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Federalism, when it has not been ignored altogether in normative political theory, has typically been analyzed in terms that fail to match the institution as it exists in the world. Federations are made up of provinces that are too few, too large, too rigid, too constitutionally entrenched, and too tied to ethnocultural identity to match theories based on competitive federalism, Tiebout sorting, democratic self-government, or subsidiarity. A relatively neglected tradition in liberal thought, based on a separation of loyalties and identifiable in Montesquieu, Publius, Constant, Tocqueville, and Acton, however, holds more promise. If the purpose of federalism is to compensate for worrisome tendencies toward centralization, then it is desirable that the provinces large enough to have political power be stable and entrenched and be able to engender loyalty from their citizens, such as the loyalty felt to ethnoculturally specific provinces. Separation of loyalty theories and the bulwark theories of which they are a subset match up with federalism as it exists in the world.

The transition from a relatively federal to a relatively centralized
constitutional structure in the United States has often been identified
with the shift from classical to welfare liberalism as a matter of public
philosophy. This article argues against that distinction. The liberal
argument for federalism is a contingent one, built on approximations,
counterbalancing, and political power. A more federalist constitution is
not automatically a freer one on classical liberal understandings of
freedom. Neither is a more centralized constitution automatically a better
match with the ideals of welfare liberalism. The article sketches a
constitutional history of federalism from the founding, through an era in
which centralization was aligned with skepticism about liberal
constitutionalism (for both meanings of liberal), to an era in which
centralization was aligned with increases in liberal freedom (for both
meanings of liberal).