Perhaps because I came to federalism by way of my undergraduate study of US government in the 1960s, when state rights was the cry of every racist bigot in the Southern states of the USA, and in one form or another the federal government had to continuously intervene to protect the rights of African Americans, I do not have much faith in federalism’s capacity to play a positive role in the drive for sensible ethnic living in divided societies. This scepticism becomes even more intense when I begin to ponder the racial fractures that exist in Guyanese society.
Nevertheless, as we seek methods to facilitate a working stability that will allow all of our ethnic groups to feel at home in Guyana, among other useful suggestions, Mr. Ravi Dev, has for some time been recommending a federal solution, and two weeks ago, commenting on my discourse with the prime minister, he proposed it again. In this and two following articles, I seek to frame and outline my concerns.
The federal system in the USA is considered by many to be arguably the most popular and successful of such systems. In “Majority rule is acceptable to no one” (SN: 13/02/13), I partly depended upon the 10th Federalist Paper written by James Madison in 1787, to make my point that fundamental change to the way people are living should not be attempted outside of an overwhelming consensus. However, this point was incidental to Madison’s argument in favour of federalism, which has become something of a classic and which I will here utilise to begin my assessment of the intentions and actual outcome of the federal enterprise as it relates to good race relations.
Madison claimed that of all the advantages promised by federalism, none needed to be more properly understood than its ability to control the possible negative propensities of the minority or majority factions. If I read Mr. Dev correctly, it is just such tendencies (or at least the perception of them) that he believes that federalism could help to significantly curtail in our context, and thus it might serve us well to associate theory with practice as we proceed to deal with the Guyana situation.
Madison believed that federalism would help to calm the widespread complaints from all sides that the government was unstable and that the public good was suffering at the hands of private interests largely because of factional groups. By a faction, he understood “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”
According to Madison, factions are most commonly rooted in the unequal distribution of property, which gives rise to various landed, manufacturing, financial and lesser interests and can only be successfully dealt with by either removing its causes (but this would require the extinguishing of liberty) or that we contrive to make everyone behave the same. But as he observed, “The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise.”
If a faction is a minority we can rely on the majority to defeat it but a majority faction can easily sacrifice the interest of others to its “ruling passions.” The federalist project is to secure the public good against the eventuality of such a danger, but is only attainable in one of two ways. We must either prevent the coalescing of interests into a majority or localise them thus rendering them unable to unite to implement their oppressive agenda. For, Madison wisely noted, “If the pulse and the opportunity be suffered to coincide, we well know that neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate control.”
In the effort to defeat factions, a large democratic state holds an advantage over a smaller one. Where a relatively small number of citizens choose a government, it cannot effectively deal with majority factions as common interests are easily formed and communicated. The mere fact that a larger number of citizens will participate and a greater number of delegates will have to be elected means that a better result becomes more likely in the larger state. The same advantage that a larger democracy has over a smaller one “is enjoyed by the Union over the States composing it. The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States.”
In other words, local issues may be best dealt with locally but federalism promises a cure. Delegated representation will more likely throw up wise and just leaders able to mediate between parochial and the national interests and dangerous national alliances will be more difficult to establish.
The major founders of the American Republic were racist and James Madison was no different. As Jared Taylor argued, many of the founders believed that slavery was a terrible injustice that should be abolished but they intended to expel the freed slaves from the United States, not to live with them in equality. Madison stated the position thus: “To be consistent with the existing and probably unalterable prejudices in the U.S. freed blacks ought to be permanently removed beyond the region occupied by or allotted to a White population.” (“What the Founders Really Thought About Race:” The National Policy Institute, 2012)
The factions with which James Madison was concerned were essentially those associated with class and religion. Unlike race, these are far more fluid alliances and changeable over time. Yet, the advantages of federalism he identified are still very much the ones still being generally touted today. Federalism prevents a majority from dominating a minority; since local affairs are thought to be generally better understood and dealt with locally, government remains close to the people and federalism aids the development of a national interest that can take advantage of all that is best in all of the people.
Next we will consider how this purported federal contribution actually stacks up with the contemporary ethnic reality of American society.
henryjeffrey@yahoo.com
