FEDERAL POPULISM
THE RIGHT GOVERNMENT
Going back into mid-summer 2022, this substack has been gaining momentum in the direction of thinking through the implications, possibilities, and conditions of possibility, for what I’d called the new populism: a communitarian populism, which it turned out wasn’t really all that new. Further, I’ve now situated it as a manifestation of a much older tendency to the right, by which is meant the defense of organic community – with its families, traditions, customs, and concrete institutions – against the corrosive impact of the French Enlightenment-informed left and its agenda of progressivism, universalism, (monadic) individualism, and rationalism.
Among the high points in this exploration has been Piccone’s definition of the objective objective of the new populism as communitarian and thus anti-social engineering; Schmitt’s validation of the centrality of concrete institutions in establishing conditions of sovereignty; the recovery of the very different political interpretation of the Enlightenment among the Scots, compared to the French; recognition of the communally destructive impact of the culture industry; Michéa’s insights into true historical lineages of both the left and right, which I’ve fleshed out at great length on this substack1; and particularly of interest, from that fleshing-out, the acknowledgement that unfettered markets and the social engineering of the managerial class’s administrative state are just two sides of the same leftist coin: not only are these strategies symbiotically entwined, but they’re both community-seeking missiles aimed at destroying organic institutions, traditions, obligations, and bonds.
What remains then is the practical question. If the right, as most critically manifest today in the populist insurgency, is to defend itself against the constant erosion of the left’s progressivism, universalism, (monadic) individualism, and rationalism, maintaining its concrete institutions and traditions, by what political – and more to the point governance – structures might such a defense take place. This will be the question addressed over the next while on this substack. And, as the title foretells, the potential solution I’ll be exploring is federalism. The difficulty that arises here is that for most people who haven’t looked into the theory or history of federalism, the term doesn’t exactly ring with tones of insurgency or communal liberation. In fact, for many it conjures up nothing much more than dreary sentiments of intergovernmental administration. Ho-hum. I know.
This though is another one of those cases – like populism itself – where a deeper look into the topic unlocks an unanticipated potential. It is true, though, that the term has become so diluted with administrative bureaucratese that some effort in conceptual clarity is required to unlock its radical potential.2 For those interested in diving deeper down this rabbit hole, there are clear and concise treatments, such as Daniel J. Elazar’s book, Exploring Federalism, which provides detailed dissection of all the various permutations of “federalism” as a governance signifier. For our purposes, though, it is unnecessary to unpack all of that. I want only to make, at least for the moment, a single conceptual distinction in how the term is used.
This is a distinction between two federalist paradigms: i.e., a top-down and a bottom-up understanding of federalism. Within each of these paradigms might be included a wide range of different theories and practices. And, at some point, there may be value in digging deeper into these specifics. However, at this early stage of the discussion, the two broad paradigms will be sufficient for our purposes.
Parenthetically, before going into a comparative description of these two paradigms, let’s simplify our nomenclature a little. In speaking of federalism, by definition, we’re speaking of at least two levels of governance. So, for example, in the United States we’d normally speak of “the federal government” and “the states.” It might be described as the parts and the whole, except that if we really got into the weeds on this, you’d see that that breakdown isn’t as obvious as it seems in some cases. So, I’ll offer here some terms which I hope will streamline our discussion without losing too much in the way of important nuance.
The conventional practice in the federalism literature is to refer, with a general term, to what in the U.S. is called “the federal government” by the phrase “the federal state.” Though exclusive use of this term I think inappropriately biases analysis, I’ll bow to that bias’s logic by retaining that term for top-down federalist models. However, to identify the assemblage created by federating in the bottom-up models, which are the ones relevant to our concern with a federalism conducive to communitarian populism – and employing an eminent designation in the history of federalism – I’ll refer instead to the “league.” It is the English derivation of the Italian/Latin words for the act of binding together. Furthermore, it was originally applied to political entities before its current popular use in relation to sports. So, it seems like a fine choice to me. Then there are the federating units that constitute the league. And that’s what I’ll call them, federating units, though I’ll use the handy, I think somewhat catchy, portmanteau of “feduns.” So, with all their historical and cultural nuance, U.S. states, Canadian provinces, Swiss cantons, German Länder, and the like, will all be henceforth commonly referenced by the generalizing term “feduns.”
So, with that bit of linguistic housecleaning worked out, let’s return to the two federalist paradigms. The top-down version of federalism refers to all those models in which original sovereignty is derived from the federal state. Any area of autonomy enjoyed by its subunits is authorized by the federal state. In such cases, these are usually administrative arrangements, often authorized for purposes of streamlining or legitimizing governance. A common giveaway as to what is the actual model of any federal system is the locus of the taxing authority.
Whatever lip service may be given to bottom-up federalism, if the federal state is collecting the lions’ share of the taxes, then redistributing them to the subunits, it is clear where the real sovereignty and power lies. The ability of the centralized power of the federal state to intimidate and extort, from its subunits, compliance with a centralizing, homogenizing agenda – however virtuous the central planners claim and believe it to be – constitutes a subversion of anything that should be considered legitimately federalist. These are simply intergovernmental relations masquerading as decentralist governance.
In contrast, bottom-up federalism is premised upon the principle that it is the feduns which are the originator of sovereignty. However, to remain bottom-up federalism, and not be gradually subverted into top-down federalism (as, arguably, has been the tendency in the United States), the feduns must retain their sovereignty and only contingently delegate specific areas of authority to the league. Not just on paper, but in fact! As should be obvious, secession always remains an option, since fedun sovereignty is never alienated. There is of course plenty of room for debate about which areas of authority should be delegated to the league. The classic areas of consideration have usually been – to paraphrase the list compiled by John Adams – war, trade, disputes between the feduns, the post office, and the unappropriated lands of the crown.
I guess we can debate the usefulness of a post office; it might not be as irrelevant as you’d think; but we can leave that for another discussion. Since the league is formed by the pre-existing, sovereign feduns, the presence of “unappropriated lands” might suggest an imperialism which probably wouldn’t be healthy for a bottom-up federation. And, in the U.S., the federal state’s control of trade was of course an aggravating contributor to the eventual (so-called) Civil War. So, there may be sound grounds to give that proposition a little more thought. So, the essential, basic function of the league would be to wage war/defense and facilitate mutually conducive resolution of disputes between the feduns. I’m not saying that legitimate bottom-up federalism must limit the league to those functions. Different contexts and circumstances may advise for specifically tailored organizational choices. And indeed, there may be grounds for non-symmetrical federalism, commonly discussed in Canada, in which not all feduns delegate the same authority to the league – if such an arrangement can be established to the satisfaction of all relevant parties.
The only point I’m making in this initial post on federalism, and the possibility for a federal populism3, is that it is this kind of bottom-up federalism which provides the institutional space and civic instruments for organic communities to maintain their organic nature. Such governance arrangements allow them, on the one hand, to protect themselves from the corrosive invasion of either of the (symbiotic) historic left strategies: centralist, homogenizing, social engineering, or the commodification of personal and communal life through unfettered markets. While, on the other hand, such federalism allows for the smaller polities, necessary to maintain organic community, to avoid what Innis would have described as an excess focus on time, while also benefiting from economies of scale in the provision of public goods, such as defense and trade.
There are several obvious objections to this federal populist vision, which are worth at least mentioning, here. For now, I’ll just address three. First, it can be argued that such a model does not protect organic community from the corrosive progressivism, universalism, and rationalism of the managerial class and its administrative state. If the feduns are to have government of any kind, which it seems they must, if for no other reason than to formally interface with the league and the other feduns, such government will be subject to the same managerial ruling class capture as any other kind or level of government. I think though that there are a couple factors mitigating this outcome.
One such mitigating factor is that scale matters. Part of what was so remarkable about the Canadian trucker protests, contributing to how it seized so many people’s imagination, was the remarkable geographic scale of the mobilization. Now, Canada is an unusually large country geographically, but the basic point remains. The farther away the majority of the population is from the center of power, the more difficult it is to mobilize political action against that center. If the same circumstances had distilled down to Ontario, it would be far easier to mount such action. And it could be done much more frequently.
Additionally, the more local the polity, the more that those in government must deal daily with their constituents, the more social and cultural pressure can be brought upon them – than if they spend most of their time in some distant capital hobnobbing with their fellow elites. Such insulation of the governing from the governed is a recipe for the objectifying mindset that promotes leftist strategies of social control and engineering. Plus, the smaller the scale of a polity, the greater the potential for some form of effective, grassroots, participatory democracy, promoting transparency and accountability.
I know, I know: the doctrinaire Italian school types all guffaw. But I expect — just as I demonstrated in my review of Pavini’s book on the so-called populist delusion that such doctrinaire attitude was not backed up by even the remotest familiarity with populist history or theory, likewise — those of the same club who so cavalierly dismiss participatory democracy I’m guessing are also ignorant of its practical history. In future posts, I’ll address both historical and contemporary examples that throw more than a little doubt upon those cavalier dismissals. After all, if something exists, it is possible. Pretty much by definition.
A second objection to the vision of federal populism, or bottom-up federalism, hinted at here goes something along the lines: seriously, how in the modern world, given the power of the internet, in its various manifestations – from online shopping, to email, to social media – can you possibly think that any organic community, even within such a bottom-up federation, could insulate itself from managerial liberalism and the culture industry? Well, I did say that maybe we shouldn’t be too quick to rule out a post office.
But look, a classic defense of federalism is that it allows for a wide range of laboratories in governance: different communities can try to live in whichever way they prefer, and in the process, others can learn from both the success and failure of other communities. Or, as I’d say, feduns. And sure, there may well be elements of such bootstrapping. But the takeaway from that insight, for my purposes here, is that we can expect to see a wide range of attitudes to and compromises with – to again use Innis’ terminology – space biased practices and organizations.
How many fedun communities will go full Amish is an empirical question that would only be revealed in practice. I doubt there will be many, but the Amish do seem to be making it work. According to Eric Kaufmann, from a purely population growth perspective, their self-insulation from managerial liberalism, the cultural industry, and unfettered markets, hasn’t been doing them any harm at all.4
Additionally, as countries such as China and Iran have demonstrated, one can at least considerably reduce the penetration of these corrosive, space biased forces through the internet while still maintaining the endogenous benefits of computer technology. There’s legitimate grounds for debate as to how long those countries can remain stable using such methods, but China and Iran are huge polities, rife with diverse dissident phenotypes, which is of course a very different thing from the small scaled, more homogenous organic community.
But of course, this gets us to the more fundamental question of accepting that not all feduns are going to be little model “liberal democracies,” as some like to put it. Which is to say, the entire point of federal populism would be defeated if it were assumed that a fedun was only legitimate if it embraced the values of the left and managerial liberalism. And, incidentally, the same lesson has to be learned by those who self-identify as on the right.
This fact is nicely illustrated in a great introductory article on federalism by Thomas Fleming, published in Telos, back in the mid-90s. It’s from this article that I took the top-down/bottom-up framing of federalist paradigms. There’s so much of value in this brief article, I’ll certainly return to some of its key points again. But here I want to address the implications of what Fleming calls “the federal principle” which may not be easy to accept for many of those who see themselves as on the right:
What will a federalist right-to-lifer have to say about a life amendment? If he is a true federalist, he is against it, because these matters are state concerns. What is the response of conservative nationalists, if they adhere to federalist principles, when liberal governors attempt to block the transportation of nuclear waste through their states or withhold units from military exercises designed to intimidate Communist countries? The simple answer is state rights. What will a libertarian federalist say about the use of federal courts to overturn local zoning or censorship regulations? He will say that the local community has the right to make its own rules, and if he does not like them, he can find a community to his taste. In no case will he summon the assistance of the national courts.
Of course, it’s easy to come up with such a list that would aggravate those who identify with the left: e.g., gun ownership rights, school curricula that forbid implementing queer or racialized critical theory, universal “human rights” of any kind. I’m sure you could come up with your own list. The point is that such bottom-up federalism requires a reining in of the imperialist instinct; it requires a genuine commitment to pluralism; it requires epistemic modesty: acknowledging no matter how convinced you are of your moral values, you have no monopoly on the truth and must leave others to live how they choose. Now, certainly, a federation could be founded upon moral axioms. A federation could be created in which a commitment to ban abortion, or ban private firearms, was a condition of joining. But even in those federations other values conflicts are likely to eventually arise.
And the more expansive become the conditions for joining a federation, the fewer communities are going to qualify to join. A federation of two or three, if the feduns are small enough to nurture organic community, are going to provide little in the direction of space biased influence to offset the risks of excess time bias. Clearly, these are not simple matters, and their resolution cannot be worked out in advance by some smug managerial class, social engineering type. They’ll have to be worked out in practice, by real-life organic communities.
As a final objection, I appreciate that some are going to dismiss all this talk of organic community, and federal populism, as quixotic romanticism, declaring that you can’t stop progress and all this happy talk is merely some conservative dysfunctional ability to adapt to the modern world. Well, to begin to answer this criticism, modernism isn’t turning out to be quite all it was cracked up to be.
Postmodernism’s assault on progressivism, universalism, and rationalism was not some exogenous alien invasion; it grew up from within modernism, leveraging the logic of modernism, and turned the latter’s own rationalism upon itself. Postmodernism is the natural outgrowth of modernism’s internal contradictions. And for the record, as I’ve noted elsewhere, it is postmodernism which is more consistent with that most enduring benefit of the Enlightenment, science. It is postmodernism that shares science’s epistemic modesty and acceptance of the contingency of knowledge and truth. It was the left’s modernist managerialism that attempted to turn science into a monolith of definitive, exclusive truth, wielded and guarded by designated priestly experts, so blatantly on display amid the COVID crisis.
Finally, to point out what should be obvious: defining the necessary future in terms of left and French Enlightenment values of progressivism, universalism, and rationalism, is mere tautology when the purveyors of that same progressivism, universalism, and rationalism, argue that failure to embrace what they purvey is a pathology of reactionary, quixotic romanticism. Basically, they’re telling you: you’re psychologically dysfunctional if you don’t accept what we determine is your inevitable future, which just so happens to be the manifestation of our own preferences. Uh-huh.
But the fun doesn’t end there! More to come on this interesting question of federalism as the governance manifestation, the political condition of possibility, of the new populism (as well as right socialism). So, if you haven’t yet, please…
And feel free to welcome into the discussion anyone you know who’d be interested…
“Radical,” of course, simply means getting to the root of something.
Federal populism, both the phrase and concept, is another that I’ve borrowed from the great legacy of the long time editor of Telos, Paul Piccone, from whom we also got the idea of the objective objective of populism and artificial negativity. However, as will be seen over the weeks to come, it was hardly original to Piccone the idea that communitarian values and practices are best protected by federal governance structures.
Eric Kaufmann, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century (London: Profile Books, 2010).
💬 Clearly, these are not simple matters, and their resolution cannot be worked out in advance by some smug managerial class, social engineering type. They’ll have to be worked out in practice, by real-life organic communities.
As for trade unions (traduns? 😇), so for feduns ↑↓.
💬 the remarkable achievement of the Poles was to keep learning – from their mistakes, failures, and blind spots. It was the increasing recognition of the organizational and strategic practices available to them, and their determination to continually refine those practices through the iterations of their struggle, regardless of the short-term outcomes, which allowed them to finally act so effectively in the historic cauldron of August, 1980.
I see that main challenge to this approach in that the centripetal forces would be too hard to overcome.