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Federation, Conflict-Regulation and National and Ethnic Power-Sharing
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John McGarry
Canada Research Chair in Political Science, The Queen’s University
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
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&
Brendan O’Leary
Lauder Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA, USA
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© Copyright 2003 John McGarry & Brendan O’Leary
Paper prepared for delivery at the
2003 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, August 2003.
Comments welcome.
Abstract: This paper attempts to demonstrate that although multi-national federations
may have a poor track-record, the standard explanations of their difficulties, especially
those advanced in much recent US political science, are not compelling. The conditions
which facilitate but do not guarantee successful democratic multi-national federations are
(i) the presence of a Staatsvolk; (ii) consociational governance at the center of the
federation; (iii) authentic democratic institutions; (iv) ‘voluntary’ or ‘holding together
origins; & (v) prosperity. Policy recommendations on federal design outside the USA that
are based on US mono-national federalism are profoundly inappropriate.
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A number of organisations have funded our joint and individual research.: John McGarry and
Brendan O’Leary both thank the United States Institute of Peace. John McGarry thanks the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.