The Global Promise of Federalism.

• Author: Anastakis, Dimitry
• Position: Book review

The Global Promise of Federalism, edited by Grace Skogstad, David Cameron, Martin Papillon and Keith Banting, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2013, 312 pp.

Though its title does not indicate as such, the Global Promise of Federalism is a well-deserved Festschrift for political scientist Richard Simeon, the distinguished scholar of Canadian and broader federalisms. Simeon, whose career coincided with the great challenge to Canadian federalism represented by the nationalist and separatist impulses in Quebec, the rise of the New West, and the mega-constitutional politics from the 1970s to the early 1990s resulting in the Charter, patriation and failed Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords, has been a keen scholar, advocate and critic of federalism for nearly 50 years.

Indeed, during this period, at a time when the study of Canada seemed to have existential implications, Simeon produced from his perch at Queen's, and then the University of Toronto, a steady stream of important and ground-breaking works, not the least of which were a series of studies for the 1985 Macdonald Royal Commission. Simeon also played a key role in the "comparative turn" in Canadian political science starting in the 1990s, wherein that discipline's scholarship took a much more expansive and global approach in its methodology and focus.

As a collection on federalism, this book is a useful and practical contribution. The introduction is a thoughtful overview of some of the key issues that have shaped Simeon's scholarship and driven the field in recent years: the "chicken and egg" debate over societal values vis-a-vis founding institutions as a key determinant for a federation's causation; the question of the importance of democracy and trust within a polity as a basis for whether or not federalism can root itself successfully; and, of course, federalism's capacity to evolve over time.

Many of these themes are reflected, and expounded, upon in the collection's 10 chapters, all of which are very good. Topics touch upon a broad range of fields and issues, from federalism and democracy, and theology and identity, to case studies on Cyprus, Spain and comparative Canadian-Australian federalism. A highlight is Alain Noel's forceful argument about the importance of politics, ideology, identities and majority/minority relations within a federation; here, we have a sharp reminder that the often messy politics of a place needs to be "brought back into" studies of the state...