Varieties of federal democracy

Arthur Benz

Chapter 4 in Understanding Federal Democracy, 2026, pp 53-78 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: To analyse federal democracies in more detail, this chapter identifies varieties that the five mature federations exemplify. They emerged at different periods of political development. The first federal system founded in the US and later adopted in Canada and Australia represents a distinct type compared with the European model that developed in Switzerland and Germany. While democracy was for a long time understood as direct participation of citizens in politics, the parliamentary system emerged as a democracy intermediated by political parties during the 19th century. Canada, Australia and Germany adopted the parliamentary system, whereas the US maintained the presidential system, and Switzerland the unique ‘assembly government’. To understand the operations, inherent tensions and dynamics of federal democracy, the chapter explains how different types of democratic and federal systems are institutionally connected.

Keywords: Assembly Government; Checks and Balances; Cooperative Federalism; Loose Coupling; Presidential Government; Parliamentary Government (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035361489
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035361496.00008 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:24590_4

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().