Inman, Robert P.; Rubinfeld, Daniel L. --- "Federalism" [2011] ELECD 1076; in Parisi, Francesco (ed), "Production of Legal Rules" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Production of Legal Rules

Editor(s): Parisi, Francesco

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848440326

Section: Chapter 18

Section Title: Federalism

Author(s): Inman, Robert P.; Rubinfeld, Daniel L.

Number of pages: 27

Extract:

18 Federalism
Robert P. Inman and Daniel L. Rubinfeld



1. Introduction
Federalism is today a topic of intense intellectual debate in many countries
throughout the world. In Europe, the former Soviet Union, South Africa and
elsewhere, the view that good government will involve a blending of local and
central governmental decision-making is now well accepted. With a topic such
as federalism that has been so widely debated from so many perspectives, it
would be impossible to provide a comprehensive review of the literature. Rather,
we provide a particular perspective, one that balances the twin goals of political
participation and economic welfare. A carefully specified theory of federalism
has many useful applications: to government expenditure policy (Martinez-
Vasquez 1994), to tax policy (Inman and Rubinfeld 1996), to deficit policies
(Inman 1990), or to regulatory policy (Rose-Ackerman and Mashaw 1984).
Confederations of small governments have been praised by many ­ from
Plato and Aristotle, through Rousseau, Montesquieu, Smith, and Mills, to
contemporary federalist legal and economic scholars ­ as that political institution
most likely to encourage a trio of social virtues: political participation, protection
of the sovereign rights of citizens, and economic efficiency.1 Other scholars
have been more skeptical. The Federalist Papers (particularly at No. 47), the
intellectual blueprint for the US Constitution, raises serious doubts about the
virtues of loose confederations of small governments. Leading contemporary
social scientists from political science (Robert Dahl and William Riker) and
economics (Joseph Schumpeter and Paul Samuelson) have lent theoretical
support to the Federalists' ...