have refined their argument. As they outline in the book, not only are "incomplete democratizing" states -- those that develop democratic institutions in the wrong order -- unlikely ever to complete the transition to democracy; they are also especially bellicose.

According to Mansfield and Snyder, in countries that have recently started to hold free elections but that lack the proper mechanisms for accountability (institutions such as an independent judiciary, civilian control of the military, and protections for opposition parties and the press), politicians have incentives to pursue policies that make it more likely that their countries will start wars. In such places, politicians know they can mobilize support by demanding territory or other spoils from foreign countries and by nurturing grievances against outsiders. As a result, they push for extraordinarily belligerent policies. Even states that develop democratic institutions in the right order -- adopting the rule of law before holding elections -- are very aggressive in the early years of their transitions, although they are less so than the first group and more likely to eventually turn into full democracies.

Of course, politicians in mature democracies are also often tempted to use nationalism and xenophobic rhetoric to buttress their domestic power. In such cases, however, they are usually restrained by institutionalized mechanisms of accountability. Knowing that if they lead the country into a military defeat or quagmire they may be punished at the next election, politicians in such states are less likely to advocate a risky war. In democratizing states, by contrast, politicians know that they are insulated from the impact of bad policies: if a war goes badly, for example, they can declare a state of emergency, suspend elections, censor the press, and so on. Politicians in such states also tend to fear their militaries, which often crave foreign enemies and will overthrow civilian governments that do not share their goals. Combined, these factors can make the temptation to attack another state irresistible. Read More

D. Deudney, Publius Before Kant: Federal-Republican Security and Democratic Peace, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 10, No. 3, 315-356 (2004)

Reflecting American and allied ascent, Liberal IR theorists have revived earlier theorists, notably Kant and democratic peace, constructing neoclassical liberalism to challenge Realism. Republican security theory (RST) begins in antiquity and reaches a conceptual watershed in the Enlightenment, not in Kant, but in Publius = Federalist. Pessimistic, RST assumed republics were small and expansion would fatally deform, a conclusion derived from Roman history. In a pivotal advance, Publius advanced federal union, suggesting the federal-republican security hypothesis — federal union enables republican viability in competitive interstate systems. Kant does not address the logically and historically prior question of how democracies come to populate competitive state systems sufficiently to make pacific unions. The historical record of the global industrial state system suggests federal-republican security is more important than democratic peace.

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A. Pagden, Imperialism, liberalism & the quest for perpetual peace, Daedalus, Vol. 134, Issue 2, Spring 2005

  … The long-term political objectives of the United States, which have varied little from administration to administration, have been to sustain and, where necessary, to create a world of democracies bound inexorably together by international trade. And the political forms best suited to international commerce are federations (such as the European Union) and trading partnerships (the OECD or NAFTA), not empires.

… With due allowance for the huge differences between the late eighteenth century and the early twenty-first, and between what Kant understood by representative republics and what is meant today by liberal democracies, the United States' vision for the world is roughly similar: a union of democracies, certainly not equal in size or power, but all committed to the common goal of greater prosperity and peace through free trade. The members of this union have the right to defend themselves against aggressors and, in the pursuit of defense, they are also entitled to do their best to cajole so-called rogue states into mending their ways sufficiently to be admitted into the union. This is what Kant called the "cosmopolitan right."· We may assume that Truman had such an arrangement in mind when he said that the American system could only survive by becoming a world system….

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S. A. Silverstone Federal Democratic Peace: Domestic Institutions,International Conflict, and American Foreign Policy, 1807-1860 

Recent studies note that a shortcoming in democratic peace literature is the dearth of research on how institutional variation among different types of democracies will affect conflict decision making and the likelihood of constraints on the use of force.  This article addresses this shortcoming by examining how America?s distinctive federal institutional structure produces a particular set of constraints on the use of force that are significantly different than what we find in other democracies.  Federalism is the key organizing principle behind the electoral systems for legislative offices as well as the presidency, the internal composition of Congress, and the political party system.  Federalism introduces a territorial component to domestic politics that produces constraints on the use of force in several ways.  It magnifies the executive?s electoral vulnerability to regional sources of opposition, increases competition within Congress over military policy, weakens the ability of political parties to centralize decision making, and decreases the executive?s ability to control the policy agenda.   The logic of a theory of ?federal democratic peace? is then tested against a series of international crises involving the United States between 1807 and 1860.  In eleven of the fourteen cases examined, the United States was constrained in its use of force.  In all eleven cases, the dynamics of American federalism provide a superior explanation to realist and liberal alternatives.

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Federalism in Foreign Policy

"Les diplomates canadiens ont joué un rôle considérable dans les discussions visant à établir les bases de l'Organisation du Traité de l'Atlantique Nord (OTAN). Leur apport le plus visible et le mieux connu est l'article II du Traité de Washington (avril 1949), lequel invite les membres de l'Alliance atlantique à renforcer la coopération dans les domaines non militaires. Mais dans l'esprit de dirigeants et de diplomates tels que Louis Saint-Laurent (ministre des Affaires extérieures, puis premier ministre), Lester Pearson (sous-secrétaire d'état, puis secrétaire d'état aux Affaires extérieures) et Escott Reid (sous-secrétaire d'état adjoint aux Affaires extérieures), l'article II devait être beaucoup plus que ce que les commentateurs en retiennent aujourd'hui. à leurs yeux, il n'était en effet que la première étape d'un projet, original et audacieux, visant la formation d'une « Communauté nordatlantique ». L'Alliance devait ainsi servir de fondement à une fédération d'états, et donc à une autorité supranationale.Dès 1950, l'Alliance atlantique a évolué dans un sens différent de celui que souhaitaient Pearson, Saint-Laurent et Reid, et leur projet de Communauté transatlantique, rangé depuis parmi les curiosités de l'Histoire, n'attire à peu près plus l'attention des chercheurs. Cet épisode présente néanmoins un grand intérêt, car il permet de vérifier certaines hypothèses qui font l'objet de débats entre les théoriciens des relations internationales, notamment les « réalistes » et les « constructivistes ». (...)

Aux yeux des dirigeants canadiens, le Pacte atlantique devait être plus qu'une alliance au sens classique du terme, c'est-à-dire un engagement d'assistance mutuelle. Non seulement le Pacte devait-il englober les questions de défense, mais il devait aussi s'étendre aux relations économiques et culturelles. Pour les Canadiens, une alliance strictement militaire était insuffisante et devait être complétée par des engagements destinés à accroître la solidarité des alliés. Bien entendu, ces engagements devaient d'abord permettre à l'Ouest de faire face à la menace militaire proprement dite en créant un réservoir de ressources suffisant pour faire contrepoids à l'Armée rouge. Mais plus encore, ils constituaient un moyen de faire face à la menace politique, c'est-à-dire à l'influence acquise par les partis communistes d'Europe occidentale à la faveur de la guerre, influence qui risquait de s'enraciner encore plus profondément si les gouvernements de l'Ouest se révélaient incapables de satisfaire les besoins économiques et sociaux de leurs citoyens. En ce sens, le projet de communauté apparaît comme le prolongement des efforts entrepris dans le cadre du plan Marshall. Les engagements pris par les alliés visaient en outre à éviter que ceux-ci ne s'affaiblissent en s'entre-déchirant pour des motifs de compétition économique. Dès mars 1948,Reid résume l'idée en ces termes :

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Mere force is not enough. There has to be the determination to use the force if necessary and a determination accompanied by a fervent belief in the society which one is trying not only to defend but to make the basis of an eventually united world.The new treaty must therefore be a living document and create a new living international institution.

C'est donc à la lumière de cette logique qu'il convient de se pencher sur les efforts en vue de faire inscrire au Traité de Washington les dispositions sur la coopération non militaire.Le Pacte devait aussi donner lieu à la création d'un certain nombre d'institutions qui constitueraient le cadre formel dans lequel prend corps la notion de communauté:

The Atlantic Treaty must be more than a mere military alliance [... ] it must create new imaginative types of international institutions which will be outward and visible signs of a new inward and spiritual unity and purpose in the Western World [... ] They should be given titles symbolic of the ultimate goal of the world order which we have in mind and of which we are building an essential foundation.For this reason we suggest the use of such terms as [... ] "Atlantic Community"for the international organization established by the treaty.

La réflexion sur le type d'institution qui devait être mis en place évoluera tout le long de l'année 1948 au gré des négociations avec les autres partenaires.Les alliés s'entendent rapidement sur le principe de la création d'un Conseil de l'Atlantique Nord réunissant les représentants des états membres et agissant comme organe exécutif. Toutefois, certaines des propositions formulées par Pearson et Reid se distinguent par leur audace. Ainsi, au cours de l'automne, ils évoquent une formule inspirée de l'Union de l'Europe occidentale : un conseil des ministres des Affaires étrangères, un conseil des ministres de la Défense, un comité des chefs d'état-major, un comité des approvisionnements et un secrétariat. Mais Reid voit encore plus grand:

 

[... ] we should go farther than the Brussels Treaty in setting up revolutionary new political instruments of the alliance. That is why I feel that we should have not only a Board for Collective Self-defence, but a parliament, a president, [... ] a chancellor [... ] and a chief of staff. [... ] This would give the impression that we mean business when we talk about forming a new society of the free nations.

Reid cherche également à mettre en place un mécanisme décisionnel fondé sur le principe de la majorité simple afin d'éviter les initiatives unilatérales ou les recours au veto, sans pour autant sombrer dans les complications d'un processus qui exigerait l'unanimité:

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D. C. Hendrikson "In Our Own Image: The Sources of American Conduct in World Affairs" The National Interest, No. 50 (Winter 1997) 

In the long span of American history, two moments stand out for their creative refashioning of the political order. The first comprises the framing, ratification, and amendment of the Federal Constitution from 1787 to 1790; the second, the creation of the system linking the United States with the advanced industrial democracies after the Second World War.