Events

The COVID-19 pandemic required prompt action from governments all over the world. In federal systems, it can be important or beneficial to coordinate crisis management between the various governments. The extent to which intergovernmental coordination occurred, the form it took (vertical or horizontal), and the institutions through which governments coordinated policy varied across countries and regarding the measures taken. In most federations, intergovernmental councils are the main forums through which governments coordinate policymaking in normal times. In this paper, we examine the role they played during the COVID-19 pandemic in Western federations. Firstly, the paper establishes whether intergovernmental councils were able to coordinate policy effectively, focusing on the degree of coordination. Secondly, it investigates whether coordination occurred mainly vertically, between the federal government and the constituent units, or horizontally, among the constituent units. Thirdly, by comparing the activities of peak councils (e.g., Conference of Premiers in Germany, First Ministers’ Meetings in Canada) with those of the policy-specific councils (e.g., conferences of health ministers), the paper describes the role assumed by the different councils. It establishes whether peak councils took the lead in coordinating the crisis response across levels of government and among the constituent units. The role of the peak councils, whose members are the heads of government, during the pandemic is particularly relevant because they are able ensure cross-sectoral as well as intergovernmental coordination. By shedding light on the role of intergovernmental councils, the paper contributes to our understanding of the conditions for effective crisis management in federal systems.

In Europe, the interdependencies created by the European integration process have contributed to the revision of traditional concepts in border studies. Instead of exploring what happens when distinct societies rub against each other or contest land – the traditional and loosest understanding to be found in border studies in international relations – border studies viewed through the lens of the European integration process explore how areas interact through concrete cross-border activities, though under the authority of different States. The paper explores the nexus between cross-border activism and crisis management. To do so, it builds on the concepts of political autonomy (i.e. the scope of the autonomy a border constituency is vested) and of borderlands as soft spaces (i.e. flexible multi-level governance arrangements that encounter crises by institutional innovation). The paper assumes that re-centralization and re-nationalization is counteracted by the formation of trans-regional spaces, and that the importance of cross-border activism has become apparent to the inhabitants of border areas, first and foremost because of the pandemic. The paper offers conceptual reflections and a contextual analysis in relation to different European border areas.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted all regions of the globe, but it has not affected all countries in the same way. Similar countries in many demographic or socioeconomic characteristics have vastly different numbers of COVID-19 related deaths. Why is there such enormous variation between cases, especially considering that some countries are relatively similar to each other in many sociodemographic aspects? It is possible to think that in addition to epidemiological, demographic, socioeconomic factors, and unfortunate random events, government decisions may have also affected the results. What types of governments managed to reduce the number of COVID-19 deaths? Some works argue that authoritarian governments were able to take more drastic measures and enforce them strongly, obtaining better outcomes. Others claim that, on the contrary, democracies with stronger rule of law and horizontal accountability, or institutionalized party systems, achieved better results. However, the available evidence does not seem to support many of these expectations. The type of party in government does seem to have partially contributed to explaining some variations. Left-wing parties in government had better results than Right-wing parties. Despite these results, ideology does not seem to be enough to explain the enormous variation in COVID-19 outcomes. This paper focuses on the role of a key political institution, federalism, and analyzes whether federal or unitary countries have achieved better results during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, it explores whether cooperation (or conflict) between levels of government led to more (or fewer) COVID-19 related deaths. It also studies whether cooperation (or conflict) between governments and social organizations in the territory produced similar results. To do so, the study uses a mixed-methods strategy. First, it develops an index of “intergovernmental collaborative governance” and an index of “social collaborative governance” that measure cooperation (or conflict) between levels of government and among them and social organizations in the territory in 23 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. It uses descriptive statistics and correlation and regression analyses to explore variations in the results. And second, it analyzes two key cases in more detail: Argentina and Brazil, to explore how these different forms of cooperation or conflicts emerged. The study contrasts these two cases with two unitary countries: Peru and Uruguay. Variations among cases make it possible to analyze the impact of cooperation or conflict between levels of government (and between them and social organizations) on the number of COVID-19 related deaths. The study finishes raising some comparative implications out of one of the regions of the globe most affected by the pandemic and questions for future research.

President Barack Obama’s new chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, famously said in 2008, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste . . . it’s an opportunity to do things” you could not do before. Although Winston Churchill first made this observation near the end of World War II when he supported creation of the United Nations, Emanuel sought to harness potential responses to the 2008 financial crisis to the excitement following the election of America’s first black president. The results were some bold initiatives by the federal government harnessed to the exigencies of American federalism. This pattern largely characterized American federalism’s responses to three major crises of the early twenty- first century: (1) the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, (2) the 2008-2009 financial crisis, and (3) the Covid-19 crisis of 2020-2022. The nature of these crises, once they were recognized as crises by political leaders and citizens, required substantial responses by the federal government acting almost unilaterally at the outset in response to the terrorist attacks and financial crisis and more intergovernmentally in response to the Covid pandemic. In each crisis, however, the federal system adapted in ways that reflected more continuity than discontinuity. In response to terrorism, the federal government created a new Department of Homeland Security, and so did the states, which quickly established relations between their homeland security departments and the federal department. The federal government enhanced its intelligence capacities, and so did many states and big cities, such as New York City, which created a sizable intelligence system and placed police intelligence personnel in 13 cities in other countries. The federal government enacted major new financial regulations in response to the financial crisis, but included state regulatory roles and did not dismantle the country’s 145-year-old dual banking system whereby the federal government regulates national banks and states regulate state- chartered banks. The Covid crisis generated unprecedented levels of federal fiscal assistance, but virtually all the aid was funneled through established intergovernmental channels while, at the same time, the crisis rejuvenated dual federalism as the states’ governors exercised their police power—the most important power reserved to the states by the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—to be the primary policy responders to the Covid crisis in terms of stay-at-home orders, mask-wearing mandates, school closures, and the like. In the long run, most crises in American history have contributed to centralization, but mostly incrementally rather than disjunctively.

The majority of contemporary states define some form of the constitutional emergency regime to provide a basis for a response to potentially extraordinary circumstances. Traditionally, the types of crises and exceptional circumstances include armed conflict, insurgency, economic crisis, and terrorism while mechanisms designed to respond to the effect of emergencies are limited to the concept of emergency powers. Crises understood in traditional terms happen abruptly, in opposition to the concept of normalcy, they are temporal and cause partial or complete suspension of the constitution while expanding executive powers. With this approach, however, other contemporary crises and exceptional circumstances remain neglected and some potentially versatile mechanisms for their mitigation have been overlooked.

For example, one significant aspect of contemporary observations is the critical role of identity markers in generating crises which leads to self-governance and autonomy channeled through constitutional asymmetries. It has been empirically proven that federal(like) systems with identity differences respond to emerging fragmentation by introducing asymmetrical constitutional solutions. This often occurs in response to an emergency, intending to disable the ‘secession potential’ and hold the system together. Unlike the traditional crises, contemporary crises happen incrementally, as a transitional process to a new type of normalcy, they are long-term, and they cause changes in constitutional provisions to match the demands while they cause no effect on the separation of powers. These considerations are confirmed by many examples of federal constitutional systems around the world that exhibit elements common to identity differences and constitutional asymmetry established under extraordinary circumstances: Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

A shift in the understanding of constitutional emergency regimes is required with regard to federal systems. However, as the topic is essentially unexplored, there is a need for an elementary debate that addresses specific types of crises generated by identity differences, government responses in federal systems to extraordinary circumstances, and the effects on the constitutional system caused by identity differences. It is hoped that this research will contribute to a deeper, perhaps altered, understanding of constitutional emergencies through the concept of constitutional asymmetry.

This paper aims at identifying and explaining the correlation between Covid-19, multilingualism, and federal governance, through cross-country research, drawing on three datasets: WHO data on the expanse of the pandemic, UNESCO data on endangered languages, LDI (Linguistic Diversity Index) and Democracy Index and co-relate it with the challenges facing federal principle (V-Dem and Freedom House). Furthermore, it hypothesizes that federal states following multi-level governance are closer to the constituencies, knowing the local language, culture, and health issues, would have handled information dissemination regarding the pandemic efficaciously. Although results establishing a direct correlation between the pandemic, multilingualism and federal governance vary across the countries with the exception of the USA, India, and Brazil. The three countries experienced the highest global pandemic caseload occupying the top positions in the number of endangered languages, are among the top ten linguistically diverse and federal states. Drawing from the research findings, the paper addresses the criticality of investing in multilingualism and calls for a shift of perspective among policymakers driven by neoliberal rationale towards greater recognition and higher funding for multi-lingual education and respect for diversity. It further argues how rise of majoritarianism has adversely affected federalism in general, and particularly the federal states of Brazil, India, and USA which experienced down-sliding of democracy due to centrist policies, lack of coordination and discussion between the centre (national/federal government) with the constituent states and rising authoritarian leadership. The paper revisits the inter-relationship between cultural-linguistic diversity, democracy, and federal power sharing, focusing on how multilingualism can provide a creative-constructive way towards the building of resilient federal states where diversity is the cornerstone, challenging the rapid homogenization by centrist forces.

This project explores the role of subnational governments in promoting upgrading and in tackling the “middle income trap,” which has become a crisis for many countries around the world. Some scholars have contended that highly decentralized democracies are at a disadvantage in developing and implementing upgrading policies due to their fragmentation of power. By contrast, I contend here that, when certain conditions are met, decentralized democracies are in an especially strong position to develop a “pluralist” form of upgrading policy, one which takes advantage of the strengths of both central and subnational governments. I test my arguments with an internally comparative case study of India across different states and time periods.

Nearly all capitalist democracies have adopted some form of upgrading or industrial policy, committing public resources in an effort to encourage domestic producers to move up the value-chain.

The key role that states perform in promoting upgrading stems from the well-founded belief that market failures impede private enterprises from achieving desired results on their own. For higher income countries, these desired results are often to secure dominance in particular innovation-based industries. For their less wealthy peers, by contrast, the goal is frequently to escape the “middle income trap” that risks consigning them to long-term stagnation, something that lends upgrading pressures the character of an ongoing crisis.

Successful upgrading generally involves building linkages among domestic firms, government, financial institutions, and researchers to help businesses constantly innovate in their technology and processes. Given the ubiquity of global value chains, upgrading policy also represents an effort to secure the most beneficial role for a country’s firms in the international production of specific goods and services.

Often upgrading policies are thought to be effective only in countries with cohesive central leadership, the kind that can oversee the development and implementation of a national plan. Such a national plan is understood to represent a coordinated vision of how to promote upgrading, one which can then be implemented in a centralized fashion.

If this understanding is correct, federal and strongly decentralized countries operate under a serious disadvantage in their efforts to promote upgrading. But does decentralization really mean that effective upgrading policy is difficult or impossible?

In this chapter, I argue that decentralized countries can indeed develop and implement effective upgrading policies, often more effective than those observed in more top-down regimes. But these policies will differ in both form and substance as a result of the deep involvement of regional governments. Moreover, I identity a series of characteristics that must be present for upgrading policy in decentralized democracies to be maximally effective.

As scholars have long understood, upgrading policy is extraordinarily complex. In the words of Peter Evans (1995), it requires that government officials be “embedded” enough in the private sector to understand the needs of business while also sufficiently “autonomous” to discipline firms that seek to take advantage of government largess.

More than that, upgrading policy can make use of a wide variety of policy tools – from trade protection to subsidies to investment guarantees to network promotion – in accomplishing its objectives. Government – in the form of autonomous bureaucracies, line ministries, and others – use these tools to support domestic firms as they innovate while also holding them accountable for a lack of progress. Due to the complexity of upgrading, researchers such as Rodrick (2004) have emphasized that a single policy formula is not likely to work in all times and places.

I argue here that what is critical for success is the right structure of policy-making, as manifested in the characteristics of the “upgrading institutions” that formulate and implement polices, as well as in the informal “upgrading coalitions” of critical actors that stand behind them. When both the state and private actors have an incentive to cooperate in these institutions and coalitions, upgrading policy will be more effective. By contrast, when government actors have the upper hand, policy will be inefficiently statist, whereas when private actors are dominant, it will be captured and used for rents.

Within the context of highly decentralized democracies, when are beneficial state-private relationships – and with them effective upgrading policies — most likely be observed? In these settings, a national government is not in a position to formulate and carry out upgrading policy without including regional governments. This is because regional governments in decentralized systems generally control significant policy and financial resources that play a role in upgrading policy, including certain regulatory policies.

More than that, however, regional governments are in a best position to interact with firms based in their locales at the grassroots level, and they are more likely to possess high quality information about their operations. In other words, they are more “embedded” into regional business networks than are central governments.

At the same time, regional governments need the resources that national governments generally command, and they also require the national policy coordination that can only be done from the capital. In addition, some firms and business associations may be large enough to operate nationally, and therefore it makes sense for the central government to focus on supporting upgrading in these industries.

With all of this in mind, I argue that upgrading policy will be most effective in decentralized democracies when:

1. Both national and regional governments enjoy high capacity and are incentivized to have long-time horizons. In the democratic context, long time horizons might be generated by a stable party system and low levels of electoral volatility, and high capacity by an effective bureaucratic structure.
2. National and regional governments are incentivized to work together to promote upgrading. This may be more likely when they are controlled by the same party, but when the regional power of sub-national government leaders nevertheless ensures them a critical place in upgrading coalitions. In other words, the power of national and regional governments must be in a “fine balance” (Hankla et al. 2019).
3. The upgrading system operates according to the broad principle of “subsidiarity.” In this context, the principle would mean that small, regional firms and industries interact primarily with the regional governments, whereas very large, national firms and highly organized industries interact primarily with the central government. The central and regional governments then share resources and information where needed.
4. Relevant private actors, especially firms, are neither too powerful (either through the size of individual firms or through the organization of business interests) to dominate the central or regional government with which they interact, nor so fragmented that they can be dominated. Indeed, the fact that differently scaled firms and industries can interact with different tiers of government is among the strongest benefits of decentralized regimes in upgrading.
5. Since some regions will begin with a stronger base to promote upgrading, the central government uses the tax system to promote some degree of equalization.

When all of these factors are in place, upgrading takes place in what can be termed a “pluralist” rather than a “corporatist” fashion, with multiple tiers and branches of government interacting separately with multiple different private actors. Of course, a national plan may still exist, but this plan is (1) either a dead letter, (2) concerns only industries of national scale, or (3) is itself produced in a pluralist and decentralized fashion, with much region-level input.

Such a pluralist approach to upgrading, I argue, is not as effective as a more centralized approach is large-scale transformation of the economy, for example from one industry to another. But it is especially effective, when done well, at smaller scale upgrading across a wide variety of large and small industries.

To provide some preliminary evidence for my arguments, I develop in this chapter a plausibility probe of the Indian case. To ensure variation on my primary independent variables, I compare upgrading policy in India between two states (Bihar and Gujarat), and between the UPA/Congress governments of 2004 to 2014 and the NDA/BJP governments of 2014 to the present.

Preliminarily, I argue that the Gujarati state government was more effective in upgrading policy than the Bihari state government due to its longer time horizons and its stronger state capacity. However, I show that the poor relationship between the UPA government and the Gujarati government impeded cooperation. The advent of NDA/BJP rule at the Centre improve coordination but also led to a weakening of the state government’s influence in Gujarat as it fell under the sway of national party officials. This impeded the ability of the Gujarat government to take the initiative in upgrading within the state.

In the final analysis, I find that strongly decentralized democracies are indeed capable of promoting upgrading within their borders. They generally do this using a more pluralist approach, in which regional and national governments each operate in different spheres and coordinate their activities when needed. This pluralist approach, while less effective at rapid and large-scale transformation of an economy, is – when certain conditions are in place – very able to promote incremental upgrading across a wide variety of industries.

Federalization, democratization and devolution have remained central to India’s relatively successful records of management of ethnic conflicts since 1950. Various round of state formation with both symmetric and asymmetric status, formula-based fiscal transfers that accommodate India’s asymmetry and diversity, sub-state decentralization and recognition of ethnic identity have worked in India. Democracy here has added to legitimacy and a challenge to the politicians.

But in India’s North-east, it has been somewhat a different story. India’s North- East comprising of eight federal units—-Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, and Sikkim (added in 2012) has long been understood as India’s ‘insurgent country’, ethnic conflicts, and political militancy. An ‘insurgency approach’ has long been advanced as apparently the only method with which to understand the politics of the region as akin to ‘durable disorder’. The region (except Sikkim) was marked by insurgency and political violence and the consequent deployment of Central. During the long period of India’s public sector dominated planned economy, the region received very favourable central grants which were per capita much higher than the all India average. The region also contains some asymmetric states with special powers. But with India’s ongoing neo-liberal reforms since the early 1990s, the liberal grants to the region has been withdrawn, and a new system of financing the states has been introduced. A Department, and later (2012) a separate Union Ministry known as the MDoNER has been put in place as the nodal agency for development of the whole region.

The region calls for special attention for the following reasons. First, it is a geo- strategic region with significant presence of India’s tribals; there are four states which are tribal dominated, and of them three are Christian majority; and the newer significance of the region for India’s Act East foreign policy drives in which it is considered to be the land bridge to the South-East. Second, despite round of states reorganization and state and sub-state formation in the region based on tribal ethnicity, tensions between tribal ethnicity and territoriality remains. Third, the region’s experiment with sub-state level tribal self- governance has mostly worked with the sole exception of the Bodoland Territorial Authority, which has suffered due to faulty institutional designs. Four, until the 1990s, both federalism and democratisation had had a limited purchase in the region, but since the 1990s, the states have demonstrated better performance records in terms of development and the rule of law. The core argument of the paper is that a combination of certain indigenous institutional strategies has proved effective in managing ethnic conflicts in the region in most cases. The subsidiary argument is that the so-called ‘insurgency’ approach followed so far in understanding the region is to be debunked in favour of a power-sharing approach which connects the regional experience with the all-India story. It also points out the limits of territorial power-sharing and seeks to defend a case for consociational approach as a supplementary.

This paper examines the genealogy and nature of asymmetric federalism in India. Going against the grain of a scholarship which suggests that it is not central to India’s institutional imaginary and conflict management, this paper suggests that asymmetric federalism lies at the heart of India’s ability to manage conflicts and transform former separatists like Naga, Mizo and Bodo in Northeast India into important stakeholders of its federal polity. Indeed, at the time of independence, faced with the problem of integration of polities which enjoyed longstanding sovereign and semi-sovereign political status, India hardly had any viable option but to craft institutional arrangements to accommodate deeply diverse and divided polities. Yet, asymmetric federalism as a normative idea and an institutional arrangement which supports the institutional recognition of ‘deep diversity’ is not without its discontents from the very founding of India’s republic. Indeed, a close reading of the Constituent Assembly debates underlines how centralists and majoritarian proponents of a homogenous Indian nation-state were deeply anxious about ‘excessive federalism’ and the centrifugal forces that asymmetric federalism might unleash. Seen against this backdrop, asymmetric federalism remains a conscious and bold decision of India’s founding fathers to ‘hold together’ its deep diversity.
The series of institutional changes that BJP-led governments effected both at the centre and in the states since 2014 have underpinned the symmetrical turn in India’s asymmetric federalism. The inauguration of NITI Aayog in 2015 which replaced the Planning Commission, the implementation of Goods and Service Taxes since 2017 under the rubric of ‘one nation, one tax’, and the revocation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019 under the banner of ‘Ek Bharat, Shreshtha Bharat’ set apace this turn. The federal-level symmetrical turn resonates at the state-level as well, a phenomenon marked by Biren Singh-led BJP government in Manipur attempts in September 2021 to dilute the sub-state asymmetry that the hill areas of Manipur enjoy under Article 371C of India’s constitution since 1971. This paper argues that while this recent symmetrical turn becomes more marked under BJP rule both at the national and state-levels, the Congress also contributes to the erosion of asymmetrical federalism. The contestation over Nagaland’s special constitutional powers over ‘land and resources’ under Article 371A around 2011-12, and the recent development in Manipur will be examined as illustrative cases to understand this symmetric turn and how they implicate on conflict management in Northeast India.

The process of decolonization in India came along with the inauguration of an independent sovereign republic which ushered in the dis/integration of princely states, and the territorial formation of states under a more institutionalized and federalized form of authority and governance. The given dense and complex diversity of the country began to be gradually accommodated in the state discourses, practices, plans and policies at various levels. The question that still needs to be asked is whether the state rationale of organizing and institutionalizing the given cultural and social diversity in India has resulted in greater democratization and political participation of people or whether it has continuously been tamed and disciplined to achieve certain political objectives and goals defined by the politics of the day. Keeping the logic and reasons of the states’ reorganization process during the first decade after independence, I argue that the question of representation, recognition and redistribution of rights, identities and resources needs to be linked up with the long drawn and complex exercise of state formation as part of the federal structure of power sharing between the centre and its constituent units. It is important to see how the state rationalization project of remapping and redrawing the state boundaries and their adjoining borders immediately after independence was contiguous with the setting up of several federal institutions in the domains of education, language and culture primarily to strike the balance between state autonomy and federal accommodation of various kinds. The Nehruvian paradigm worked through the principles of state autonomy, reasonable equitable distribution of natural, economic and cultural resources, innovative constitutional and legal provisions to ensure greater parity among states, and their democratic political participation in the policy making processes in the federally governed state system in the early decades after independence. Drawing upon a set of governmental records, reports and policy documents published in the first two decades after independence, I argue that understanding the Indian experience located within the deep structural inequalities and hierarchies of ethnicity, class, caste, language and region compels us further to reflect as to why the Indian state adopted an integrationist model with asymmetrical federalism from the early years since independence.

The draft paper, while aiming to present an overview of evolving constitutional status of Kashmir within India confines itself mostly to legal and constitutional texts, political documents, judicial decisions, accord papers and commission reports covering a period of seven and half decades. The combining of this reading of official documents with a scrutiny of academic literature aims to promote a historically informed assessment of the valley’s relationship with India. Based on a re-reading of official documents, the paper tries to demonstrate how, between 1947 and 2019, the years of integration and abrogation of Article 370, the highly contested asymmetrical relationship between the Indian federal state and the erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir developed into a perennial crisis scenario that became very costly and ultimately unsustainable. The academic literature having their own biases (the paper has its own India-focused bias) focus on certain events, institutions, personalities and also social and political processes within the state while discussing the dire consequences of the failure, over many decades, to achieve abiding peace in the Kashmir Valley. The combining of this reading of official documents with a scrutiny of academic literature is aimed at having a historically informed assessment of Kashmir’s relationship with India.

With the onset of green revolution since the 1970s, the state of Punjab located in the Northwestern part of India, witnessed a shift from canal irrigation to groundwater irrigation. Such shifts resulted in two significant developments. While on one hand agriculture productivity in the region increased, it also led to massive depletion of groundwater. This is reflected in a recent Planning Commission Report, which states that 85 percent of the blocks in the state have been listed as ‘over-exploited’. Studies on the subject have shown that there are many reasons behind this grim situation including the populist policy of free or subsidized electricity for running tube wells, absence of regulatory mechanism, and refusal of the state to accept Groundwater Bill 2011 among others
It is important to highlight here that groundwater crisis in the region have impacted the small and medium more farmers more specifically as they have low purchasing capacity to install individual tubewells in their respective fields. Given the critical situation, these farmers have taken recourse to a traditional informal institutional practice of ‘water sharing’; locally know as ‘sanjha kuh’. The concept of “shared well” which is kinship based, culturally driven community practice of water sharing, have ensured sustainable and equitable distribution of ground water for irrigation and have emerged as a local solution to cope water crisis. This paper argues that such practices needs to be documented and studied, particularly in recent times, where natural resources, particularly water have become victims of either state centric policies or market driven interventions.
This paper locates the problem within the theoretical framework of state-market and community and attempts to understand, analyze and explain the institutions of shared well irrigation in Punjab. Based on a micro level and an in- depth study of a village in the Hoshiarpur District of Punjab, the tries to see the extent to which the issues of equity, participation, conflict are addressed by such institutional practices. It assumes that ‘social capital’ plays a significant role in the sustenance and continuity of these informal socio-cultural practices, which have been in existence since the thirteenth century and continue even today. Such practices are examples of local solution to address crisis situation in a federal context in countries like India.

This presentation aims to explore the often understudied role of subnational governments in the global efforts to both mitigate climate change and contribute to solving the climate crisis. It does so by examining and comparing how climate change is integrated in the public policies adopted by the Autonomous Provinces of Trento and Bolzano in Italy, and Länder Tyrol and Vorarlberg in Austria. In particular, the analysis focuses on the sectors where these subnational governments exercise legislative powers: transport, energy and water, and spatial planning.

The salience of climate change for subnational governments is justified by the fact that impacts of climate change are often felt most immediately by citizens at subnational or local levels, and subnational policies must respond to these pressures. Conversely, subnational governments have an indirect impact on climate change mitigation when they exercise powers that may either be impacted by the consequences and constraints of global warming or influence the way in which climate change is tackled at higher levels.

The select cases are comparable for a variety of reasons. The four subnational areas are part of the Alpine macro-region, one of the four macro-regions composing Europe. They are geographically close, meaning that the climate issues they deal with are often shared. Yet, they also present variation in terms of their subnational legal and governance systems. Both in Italy and Austria, climate change is a policy area that intersects many competence fields, including some shared and exclusive powers in the sectors analysed in the comparison.

In this context, the presentation discusses in detail how climate change has been integrated in policies concerning transport, energy and water, and spatial planning in the study areas. Furthermore, it evaluates the importance, in absolute and relative terms, of five factors that influence the integration of climate change in subnational policies: coordination (vertical and horizontal), public participation, information to the public, leadership and funding.

National crises thrust on by pandemics seem to be the new normal in recent times and are jeopardizing both lives and livelihoods even as they threaten federal governance and social capital with serious challenges. Coronavirus 19, a seemingly benign micro-organism has become a catacylsm and will go down in history for creating social turmoil, inflicting debilitating infirmities and killing people apart from crippling inter related federal sectors such as health , economy and human sustenance . Currently it has killed more than sixtyfour lakh lives worldwide. India with five and quarter lakh deaths holds the ignominous position of being the country with the third highest deaths in the world. What is more dangerous is the fact that the deaths have not stopped despite emergence of vaccine .
Since March 2020 it has overwhelmed India and its medical infrastructure, economy, and people’s livelihoods. Its economic structure is under seize. Largely, because it’s public healthcare institutions historically have remained neglected and underinvested and are not robust to tackle its challenges . The recommended 5-6% of country’s GDP expenditure – the bare minimum required for public health has been elusive. Indian economy has been disrupted because of crippling enforcement measures which led to cascading industrial shutdown, suspension of tertiary and secondary sectors and large unemployment thereafter. Economic malaise is complicated by the nature of India’s economy – largescale informalisation of labour, vulnerable unorganised and migrant labour sector, over dependance on State welfare and subsidies. In general, the disruption in economic flows of supply, distribution and consumption that lockdown ensued have impacted normal life, created uenmployment and suffering . State governments have been constrained in their responses towards the pandemic because of financial limitations.
In this grim scenario however, there are certain hopeful indicators. As economists including Nobel laureates opined that even if India lacks financial muscle of the West, it can win over the crisis by innovative policy strategies in economy and public health. These intiatives have to be in the form of enhanced 5% GDP spending as relief /stimulus packages , fiscal deficit be given a temporary supension for a year and monetary financing be resorted , free distribution of buffer stock of 75 MT of foodgrains etc. Indian economy has great resilience and therefore saving lives should be given top priority through public distribution / direct transfers without concerns that this would increase budget deficits then the economy will turn around. Last, but not least was their projected forecast that that even after this pandemic crisis India’s loss would be around 2% whereas Europe and US would be reeling under -6% and -2.8% GDP growth rate. Much of this premonition has occurred. In the background of the shocking GDP’s fall to -23.9% in Sept 2020 and -6.6% overall decline in 2021 the afore-mentioned optimism of economists was questioned. But later economic trends in 2022 (GDP rises to 4.1% by Quarter 1) have shown some recovery though, still many targets, much improvement and investment in economic policies especially in health sector need priorititising.
Thus, humane policy interventions and remedial economic strategies to save both lives and livelihoods assume greater relevance now than ever before to escape the threat of immiserization from pandemics. It surely will be an acid test of India’s healthcare and economy.

This paper examines India’s responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, from the perspective of its federal structures. It first summarizes different institutional components of India’s federal system. Next, it outlines the responses to the pandemic, both over time, and across different levels of government. The main contribution of the paper is a new evaluation of the federal dimensions of India’s governmental responses at different levels. It is argued that, while the national government did well in some respects, and there was considerable coordination across levels of government, there were key failures, both in the manner of the initial abrupt and drastic national lockdown in March 2020, and in the lack of preparation and national response to the deadlier second wave of the pandemic in 2021. By contrast, subnational governments, both state and local, and including bureaucrats and elected officials, did better than might have been expected, especially in the face of limited resources and information. It is argued that India’s pandemic experience contradicts the “flailing state” idea that was devised to explain the country’s governmental performance in recent decades. The paper also questions the applicability of the concept of “cooperative federalism” to the Indian case. It argues that India’s federal system proved quite resilient, but can be made more effective by strengthening capacity at the local level.

The recent cataclysm caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has posed several obstacles to the global governmental structure. Both the central government and the states are expected to combat and control this pandemic, and this expectation has grown exponentially over the several waves of the COVID-19. The continuing epidemic has prompted concerns about the efficacy of crisis response and government response in federal nations. As a result, questions pertaining to the duties and responsibilities of the various levels of government, as well as the reciprocal containment of the pandemic by institutions and procedures, as part of intergovernmental relations, become very relevant. The contributions of various levels of government must be acknowledged; while the focus of the central government has been on attaining economies of scale in vaccine development and establishing guidelines and directives for all administrative units in the country, the states have executed the majority of effective responses to health crises. However, the succession of disagreements between the central and state governments over matters like as lockdowns, test administration, the delivery of funding and GST compensation, and the introduction of vaccines cannot be overlooked. Nonetheless, the ethos of cooperative federalism remains an imperative prerequisite and necessity for overcoming future pandemics.

This paper provides a comparative analysis of centre-state relations during the first year of the pandemic with a focus on Kerala and Delhi, two opposition-controlled sub-state entities. The paper illustrates the resource capacity of the states in health and social protection and the extent to which they were deployed during the early phases of the pandemic. It then illustrates how the centre seized control of pandemic management as Covid spread across state boundaries by the imposition of a centralized lockdown, but also how the states ‘fought back’ in the process of gradual unlocking. Overall, the paper exemplifies the possibilities but also limits of centralization under India’s one party dominant system. Indeed, based on a careful analysis of policies we show how centralization was made possible by India’s centralized federalism in combination with one party dominance featuring a centrally incumbent party (the BJP) which propages ‘One Nation Federalism.’ However, we also identify the scope conditions under which subnational governments controlled by opposition parties are more likely to exert subnational agency and autonomy. This is shown by Kerala, which due to its political and institutional resources was successful in counteracting some central initiatives whilst keeping open channels of collaboration with the centre. Its experience is contrasted with Delhi which due to its comparably weaker institutional and political capacity faced a much stronger centralizing and adversarial response. The paper therefore highlights the variable impact of federalism on state agency and the nature of centre-state interactions.

As one of the newest federal countries, Nepal’s intergovernmental collaboration in dealing with the adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020/21) needs special attention. In the absence of clarity in the roles of federal, provincial, and local governments in the management of such an unanticipated public health crisis, it appeared in the first few months of the pandemic that each level of government functioned rather inwardly. Consequently, preliminary efforts of providing shelter and food to save lives remained ineffective. In response to this remarkably failed circumstance, the government of Nepal introduced new collaborative measures that leveraged engagement of federal, provincial, and local governments in harmoniously providing medical help and other daily needs to citizens. This conference paper examines these measures to understand the degree to which the COVID-19 pandemic generated needs to strengthen intergovernmental collaboration in Nepal.

American federalism, at its best, is described as cooperative and conflictual. Federal gridlock driven by partisan and ideological polarization has transformed intergovernmental relations from contentious to fragmented. State leadership across a range of policy areas has resulted in disparate outcomes for citizens across the states. The states have responded by reorganizing their institutions by centralizing power under the executive branch and privileging unilateral executive action. The centralizing tendency of modern state executive authority is constrained by the legacy of historical eras that prioritized diffusion of power and accountability that resulted in the divided or plural executive. Most state executive authority has been divided up among offices that vary in their method of selection with the effect or intention of fragmenting the executive power making control by one central executive authority difficult. Nevertheless, state executive authorities have gained extensive powers to shape state-level policies as well as national policies through the administrative control of state agencies. Executive orders and other administrative directives are critical vehicles that executive officers use to engage in administrative control of the bureaucracy to secure compliance, coordination, and implementation of a given policy. The potential for conflict and competition between executive officials is a risk under normal conditions and especially so during crises and emergencies. The COVID-19 pandemic created an opportunity to assess the consequences of executive fragmentation on the functioning of the executive branch across the fifty U.S. states. From March 2020 through July 2021, state executive authorities issued over 16,000 policy actions across 16 policy areas in response to COVID-19 in the United States. These policy actions created mandates or recommendations that impacted wide swaths of the public’s daily life and ranged broadly from the restriction of business operations, school operations, the use of face masks, travel restrictions, and emergency declarations. Count models are employed to determine the role of executive fragmentation as well as an array of epidemiological, political, social, and economic variables on the total number of policy actions taken by each state as well as the number of policy actions taken across policy types. The results hold implications for models of executive power, the effectiveness of administrative policymaking at the sub-national level, the fragmentation of executive authority, and the performance of American federalism during emergencies and crisis events.

Fiscal crises disrupt systems of government and give rise to a ‘special style of politics’ (Heald and Hood 2014).  They create opportunities and challenges for advocates and opponents of change and test the resilience of existing institutions. In this paper, we will consider two moments of fiscal crisis in the UK and their impact on territorial politics: the crisis following the onset of stagflation, IMF intervention and deep spending cuts in the late 1970s against a backdrop of debates on Scottish devolution and decentralisation following the rise of the Scottish National Party (SNP); and the crisis in public finances that followed the ‘great recession’ of the late 2000s after devolution had been established against a backdrop of debates on more Scottish devolution/independence and greater support for the SNP.

The paper will consider how, on each occasion, UK central government sought to manage the twin pressures of fiscal and territorial crises and how the Scottish National Party sought to exploit the fiscal crisis to advance its cause. The strength of the Scottish economy and whether Scotland was a net contributor or recipient of central Exchequer funds were part of these debates in each period. A key part of the backdrop in each case was the complexity, lack of transparency and contested claims involved and therefore much debate involved heresthetics, managing and manipulating data to frame debate to advantage and included blame games on both sides. The paper will consider the options and outcomes of this special style of politics.

The accommodation of territorial diversity is one of the biggest challenges that complex societies must face. Today, many states are facing intergovernmental conflicts that in certain cases also spark secessionist claims. Multilevel government (either in federal or regional form) plays a key role in managing diversity and reducing the risk of secession. This has led to decentralization being presented by some scholars as the antidote that would counter secessionist/nationalist movements (Kymlicka 1998), though contrasting views spice up the debate (Sorens 2015). Moreover, history has not proven any one of these theories. Although conflicts and secessionism arise from multiple factors, traditionally, the literature on territorial accommodation has predominantly focused on other aspects of the federal model such as the recognition of national identities. The study of fiscal instruments and financial relations has been left aside, despite the fact that the latter have a critical role in this respect (Sorens 2015). In other words, the fiscal dimension is a vital component of any system of shared government, as the lack of resources to finance constitutionally assigned competences would render them inoperable, reducing autonomy to an empty vessel. However, the nexus between them is still to a large extent understudied (Weingast 2014).

Against this background, this study aims at integrating the discussion on the role of fiscal constitutions -understood in a broad sense- as a determinant, among other factors, not only of financial relations but also of the inherent dynamics of a federal system 1 (Palermo and Kössler 2017). More specifically, this study will focus on the role of equalization mechanisms as tools of (dis)integration in multilevel countries that have experienced secessionist challenges. To fulfill this purpose, the structural elements (e.g., the nature of the redistribution system, the conditionality attached, the institutions responsible for managing the program etc.) of equalization mechanisms will be investigated to develop a benchmark that will be used a standard for comparison. This benchmark will be then applied to three case studies that have experienced secessionist challenges (Canada, Spain and the UK) comparing each of the equalization programs currently in place in these countries with the proposed benchmark to calibrate the (dis)integrative effects of its core components. The study will adopt a legal perspective, focusing on arrangements at constitutional and legal level, including also secondary legislation. The final aim is to draw comparative conclusions to evaluate the appropriateness of equalization mechanisms in terms of territorial integration in sub-units at risk of secession, namely, if they can be conceived as an instrument to reduce territorial tensions and accommodate diversity and if so, to what extent. This analysis will be conducted through the evaluation of the integrative and disintegrative effects of each case to determine if equalization mechanisms can reduce territorial tensions and accommodate diversity, reversing disintegrative trends.

₁ The notion of “federal system” is used to include “all those systems in which at least two political tiers of government exist, thereby combining self-rule and shared rule and thus making use (to a greater or lesser extent) of the federal toolkit”.