Federalism: A Balancing Act

In India, elections are a celebratory event. Even a customary glance at the newspaper or digital media gives an insightful perspective to acknowledge the diversity and pluralism existing in the country with inevitable conflict arising out of it and concomitant strategic cooperation forged to advance socio-political agendas. This may sound chaotic, but that’s precisely what its federal political system encounters. Nonetheless, federalism is widely accepted as a safeguard for democracy. In this respect, federalism stands out in two distinct aspects in normative terms: first, it requires the division of (legislative and executive) power between central and regional/local governments, varieties of representation that are meant to accommodate diversity and maintain a balance of power, and at the same time, it gives rise to the complexity of the public policies which necessitate intergovernmental coordination of policies as well as the intricate challenge of conflict resolution among various constituent units, interest groups, and stakeholders.

The recently concluded Winter School on Federalism and Governance, jointly organized by the University of Innsbruck and the Eurac Research Institute for Comparative Federalism, provided ample opportunity to deliberate, discuss, and explore some of these facets in-depth. The 2024 edition of the Winter School was particularly interesting since it covered the intersection of federalism and sustainability and took a deep dive into how the federal political system in some of the largest and most populous countries, such as the United States, Brazil, EU Member States, India, and Iraq, impacts national environmental governance and natural resource management. Together these countries contribute a significant percentage of the world’s population and economy. Given their importance in this framework, any meaningful progress towards 2030’s Sustainable Development Goals and other climate-related pledges would require in-depth consideration of their domestic policies, politics, and governance, which inescapably involves navigation of the federal system.

The topic of federalism is wide-ranging and integrates scholarships ranging from constitutional law, political science, political geography, public finance, and other related fields, as was rightly represented by the transdisciplinary cohort attending the event. In particular, it was interesting how diverse representation raises the quality of the discussion, illuminates region-specific concerns, but also suffers from skewed euro-centric constructs. However, there was a significant effort to infuse some of these concerns during the event, especially the sessions eliciting colonial history and the postcolonial realities of federalism in Asia and Africa, the practice of federalism in managing natural resources in regions experiencing conflict such as Syria and Iraq, and federal challenges in post-democratic contexts. These case studies inevitably trigger critical engagement on the need for a contextual grounding that perhaps represents a marked shift from the practice of federalism in the political realities of Europe and other nations of the Global North.

At the personal level, the various experiences coalesced to form a better insight into the complexities of the federal system, but at the same time, it was indeed challenging to surmize how such wide-ranging deliberations might help advance policy research in India, particularly in the domain of natural resource management. This is more relevant as an early-career researcher and part of the Transboundary Rivers, Ecologies & Development Studies (TREADS) initiative at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, which engages with policy-relevant questions on the intersection of federalism and natural resource management, in particular water. For example, the various sessions of the event frequently pointed out three broad and interlinked features of the influence of the federal political system on environmental or climate change governance. 1. The multi-scalar nature of environmental problems and, concomitantly, how to design the division of environmental powers in a multi-scalared setting 2. How to ensure cooperation among the many constituent units towards collective action on environmental and climate governance. 3. The role of the court and institutional mechanisms for conflict resolution. Precisely, TREADS’s research has critically interrogated some of these dimensions in the context of water governance in India and how it compares with other regions, such as Europe.