stressed, “sufficiently prominent to attract its attention”), leaving what he called society’s
countless “secondary affairs” to lower levels of administration.
Such a system, in other words,
could help the central government keep its priorities straight.
It is this potential advantage above all that warrants renewed emphasis today, because
America’s central government, with its global security responsibilities, is overburdened. Of
course, it is one thing to wish for relief, and another to obtain it. But that is not reason to give
up. Other fruits of federalism, too, have been easier to wish for than to attain. Moreover, some of
the attained ones have gradually come to matter less. Let us glance at each in turn.
Ensuring Unity?
Sometimes nations face a stark choice: allow regions to federate and govern themselves,
or risk national dissolution.
Certainly examples where federalism is the answer can be found, and
not just in exotic locations but in the heart of the Western world. Belgium would probably be a
partitioned state today if Flanders had not been granted extensive self-government. If under Italy’s
constitution, Sardinia, a large and relatively remote Italian island, had not been granted significant
autonomy, it might well have harbored a violent separatist movement—like the one plaguing a
neighboring island, Corsica, a rebellious province of unitary France.
Where truly profound regional linguistic, religious, or cultural differences persist,
however, federating is by no means a guarantee of national harmony. Canada, Spain and the
former Yugoslavia are well-known cases of federations that either periodically faced secessionist
movements (Quebec), or have had to struggle with them continually (the Basques), or collapsed
4
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 1 (New York: Vintage Books, 1945), Chap. 16, p. 281.
5
Cass Sunstein, “Constitutionalism and Secession,” University of Chicago Law Review, vol. 58 (1991). Allen
Buchanan, Secession: The Morality of Political Divorce from Fort Sumter to Lithuania and Quebec (Bounlder,
CO: Westview Press, 1991).
3
Convention