IN SEARCH OF THE FEDERAL SPIRIT by MICHAEL BURGESS.

214 In Search of the Federal Spirit
plus politically sovereign states). Referring to the work of Ivo Duchacek in the
early 1970s, he noted that something like 90 per cent of these states contained
minorities within their boundaries that embraced approximately 15 per cent
or more of their population. Toward the end of the decade of the 1990s of
course this complex set of circumstances had become even more complex. But
by then he claimed that over one-third, approximately eighty, of all nation
states were involved in formal arrangements to create new federal models or
were utilizing federal principles in some form in practice to accommodate
demands for self-rule or shared rule. 89
One manifestation of the paradigm shift was evident in the process of
democratization that had accelerated in different parts of the world. Elazar
noted the role that federalism had played in the restoration of democracy in
Spain and also in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela in Latin and
Central America. Returning to look at Europe, he noted its utility in the
process of German unification, in the confederal European Union (EU), and
in the transformation of the United Kingdom (UK) as a new 'U nion' state with
'new-style' federal arrangements also evident even in France. These were
presumably moving slowly toward federal democracy. But beyond the standard
categories of federation and confederation, he included federacy, associated
state relations, and decentralization in Portugal, the Azores, Monaco, and
France. Even further than this, he added the looser league arrangements such
as the Council on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and the North
Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), which had acquired certain limited but
nonetheless real constitutional powers. He also included the Commonwealth
of Independent States (CIS) arising out of the former Soviet empire and the
'new near-federal' constitution in South Africa."
All of these were interesting examples of the contemporary relevance of
federalism, but of equal significance was his conceptual distinction between
the process and structure of federalism. This had been strongly affirmed in
1987 in his Exploring Federalism when he insisted that federalism must
combine both structure and process, where the latter was broadly defined to
include in particular 'a political-cultural' dimension. Political culture was
vitally important in his estimation because it provided 'a sense of partnership
among the parties to the federal compact', a willingness to cooperate via
negotiated agreement, and 'a commitment to open bargaining between all
parties to an issue in such a way as to strive for consensus or, failing that, an
accommodation' that protected 'the fundamental integrity of all the partners'.
In short, structure alone was 'not sufficient to determine the federal character
of any particular polity'." But federalism was nonetheless a phenomenon that
provided many options for the practical organization of political authority and
powers 'as long as the proper relations were developed'. Consequently a 'wide
variety of political structures' could be, and had been, developed that expressed
specifically 'federal relationships'i'"