Introduction

In a special issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science entitled ‘Ethnic Conflict in the World Today’, Martin Heisler argued that ‘the peaceful and effective management of conflict between ethnic groups involves the building of rules and institutions for coexistence in a single society, state and economy’ (Heisler 1977). The question we address in this chapter is: How effective is federalism as an institutional framework for managing these kinds of conflict? In particular, when, and under what conditions, does federalism constitute a stable, enduring solution, rather than a transitional phase on the way either towards secession or centralization? Is it inevitable that federal solutions are unstable? Are some models of federalism more likely to succeed than others and if so, under what conditions?

We will look at one long-standing democratic federal system, Canada, and three newly emerging federal or quasifederal systems, Belgium, Spain and Scotland. All are multinational federations, rather than what Juan Linz calls mononational federations, such as Germany or Australia (Linz 1997b). We will also focus on managing conflict among groups that are territorially concentrated. Federalism itself is not a plausible solution when minorities are spread widely throughout the majority population, although Elkins (1995) has shown that many federalist devices can be used even in these cases.