New Scientist: End of nations: Is there an alternative to countries?

OddTrader · Mar 8, 2017

luisHK said:
No idea how it will evolve, but it was interesting to read about the birth of nationalism and borders.
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I think this is a legitimate question for why so many conflicts and wars among/between countries in human history.

September 1991

SIMPLY - The history of borders

Rulers and governments have often tried to control people’s freedom of movement. NI tells the story.

https://newint.org/features/1991/09/05/simply/

1. Ancient migrations

Cartoons: JIM NEEDLE

Human history is the history of migration and the most sophisticated civilizations arose where human traffic was heaviest. The Ancient Near East, the Indian sub-continent, China, the Americas, Europe – all had constant influxes of migrants bringing new ideas and change. And in ancient Greece the Delphic priests regarded the right of unfettered movement as one of four freedoms distinguishing liberty from slavery. Because they did not feel responsible for newcomers, rulers often saw them as an asset rather than a liability. They would add to a region’s wealth, contribute to taxes and serve in local armies.

2. Bonded serfs

Cartoons: JIM NEEDLE

People moved constantly all over the world – be they Vikings, Crusaders or Chinese emigrants. Large scale restrictions, however, were imposed with the introduction of serfdom in Europe under the Roman Empire during the third and fourth centuries AD. Initially, controls were lax but under the Roman Emperor Constantine (AD 309–37) serfs were forbidden to leave their work place and had to accept whatever conditions their lords imposed. The Romans even introduced the first ‘passport’ – a document requesting safe passage for the bearer. By mediaeval times a large part of Europe’s population was bound in place and traded like chattels. Movement was considered inimical to order and the possibility for human migration was restricted mainly to wars.

3. Nation states

Cartoons: JIM NEEDLE

But during the early Renaissance period a new social order emerged founded on wage labourers. Serfdom started to die out, but was not replaced by free movement. Instead rulers and governments tried to increase the power of the state. People were viewed as wealth, a valuable workforce to be kept within a country’s borders. Rulers even encouraged immigration by offering newcomers citizenship, tax incentives and other benefits. The ideology of nationalism which was developing at this time united a vast range of cultural groups and classes on the basis of loyalty to the state while designating others as ‘outsiders’. Countries like Spain and France ordered mass expulsions of ethnic or religious minorities. By the end of the 16th century Jews had been driven out of most of Western and Central Europe and an estimated 175,000 Protestants were expelled from the Spanish Netherlands.

4. Slave labour

Cartoons: JIM NEEDLE

More horrific than these expulsions, however, was the shipment of millions of West Africans to slavery in the Americas – the largest involuntary migration in history. It was nothing new – Islamic states had been enslaving Africans since 650AD – but Europeans wanted them as labourers to help them push forward the frontiers in the New World. In all, between eight and ten million Africans were taken to the Americas from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century – four to five times the number of European colonialists arriving in Africa during the same period. Dr David Livingstone, the nineteenth century missionary, claimed that at least ten lives were lost for each slave that arrived

5. Colonial controls

Although they needed to populate their colonies, most European governments tried to maintain strict control over who the settlers should be. Spanish citizens could only enter Spanish colonies with a licence proving they were ‘neither Jews nor Moors, nor children of such, nor sons or grandsons of any that have been punished, condemned or burnt as heretics, or for heretical crimes’. Anyone going illegally would forfeit their property, be forced to return to Spain at their own expense and be excommunicated. The death penalty was imposed in 1607 for any ship’s officer illegally carrying passengers to the Indies. The British, however, had the opposite attitude and shipped their dissenters overseas to places like Australia. And when they opened their colonies to settlement in the early eighteenth century, domestic depopulation became a serious problem. National passports were introduced and by the end of the eighteenth century were obligatory in most European countries.

6. Right to leave

Cartoons: JIM NEEDLE

By the end of the seventeenth century ‘liberal’ thinkers like John Locke were questioning a ruler’s right to restrict the movement of the individual. Such questions gained support from a new school of economics led by Adam Smith, which preached the virtues of free trade and a free labour market. Border controls were relaxed and for a few decades monied people in the West could largely choose where they went. The need to increase domestic populations was replaced by a concern with over-population as social unrest and unemployment had grown by the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. The British Government began organizing and assisting emigration. Other European countries followed suit and the New World was settled in the following century by people exercising this right to leave.

7. Changing course

Cartoons: JIM NEEDLE

However during the nineteenth century the migration flow reversed. People no longer surged from developed Europe to new areas of the globe. Instead migrants streamed northwards from less developed areas: North Africans into France, Italian peasants to New York. Racism proliferated as nationalists cultivated the view of outsiders as dangerous to the health of a nation – a threat to its security and way of life. European countries which had been open to political exiles during Victorian times began restricting the entry of immigrants. These controls grew stronger after 1848 when the revolutions produced a flood of political refugees from the German states and Hungary, and intensified at the close of the century after a wave of anarchist attacks.

8. War wounds

Cartoons: JIM NEEDLE

Waves of refugees swept across Europe in the early twentieth century. Hundreds of thousands roamed the Balkan peninsula in the decade before World War One. The post-war political realignment of territories that occurred after the four great European empires collapsed made many more thousands homeless. By the 1920s immigration controls were tightened and passports – which had fallen into disuse in many places – were reintroduced. The Second World War brought another exodus as intensified aerial bombardment left massive numbers homeless. Hitler’s Luftwaffe scattered tens of thousands in the Blitzkrieg of Poland and France, while the British and Americans deliberately uprooted massive numbers of civilians to facilitate the invasion of the German Reich. States turned a cold eye upon these newcomers; the Allies provided not one ship to carry Jewish escapees from Romania, Turkey or other countries when doing so might have saved thousands of lives.

9. Fortress world

Cartoons: JIM NEEDLE

Nation-building in the Third World during the twentieth century has created mass migrations on an unprecedented scale. New regimes have persecuted ethnic minorities in attempts to ‘consolidate’ the nation while dissident voices have been silenced by large–scale human rights abuses. Wars, poverty, environmental degradation have also left millions homeless. But faced by the rising tidal wave of need, the West has tightened immigration controls further still. Even traditional places of refuge for asylum-seekers are vanishing, as schemes to deport refugees are implemented and asylum claims are dismissed. Moreover, immigration controls are set to tighten still further, especially with the creation of a single European Community in 1992, which will deny access to outsiders except as part of a strictly controlled workforce.

Source: Much of this material derives from Closed Borders: The Contemporary Assault on the Freedom of Movement by Alan Dowty (Yale University Press, 1987)
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OddTrader · Mar 8, 2017

The End of National Borders: Thinking Ethically in the Face of Mass Migration

Luke Bretherton ABC Religion and Ethics Updated 21 May 2015 (First posted 20 May 2015)

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2015/05/20/4239083.htm

In debates about refugees, asylum seekers and mass migration, a crucial issue is the moral and political status of borders. Do we think borders are good or bad, a necessary evil or a moral necessity?

My contention is that those who argue for open borders under-value a sense of place and the integrity of the nation as political community, but those who argue for closed borders over-value the nation as political community.

Instead, I will suggest we need a way of valuing our particular political community in relation to other nations and ultimately in relation to God, and that such a framework will enable us to make appropriate decisions about how to respect and value existing citizens and fulfil our duty of care to the refugee and vulnerable stranger from outside our country who nevertheless who seek a new life within our country.

In summary:

those who argue for opening up borders see borders as a filter to keep out the bad and corrupt but at the same time, let in any individual who seeks to live in this land;

those who argue for closing our borders see borders as a fence, a system of security and defence that protects and preserves what is inside from what is outside;

but I want to argue that borders are a face we turn to the world around us which tells them what kind of country we are and how are want to relate to those around us and whether we are hostile or hospitable.

Mass migration is a central feature and fruit of contemporary globalisation and will continue to be a central feature of social, political and economic life for the foreseeable future.

In the modern period, mass migration is not new but it is morally and politically problematic for two key reasons:

It is politically problematic because it involves crossing borders between different nation-states and therefore it involves the re-negotiation of the fundamental political and legal status of the individual concerned.
Migration is morally problematic because current immigration policies adopted by all nation-states favour the needs of the strong (the existing members of a polity) over the weak (asylum seekers and vulnerable economic migrants).

The underlying options shaping the political debate and policy response to mass migration seem unable to cope with this reality. The two basic options seem to be either we prioritize the needs of the strong and so have closed borders with very tight immigration controls and large-scale deportation of illegal immigrants in the hope that this will deter further migrants; or we prioritize the needs of the weak and have open borders.

I want to argue that a Christian account of how we think about what duty of care we owe to our neighbours, near and far, is a much more robust, constructive and realistic way of framing a response to the challenges posed by mass migration.

In arguments about how best to respond to the issues mass migration pose to a liberal democracy, three basic philosophical approaches can be discerned. On the one side are liberal utilitarian and deontologist thinkers who argue for open borders; on the other are more communitarian thinkers who argue for the moral importance of borders. I am not going to address racist and nationalist arguments for the sanctity of a particular nation as my concern here is with morally serious and philosophically cogent arguments for and against borders. I do not deny that racist and nationalist sentiments are at work in contemporary debates about immigration, but I think their plausibility feeds off a deeper confusion and a legitimate sense of threat that I will try to address through a theological account of how to think about migration.

Borders as filters

Liberal utilitarians and deontologists argue that liberal democracies, in principle, owe an equal duty of care to all humanity and by implication, that borders should, in principle, be open.

Peter and Renata Singer argue on a utilitarian basis that immigration policy in general and refugee policy in particular should give equal consideration to the interests of all those affected and where the interests of different parties conflict (namely, where the needs of existing citizens conflict with the needs of a refugee) priority should be given to those with the most pressing claim to have their needs met (the refugee or economically vulnerable).

Joseph Carens, from a deontological perspective, argues that free movement is essential for the realisation of an individual's other liberties and thus should be considered as a basic human right with open borders a direct implication of this right.

Michael Dummett argues that the requirements of justice are such that "all states ought to recognise the normal principle to be that of open borders, allowing all freely to enter and, if they will, to settle in, any country they wish."

However, none of these writers argue for completely open borders and all recognise limits to freedom of movement and how this freedom can conflict with other rights which may necessitate its legitimate restriction. They recognise that there is a basic problem which restricted borders are a means of addressing - that is, the need to balance the rights of existing members of a liberal democracy with the human rights of every individual to freedom of movement. They also recognise the need to keep out criminals and other destructive elements.

But for advocates of open borders, borders are in principle morally wrong even if they are necessary evil in practice. What matters to those who argue for open borders is not a particular political community, but the individual. Border controls in their view place a higher value on the existence of one particular community than on the value of an individual and their human rights. For them, borders should allow free passage of individuals from one place to another while acting as a filter for violent and criminal individuals.

Borders as filters: a theological critique

From a Christian perspective, this all might seem right and proper - we should, after all, value the image of God in all humans and respect for human rights seems a good way to do that. But there is a subtle but very important difference between what the likes of Singer and Carens argue for and a Christian view.

Those who argue for open borders are deeply concerned about how we may respect everyone's humanity, but they abstract love and respect an individuals' humanity from the question of what it means in practice to love and respect this particular person in this particular place. Their view is best summarised by the philosopher Liebniz's statement that, "I am indifferent to that which constitutes a German or a Frenchman because I will only the good of all mankind."

In short, respect for humanity is understood as overriding the respect that is owed to one's particular community.

From a Christian view, there is no such thing as a love of humanity or humanness only a love of particular persons in particular places. This love is itself situated within concentric circles of relationship beginning with the family and ending with humanity as a whole. Truly loving relations necessarily involve particularity, limit and points of exchange at both an individual and communal level. The particularity of persons is, to a large extent, constituted by their place - that is, their social, economic, political and historical location in creation. These places and their limits form the basis and pattern of the relations of giving and receiving that constitute what it means to be human in the image of God.

Another way of putting this is as follows: while we are the same as all other creatures, we are more like some persons than others and we are also like no other person - each person is unique. This basic structure of human being is at once assumed and affirmed in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the one who is truly human. Jesus is human; Jesus is unique; and Jesus, as a historical person from a particular place is more like some than others. In short, we need others to be Other or different in order that we may all be human.

The parable of the Good Samaritan is instructive here. The parable of the Good Samaritan is often read as justifying a universalistic ethic of unconditional love - that is, that we should love anyone and everyone. However, while the parable suggests aid knows no boundaries - all may be counted as neighbours - the extension of solidarity is particular: care is given by one person to another. So proximity and location are directly relevant: the Good Samaritan responds to one he finds nearby, not some generalised or abstract bearer of rights who exists nowhere and everywhere. The one in distress is presented as a fleshly body to be hosted through costly personal involvement. To abstract or objectify this particular body and so pass on by without really encountering them is a sin.

Moreover, that the Samaritan comes from a particular place that has a particular relationship to the hearers of the story and the other characters in the parable is central to its dramatic force. Oliver O'Donovan notes:

"It is essential to our humanity that there should be always foreigners, human beings from another community who have an alternative way of organising the task and privilege of being human, so that our imaginations are refreshed and our sense of cultural possibilities renewed."

The parable explicates, among all its hearers, both ancient and modern, precisely how someone from another place can renew our false constructions of what neighbour love consists of. As the parable suggests, while the church must uphold the worth of place, of coming from somewhere, as intrinsic to personal relations and the very fabric of what it means to be human, it must also recognise that all our human constructions of place are sinful and are under judgment.

Unlike the liberal utilitarians and deontologists who call us to love an undifferentiated "humanity," a properly Christian view calls us to love particular persons who are located in particular places.

Thus the problem with seeing borders as filters and migration as simply a question of individual freedom of movement is that it fails to value the ongoing integrity and worth of a particular place and that migration does change places for better and for worse and that people are right to be concerned about the changes it will bring. Lack of attention to this concern and love of place makes plausible the racist's rhetoric and the nationalist's exclusionary nostalgia.

These leads us to question those philosophers who argue that borders are good to see whether their approach is more amenable to a Christian point of view.

Borders as fences

Communitarian philosophers argue that borders are not only necessary in practice but are morally required. Michael Walzer notes how entrance policy goes to the heart of political sovereignty and the ability of a community to sustain a common life. He argues that the primary duty of care that members of a political community owe to each other is the communal provision of security and welfare. Central to this provision is the need for community itself that inherently involves culture, religion and politics. Maintenance of security and welfare - which inherently involves maintenance of the community itself - justifies entrance policies.

In relation to the acceptance of refugees and migrants, the provision of security and welfare gives rise to a conflict, should the numbers of refugees and migrants ever threaten the provision of security and welfare; there is a strong case for refusing entry. So here the question is at what point do the numbers threaten security and welfare and thus should the fences be higher or lower in order to protect the maintenance of the existing community.

Like Walzer, Matthew Gibney sees entrance policies as a site of conflicting moral claims. The claims of migrants and refugees must be balanced against the need for states to protect the institutions and values of the liberal democratic state. Gibney goes on to argue: "liberal egalitarian principles can only be realised in communities where relations amongst citizens are characterised by solidarity and trust, relations which develop over time and can be jeopardised by large, short-term changes in membership."

For Walzer and Gibney, a particular liberal democratic state is a good thing in and of itself that needs upholding and protecting: mass migration can threaten the existence of this good thing and so we need border controls to be fences protecting what is inside them.

Borders as fences: a theological critique

Walzer and Gibney see the common life of a nation or particular group as an end in itself. However, this needs to be contrasted with a Christian approach. The German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg argues that the cultivation and upholding of a distinctive national life cannot be an end in itself, but must be subordinated or come second to the concern for an international order of justice and freedom. However, this order can only begin in particular communities which then form unions with other nations, of which Pannenberg cites the European Union as a good example. However, like nations themselves, such unions:

"should be orientated beyond their own bounds towards the idea of an order of justice and peace that should one day include all humanity, that is, not only the world of our friends but also our present enemies. Thus this sequence of specific unions, which must have their beginnings in the internal political life of each people that is involved ... points toward the universal goal of a peaceful world that encompasses all mankind."

It is the comprehensive goals of regional and then world peace that "determines the boundary between the justifiable cultivation of distinctive national features and nationalistic exaggerations." It should be noted that Pannenberg conceives world peace as a wholly provisional, political and penultimate form of peaceableness that is in no way equivalent to the peace of God, but is rather an echo of the Kingdom Christ inaugurates and which finds its fulfilment in that Kingdom.

Thus, in contrast to Walzer and Gibney, there is no inherent or necessary conflict between the duty of care to migrants and refugees and the duty of care to existing citizens. Rather, the duty of care to migrants and refugees must be ordered in relation to pursuit of the common good which itself must be ordered in relation to the universal and cosmic good of humanity.

The true end of humans lies in neither the family, nor a particular culture, nor a nation, nor in some kind of worldwide polity or universal society - but in communion with God. How we order the relationship between the needs of migrants and the needs of existing citizens needs to be set within this bigger picture.

Borders as a face we present to the world

To see borders as fences is to over-value the maintenance of a particular community and isolate it from how it is related to other nations and the rest of the world. Instead, we need to see borders as a face we present to the world.

A face says that I am somebody who deserves respect, I am not simply a piece of land to be bought and sold or a thing made use of for a time. I have a personality and a history and a way of doing things, but I am made for relationship and without coming into relationship with others who are different from me, then I do not grow. And ultimately, I am a face who seeks to look upon the face of God and who finds the face of God reflected not in the faces of the strong and powerful, the skilled and the economically capable but in the face of the orphan, the widow and the refugee - and this is who God bids me be hospitable to.

To think of borders in terms of the metaphor of the face reorientates us to see there is value to be placed upon the existing community, but the existing community is not an end in itself, but is only fulfilled as it moves beyond itself and comes into relationship with those around it.

Borders are a means of framing and structuring this relationship and orientating a nation to the rest of the world in a way that presents an enquiring, confident, hospitable face rather than either a closed, insular, hostile face turning away from relationship with the poor and vulnerable or a hopeless, insecure face that is used and lacks a sense of self-worth.

Luke Bretherton is Associate Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University and Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics. His most recent book is Resurrecting Democracy: Faith, Citizenship and the Politics of a Common Life.
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SunTrader · Mar 8, 2017

Countries have borders for the same reason doors have locks.

It ain't rocket science.

OddTrader · Mar 8, 2017

As mentioned before, I don't think a world citizen approach (globalism/globalisation) is really feasible or workable, practically.

For practical purpose, there should still be borders, as also mentioned.

However, in addition to World-State Borders (cosmopolitanism), there would be also Continental Borders (e.g. Africa Border), or Partial-Continental Borders (e.g. North America Border) - which is designed mainly for border control purpose.

The conventional National Borders then would be substituted by these two layers of new borders.

LOL

SunTrader · Mar 8, 2017

LOL is right. This is swimming against the tide.

The tide towards control returning more and more to the local level. Less, not more globalism.

OddTrader · Mar 9, 2017

https://elitetrader.com/et/threads/why-californians-should-vote-to-secede-from-the-union.307350/

BLUEXIT

A Modest Proposal For Separating Blue States From Red

By KEVIN BAKER
March 9, 2017

https://newrepublic.com/article/140948/bluexit-blue-states-exit-trump-red-america

Truth is, you red states just haven’t been pulling your weight. Not for, well, forever. Red states are nearly twice as dependent on the federal government as blue states. Of the twelve states that received the least federal aid in return for each tax dollar they contribute to the U.S. Treasury, ten of them voted for Hillary Clinton—and the other two were Michigan and Wisconsin, your newest recruits. By the same count, 20 of the 26 states most dependent on federal aid went to Trump.

Take Mississippi (please!), famous for being 49th or 50th in just about everything that matters. When it comes to sucking at the federal teat, the Magnolia State is the undisputed champ. More than 40 percent of Mississippi’s state revenue comes from federal funding; one-third of its GDP comes from federal spending; for every dollar it pays out in federal taxes, it takes in $4.70 in federal aid; one in five residents are on food stamps—all national highs. You people—your phrase, not mine—liked to bash Obama for turning America into what you derisively referred to as “Food Stamp Nation.” In reality, it’s more like Food Stamp Red America—something your Trump-loving congressmen will discover if and when they fulfill their vow to gut the program.
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OddTrader · Mar 19, 2017

Looks like a potentially significant development, Bigly!

Gordon Brown pushes 'patriotic' third option for Scotland after Brexit

Former prime minister proposes repatriating powers to Holyrood from Brussels rather than Westminster

Severin Carrell Scotland editor

Sunday 19 March 2017

https://www.theguardian.com/politic...ption-for-more-powerful-scotland-after-brexit

Brown’s proposals support policies being pushed by Scottish Labour’s leader, Kezia Dugdale, as its alternative to independence. They argue federalism could strengthen and benefit all UK nations and regions by decentralising power and reducing the grip of Westminster.
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Gordon Brown unveils masterplan to save the UK - for a second time

Former Labour PM whose heavyweight intervention was credited with helping swing last referendum unveils plan to woo voters thinking of voting for independence

Ashley Cowburn Political Correspondent
@ashcowburn
Saturday 18 March 2017

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...turgeon-independence-referendum-a7636431.html

"Most of all, a new third option can unify our country and end the bitter and divisive Yes v No conflict that will continue to rip us apart.

"It is time to transcend the bitter division and extremism of an inflexible, die-hard conservatism at war with an intransigent and even more hardline nationalism."
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OddTrader · Mar 20, 2017

Devolution

Can England avoid a meltdown of national identity?

Paul Mason

After a hard Brexit and the end of the union, the English will need to define what they stand for – and how they are ruled

Tuesday 21 March 2017

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...england-avoid-a-meltdown-of-national-identity

Here is why I favour that solution over a single English parliament: in any English parliament, the south-east will dominate; and the emergent ideology of an English nation state will form itself around the white, military-monarchic and financial elite. With the Scots gone, their replacements as the social laboratory for far-right economics will be the north and the Midlands of England. If we are really unlucky, and Ukip does not evaporate, the racial and religious exclusivity ideologies will get stronger.

Better to create a strong federal institution at the centre – and offer Scotland and the Republic of Ireland strong bilateral arrangements over, for example, defence and trade – and then create strong regional assemblies. That is the best way of representing the separate regional identities of the English, and of allowing Wales to participate as an equal to the other regions, rather than as an appendage to Great England.
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OddTrader · Mar 20, 2017

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_federalism

"United Republics of China"
Gomberg's map

The concept of a United Republics of China first appeared in the fantastic "Outline of (the) Post-War New World Map". Published in Philadelphia in early 1942, this map - created by Maurice Gomberg - shows a proposal to re-arrange the world after an Allied victory against the Axis forces. In the map the United Republics of China (URC) includes most parts of present-day China, Korea, the erstwhile French colony of Indochina (now Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia), Thailand and Malaya. Otherwise, North Manchuria and Mongolia belong to the USSR; Taiwan and Hainan become territories of the USA.

In 2004, Lin Chong-Pin, former deputy Minister of Defense of the ROC, said that a think tank in Beijing or Shanghai gave a proposal for United Republics of China.[12] None of this proposal has become public. But in the same years[when?] the officials and think-tanks of the PRC have often shown an interest in the 1964 merger of mainland Tanganyika and the archipelago of Zanzibar to form the United Republic of Tanzania. As Zanzibar has its own president, government, parliament, autonomy, etc. and the president of Zanzibar serves as the vice-president of Tanzania, Tanzania may have provided an examplar of Deng Xiaoping's proposals for "One country, two systems" in China in the 1980s.[citation needed]

In 2011, Li Yi-hu, director of Institute of International Politics, University of Peking, said that Tanzania and Zanzibar, the model of "One country, two constitutions", could be referring to "One China, two constitutions".[13] In February 2011, China Review News published an article about the Tanzanian style of Chinese reunification.[14][15]

https://www.sinoss.net/uploadfile/2010/0909/20100909031928538.pdf
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OddTrader · Mar 21, 2017

February 22, 2017
Federalism, jurisdiction, and resistance
by Jacob T. Levy

https://niskanencenter.org/blog/federalism-jurisdiction-resistance/

More than sixty years ago, the legal scholar Herbert Wechsler argued that “the political safeguards of federalism” could do what needed to be done by way of protecting the states’ role in the constitutional system. Senators are elected by state, as are members of the Electoral College. Districting for the House of Representatives is done by the states. The American federation is not one of some national majority governing at the center and threatening the autonomy of the several states; the states are directly involved in the creation and makeup of the national government. That direct participation in federal institutions is supplemented by the states’ ability to act as lobbying interest groups. In light of all this, the dominant view among liberal legal scholars for two generations was, as Jesse Choper later argued, that the national political process could sort out the balance of state and federal authority, without judicial intervention.

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Federalism isn’t only valuable, or only liberal, because it brings lawmaking closer to the people. The local governing autonomy of the states is a mixed blessing, as Madison knew; local majorities can sometimes be the most oppressive. But we shouldn’t only think of the states’ outward-facing capacities as taking part in elections or looking for federal handouts. A central theme of my scholarship on federalism for many years has been: federalism is valuable because states can be oppositional. They can provide organizational, institutional, and political strength that is otherwise hard to come by in the face of a tremendously powerful central government. They are units that can say ”no”, and can help give people who say “no” a place to stand. They say “no” only partly to protect their own governing autonomy. It’s impossible to cabin off political power that neatly; states that are strong enough to defend their own inward jurisdiction are also strong enough externally to shape what happens overall. “The different governments control each other,” Madison wrote: not merely bound or limit, but control. If they didn’t, if they couldn’t, the “rights of the people” would be a great deal less secure.
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