| Review of: | Comparative Federalism: The European Union and the United States in Comparative Perspective edited by A. Menon, M. Schain |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Michelle Egan |
| Reviewed in: | Journal of Common Market Studies |
| Date accepted online: | 02/11/2007 |
| Published in print: | Volume 45, Issue 03, Pages 745-769 |
Book Reviews
Anand Menon and Martin Schain's edited volume,
The first four essays in the volume cover some broad conceptual comparisons drawn from comparative politics and international relations, discussing the political and historical considerations that have led them to reappraise European developments in light of the American experience. This is then followed by six essays addressing how these changes in institutions and processes have played out in both polities. The final section of the volume is a series of case studies examining the role of federalism in shaping fiscal, monetary, immigration and biotechnology policy. Several chapters draw attention to the constitutional process, institutional design and governance dilemmas faced in consolidating diverse sets of territorial interests, plural identities, and vested interests. The authors divide over the lessons that can be drawn from the American experience with some authors focusing on the developments in the formative periods of American politics to provide a reminder of how significant constitutional design has been, and how different the European constitutional experience has been, whereas others point to the similarities and constraints that both polities face in tackling the vertical and horizontal allocation of competences, decentralized implementation, and managing the market against its dysfunctional tendencies (Jabko). Shapiro provides an excellent analysis of commonalities in patterns of judicial review, balancing standards and delegated implementation to lower courts through similar reference procedures. The chapters on comparing constitutional change, by Magnette and Nicolaidis respectively, are extremely good at providing both normative and historical benchmarks for comparison.
In common with other edited volumes, the chapters contain many original contributions about the nature of federalism, as well as some familiar arguments drawn from prior work. The volume essentially revolves around two themes. The first one is that many institutional arrangements have enduring but unintended consequences, and that both polities have faced transformations of state structures as a result. The emphasis by Lowi and Sbragia in particular, highlights that the political process is not simply about comparing the functional differentiation and competences among different levels of government, but to recognize the contest over the form of the state. The second theme is the issue of representation and rights. This is manifest in efforts in the US and EU to manage both functional and territorial politics by way of delegation, control and oversight mechanisms, the territorial dispersion of power between central governments and subunits, and the differentiation in political and social rights that have evolved.
Two issues deserve further attention in the volume. One is the different models of federalism that have evolved across different policy areas, which speaks not only to the different policy challenges in dealing with policy externalities or public goods, but also to the fact that different models have evolved as a result of both exogenous and endogenous pressures, and perhaps unintended consequences. Secondly, given the focus on institutions in this volume, it would also be useful to consider the emergent patterns of citizen behaviour and organization, given that crucial transformations in the American polity came about as a result of political mobilization, expanding participation, ethnic voting and social movements. The politics of mass parties and the patronage state (Lowi) are clearly important in understanding how the state transformation process unfolded and shifted towards the modern regulatory state in the US. Such work on civic engagement in the American context might be fruitful to discuss in light of discussions about democracy in the European polity (Nicolaidis). This book has a great deal to offer empirically, as well as theoretically, to the debates on comparative federalism.