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25 NOMOS: Am. Soc'y Pol. Legal Phil. 95 (1983)
Federalism and the Democratic Process

handle is hein.journals/nomos25 and id is 111 raw text is: 3 FEDERALISM AND THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS ROBERT A. DAHL Whenever the number of citizens is large-it need be no longer than the adult population of a small country-then citi- zens will find it inconvenient, even oppressive, to govern them- selves in a single unit. To manage public affairs they will need other units, including local governments. Local governments will make binding decisions, enforced if need be by heavy punish- ments. In principle, a local government might be highly dem- ocratic-thanks to the advantages of its size, possibly far more than the national government. Yet it would necessarily fall short of democratic criteria in one respect: its citizens would not ex- ercise final control over their own agenda, which would be re- stricted by a higher level of government or by the constitution of the country. Let us now suppose that the national government is consti- tutionally prevented from infringing on the agenda of the local government. Each level of government is privileged, so to speak, in relation to the other. Yet because each has a protected agenda, neither has a completely open agenda. This is, in es- sence, a federal system if by federalism we intend to mean a system in which some matters are exclusively within the com- petence of certain local units-cantons, states, provinces-and are constitutionally beyond the scope of the authority of the na- tional government, and where certain other matters are consti- 95

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