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Not all federal systems permit their constituent units to adopt constitutions. This Article considers whether, and under what circumstances, subnational constitutions tend to contribute to the volatility or stability of their respective federal systems. By examining the role that subnational constitutions played in South Africa's celebrated democratization, this Article observes that a transitional federal state can increase its flexibility and adaptability by merely authorizing subnational constitutions. The Article concludes that federal systems, particularly those undergoing fundamental change, can be better equipped to manage regime-threatening conflicts and perpetuate a democratic political culture if they permit constituent units to adopt constitutions.

The democratization of a national government is only a first step in diffusing democracy throughout a country's territory. Even after a national government is democratized, subnational authoritarian 'enclaves' often continue to deny rights to citizens of local jurisdictions. Gibson offers new theoretical perspectives for the study of democratization in his exploration of this phenomenon. His theory of 'boundary control' captures the conflict pattern between incumbents and oppositions when a national democratic government exists alongside authoritarian provinces (or 'states'). He also reveals how federalism and the territorial organization of countries shape how subnational authoritarian regimes are built and how they unravel. Through a novel comparison of the late nineteenth-century American 'Solid South' with contemporary experiences in Argentina and Mexico, Gibson reveals that the mechanisms of boundary control are reproduced across countries and historical periods. As long as subnational authoritarian governments coexist with national democratic governments, boundary control will be at play

This paper examines the fiscal balance of power between national and subnational governments in Canada and the US. While it is generally acknowledged that Canadian provinces are more autonomous than American states in terms of own-source revenues and the conditionality of transfers, I argue that political dynamics within and between the two levels of government significantly impact the ability of federal governments to exercise their fiscal power on the subnational units. Even though Canada has more decentralized fiscal arrangements, the independence of its federal government and the interdependence of American federal-state relations results in a greater degree of federal fiscal power in Canada.

AbstractWhat role do subnational governments play in shaping a country's redistributive efforts? Existing literature suggests that federalism can be a hindrance to redistribution. Such negative effects may be particularly true of Latin America's federations due to high levels of regional inequality and malapportioned political institutions. However, in order to fully understand redistribution in federal systems in Latin America, we need to examine not only how subnational governments affect centralized redistributive efforts, but also what efforts these subnational governments are making themselves. In this article, I contribute to our understanding of subnational social spending in Latin America's largest federation, Brazil. My results suggest that, in Brazil, state governments are constrained actors, but they do pursue different levels of redistributive social spending with higher levels being more likely under left parties.

This article provides an explanation for the adoption and partial abandonment of subnational regional greenhouse gas emissions trading systems on the United States' East and West Coasts as well as the country's Midwest by focusing on gubernatorial entrepreneurship. The analysis is twofold: On the one hand, the article explores the motivations of governors to act as entrepreneurs, pushing for the adoption of the policy innovation 'greenhouse gas emissions trading systems'. On the other, it examines the interaction between contextual factors and gubernatorial entrepreneurship, arguing that this can explain the adoption and abandonment of subnational regional greenhouse gas emissions trading systems. The analysis suggests that strong gubernatorial entrepreneurs can seize windows of opportunity for ambitious climate policy that are opened by a federal-state context in which the federal government is inactive, creating a regulatory void. In doing so, they take a risk due to the uncertainty of whether the policy will be (politically) successful. Since politicians often are risk averse, trying to avoid blame for policy failure, such proactive gubernatorial entrepreneurship requires strong motivations. With the increasing likelihood of imminent federal policy, additional governors can become active but their entrepreneurship tends to be weaker since they react to a different window of opportunity in which they take a lower risk than the strong gubernatorial entrepreneurs. Also their motivations tend to differ from those of the proactive gubernatorial entrepreneurs.