Questions concerning border closures during pandemics often focus on international borders or rights-based considerations. Closures of internal borders in federal countries, such as Canada, raise independent concerns regarding who can close internal borders when. Those questions are not exhausted by rights-based considerations and cannot be resolved using brute empirical measures. They instead implicate the nature and ends of federalism. This text uses the case of internal border restrictions in Canada during COVID-19 to explore whether the kinds of closures that took place there can be justified on federalism grounds. It argues that the case for provinces being able to unilaterally enact interprovincial border closures in federal countries, as observed in Canada during COVID-19, do not withstand scrutiny. It attends to possible justifications for federalism to demonstrate that the best arguments for federalism do not support provincial control over borders that justify provinces possessing, let alone exercising, unilateral authority to close interprovincial borders to persons residing in other provinces.

Within the framework of the soft budget constraint problem, this article investigates the impact of a legislative reform that increased regional tax autonomy on the propensity of Spanish regional governments to incur a deficit. For this purpose, a dynamic panel data model is estimated, using data for the period 1984–2019. The sample shows a breakpoint in 2002, when the reform of the regional financing system came into force, providing Spanish regions with greater tax autonomy, more fiscal competency, and lower intergovernmental transfers. Results show that the budget constraint has hardened, as regions have fewer incentives to accumulate budgetary deficits with the expectation of future compensations from the central government. A comprehensive review of the evolution of other factors previously identified as determinants of soft budget constraints, and the analysis of two regions not included in this financing system, suggest no other possible explanation for these results.

The part of the UK fiscal framework which determines how UK government funding is allocated across the four home nations has undergone profound change since 2012, given tax and social security devolution. The UK government’s post-Brexit plans for regional development funding, state aid, regulation and trade negotiations have led to significant disagreements about the nature of the devolved fiscal and constitutional settlement. And the COVID-19 pandemic provided a major shock to a fiscal system with limited flexibility for the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish devolved governments. This paper reviews the changes and challenges faced during these reforms and policy shocks. We find that: tensions about reforms to funding arrangements reflect the inconsistency of principles guiding the reforms; that the UK government’s post-Brexit plans do reduce the policy autonomy of the devolved governments, but reflect powers central governments often have in even highly decentralised countries; and that temporary changes to rules and the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic prevented a subnational fiscal crisis, but that more systematic change may make the system more robust to future shocks. This suggests that a review of the principles underpinning the UK’s subnational fiscal and economic policies would be highly worthwhile.

What explains state agency resistance to actions taken by their federal counterparts? And do sectional tensions make state bureaucratic nonacquiescence particularly likely in the U.S. South? We theorize that state resistance to federal administrative policy is more likely among Southern state bureaus due to administrative sectionalism. We argue that state agencies can and do resist federal administrative orders independent of other political constraints. This study is among the first to consider the policy consequences of sectionalism in state bureaucracies. We test our claims by employing a mixed methods approach that analyzes each instance of litigation and intervention by state bureaucrats in opposition to actions and orders by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) from 2010 to 2017. We find that, all else equal, state agency resistance to federal utility policy is about 3.75 times as likely among Southern utility regulators. This research has important normative implications for administrative politics as it suggests agencies with putatively apolitical policy jurisdiction have political preferences driven by sectional tension.

The recent and still enduring global economic and financial crisis deeply impacted the institutional framework in Italy and Spain by prompting a series of reforms, which ultimately re-shaped the local government features. Based on a qualitative comparative analysis of recent reforms, the author shows that (directly and indirectly) crisis-driven provisions have significantly impacted the local levels and changed the central/local relations in both countries. During the years of crisis, a decrease in local discretion in its three main facets (fiscal, administrative, and political/functional) has taken place. This outcome could both allow for a better understanding of how central and local governments have interacted during the crisis and to contribute to the formulation of more general considerations on local discretion and central/local relations in Italy and Spain.

Democracy and federalism are commonly viewed as complementary components of a political system. Conversely, a long-standing discourse claims the incompatibility of inevitable intergovernmental coordination in federalism with democracy, the former being viewed as an impediment or disruption to democratic governing. However, neither are the two inherently compatible nor inevitably incongruous. Instead, research and practice of democratic federations show that their relationship is one of multiple tensions. These may generate conflicts and impasses, yet can equally prove to be productive. To delineate these tensions, but also how different federal systems deal with them, this article examines federalism and democracy as two discrete, but interdependent institutional dimensions. Building upon this framework, we depict variants of coupling between institutions of federalism and democracy-based on selected cases. We demonstrate that particular modes of multilevel governance and intergovernmental relations are essential for linking the logics of federalism and democracy in loosely coupled, flexible patterns. Moreover, federal democracies can effectively cope with these tensions by continuously balancing power established in the two institutional dimensions.

This paper develops a framework for analysing intergovernmental relationships around greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation policies along a cooperation-conflict spectrum that affects the probability of their enactment. Cooperative policies, such as federal fiscal transfers to sub-national governments, facilitate enactment. Coordination policies, including enabling and funding mechanisms, promote interdependence between jurisdictions. Competitive policies, such as federal performance standards and price mechanisms, increase political conflict over authority. We categorise 23 policies developed by over 1,500 state stakeholders into the cooperation/coordination/conflict taxonomy. If scaled to the national level, these policies could reduce GHG emissions by over 3 billion tonnes by 2020 and generate nearly 2.2 million jobs (1.19 per cent above baseline projections). Nearly two-thirds of the job gains are from coordinated and cooperative policy options that are unlikely to occur under the status quo policy process. We recommend a national climate action planning process to reduce GHG emissions while increasing aggregate economic efficiency.

In theory, lower-level governments (provinces, regional governments, or member states) operating in multilevel systems within and beyond the nation-state can choose from a wide repertoire of modes of policy coordination to solve collective problems non-hierarchically. These modes range from unilateral policy emulation over informal intergovernmental agreements to binding interstate law. The modes that governments are willing and capable to use, however, vary considerably across multilevel systems which affects governments’ collective problem-solving capacity. This paper argues that the nature of executive–legislative relations in lower-level governments is crucial to account for this variation. The presence (or absence) of power sharing shapes the willingness of lower-level governments to enter agreements that greatly constrain individual government autonomy. Power-concentrating governments, as opposed to power-sharing ones, tend to avoid such agreements. The type of power sharing affects the capacity to enter agreements that require legislative approval. Compulsory power-sharing governments, as opposed to voluntary power-sharing governments, should find it difficult to enter such agreements, since this type of power sharing invites inter-branch divides. To substantiate these arguments, we apply them to Canada, Switzerland, the United States, and the European Union.