Federalism as a Mechanism of Collective Problem Solving

• In Event: Political Theory in/ and/ as Political Science: Democracy in Theory and Practice

Abstract

In group problem solving, the collective can be a wise crowd or a mad mob. The difference between the two is not the individual characteristics of the agents who comprise the group, but instead the institutions that establish their relation to one another and the methods for eliciting and aggregating their choices. Democratic governance is a problem of group rule.
It requires methods to stimulate new ideas, select between good and bad ideas (including a means of determining what is good), and propagating the good ideas, and, while doing these things, avoid the pitfalls of that lead collective choice toward madness. These problems preoccupy an important literature at the borders of democratic theory, positive theory, and empirical studies of knowledge. Federal systems have characteristics that may improve the problem-solving capacity of democracy, but it is not a failsafe remedy. Federalism's problem-solving potential opens up the possibility of ``opportunistic decentralization'' where the center government pushes the risk associated with experimentation on to the peripheral governments, and claims credit for successes.

Author

• Jenna Bednar, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor