International IDEA 19
4. Distribution of powers
commerce’or through conditional fiscal transfers to the states. This is a clumsy
and inefficient arrangement which makes it difficult to adopt national policies or
ensure uniform outcomes. Moreover, although the courts have generally allowed
the federal government broad latitude to act in this way, it has resulted in some
policies and programmes being contested in the courts.
In Australia, in contrast, the Constitution was amended in 1946 to grant the
federal parliament the power to enact laws with respect to ‘invalidand old-age
pensions’; ‘the provision of maternity allowances, widows’ pensions, child
endowment, unemployment, pharmaceutical, sickness and hospital benefits,
medical and dental services . . . benefits to students and family allowances’(art.
51, xxiii and xxiiiA). This means there are no constitutional obstacles to
developing national policies in these areas.
Because constitutions, in addition to defining legal rules, are political
documents that signal intent and express identity, the explicit recognition that the
federal government has responsibility for public services, social security and
welfare policies may strengthen the political case for the extensive exercise of
federal power in these policy areas in order to raise national standards.
Development and availability
Constitutional designers cannot always successfully prescribe or predict how the
distribution of powers will develop over time. For example, Canada was intended
to be a rather centralized federation, with all powers being exercised at the federal
level except for those few that were specifically reserved for the provinces. The
USA was intended to be a decentralized federation, with the bulk of power
reserved for the states. However, the histories of these two countries have diverged
from their framers’intentions. The USA has become more centralized over time,
while Canada has developed stronger provincial autonomy. This variation is, in
part, due to judicial decisions, but it is also due to circumstantial considerations,
such as the fact that the USA had a civil war over the issue of secession while
Canada did not, that the USA became a military superpower while Canada did
not and the fact that Canada contains a major, territorially-concentrated cultural-
linguistic minority whereas the USA does not.
The party system—in terms of the number, relative strengths, ideological
polarization and internal organization of political parties—can also influence the
development of federalism in ways that are difficult for constitution-builders to
prescribe or predict. If parties are organized and led on a national/federal level,
such that regional/state/provincial parties act as branch offices of the national
party, and if the same set of parties are electorally competitive in different parts of
the country, then parties may act as important channels of unity, interest
aggregation and policy coordination. If, however, parties are loosely organized
and dominated by subnational leaders, or if the electoral strength of different