Abstract
This chapter accounts for federal institution-building based on the concept of sequencing. It argues that state-building processes on the level of constituent units that preceded nation-state formation encouraged a more functional rather than dual allocation of powers. Inspired by historical institutionalism, this long-term historical perspective illustrates diverging federal development paths between European federations (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) on the one hand and Anglo-Saxon settler societies (USA, Canada, Australia) on the other. Furthermore, the constituent units’ infrastructural capacities at the time of federalization shaped the historical development paths that Germany, Austria and Switzerland took and explain the considerable variation in autonomy of the constituent units. While Swiss Cantons dispose of high authority, Austrian Länder are much weaker and German Länder take on a middle position.
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Notes
- 1.
For the purpose of this paper, I neglect the special case of “execution on federal commission” (Auftragsverwaltung, Art. 85 GG) which is largely similar to indirect administration in Austria but is limited to some specific domains (in particular, federal roads and waterways and nuclear energy).
- 2.
Art. 46: Implementation of Federal Law: “The Cantons shall implement federal law in conformity with the Constitution and the statute.”
- 3.
Also, for important legislative domains, the 1874 constitution explicitly entrusted the cantons with the execution of federal laws.
- 4.
It should be kept in mind that Austria was part of the old (“Holy Roman”) Empire until its dissolution in 1806, and was also a member of the German Confederation during its lifetime (1815–1866). It was Bismarck who, by founding first the North German Federation (1867) and then the (“second”) German Empire, ousted Austria from Germany.
- 5.
The Austrian monarchy as understood in this paper is synonymous with the “cisleithanian” part of the “double monarchy” of Austria-Hungary. The river Leitha was considered a symbolic demarcation line between Hungary and Lower Austria within the empire, with the latter also being called Cisleithania and the former Transleithania. Since the Ausgleich of 1861, the former kingdom of Hungary was in many respects an autonomous state (“Transleithania”), with its own institutional history, and can be passed over in our analysis.
- 6.
The latter, in turn, criticized political parties in the Landtag for their attempts to put political pressure on the monarchical officials (Wielinger 1991, p. 789).
- 7.
To be sure, the numerical superiority of German-speaking citizens was stronger in the German Reich than in Switzerland: Around 1890 the German language was spoken by 71% of Swiss citizens and by around 92% of German citizens.
- 8.
Berne had a Catholic, French-speaking minority in the Northeast, until their secession and the formation of the canton of Jura in 1974. This event rather lately confirmed the importance of ethnic and religious homogeneity on the cantonal level. However, even in this instance the francophone Protestants in the southern Jura refused to join the new canton and preferred to stay with Berne.
- 9.
Most vigorous in putting such demands forward were the conservative party organizations of the West Austrian Länder since they were particularly concerned about the ascendance of the political Left in the capital city, Vienna. Since that time, conservatives tended to regard federalism as an institutional bulwark against an eventual “red” Austria.
- 10.
United States in 1789; Canada in 1867 and Australia in 1901.
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Acknowledgements
This chapter is a revised and abbreviated version of a manuscript originally prepared for the 2nd ECPR General Conference, Marburg 18–21 September 2003. I am grateful to the editors for useful comments and suggestions and to Jörg Broschek for substantively updating and compiling the final version of this manuscript.
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Lehmbruch, G. (2019). Sub-Federal State-Building and the Origins of Federalism: A Comparison of Austria, Germany and Switzerland. In: Behnke, N., Broschek, J., Sonnicksen, J. (eds) Configurations, Dynamics and Mechanisms of Multilevel Governance. Comparative Territorial Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05511-0_20
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