Edmond Orban

Great-Power Decentralization and the Management of Global/Local Economic Policy and Relations: Lessons in Fluidity from the People's Republic of China

This article compares the practice of great power federalism in terms of global/local economic policy and relations in a context of expanding regional influence and transcontinental reach. The authors contrast Chinas recent decentralization experience with that of the FRG and the United States with respect to management of productive ventures, regulation of the economy, trade and commerce, fiscal relations, monetary policy and labor mobility. The three great-power states manage their complex and far-reaching economies through systems of multi-level governance that exhibit elements of convergence at the same time as each is headed in a defining direction. German federalism is making room for supranational involvement, US federalism emphasizes new managerialism at all levels of government and Chinas post Mao de facto federalism is launching provincial and sub-provincial governments on a booming economic trajectory. Chinas recent performance is particularly impressive given the size of its population and the extent to which its economy has been transformed and energized. In key respects, Chinas administrative system is the most decentralized and fluid. The effective participation of Chinese sub-national entities in transterritorial economic undertakings is particularly striking. Chinas experience suggests that the requisite energy and capacity to tackle trans-national economic challenges might lie at the sub-national level. Given the shifting nature of global pressures and local priorities, the extra-organizational sensitivities and linkages of sub-national public managers must include proximate and distant economic conditions, central government overseers and trans-national actors. In this dynamic context, the most fluid forms of federalism are likely to have an edge.

Droits de la personne et processus de centralisation: rôle de la Cour Suprême des États-Unis *

The Supreme Courts position in federal states, especially in Canada and the United States, is often delicate when it has to settle cases under dispute involving the sharing of powers between the states (or provinces) and the central government. For the United States, even if civil rights affect only indirectly these powers, several Supreme Court decisions curtail the autonomy of the states, from which follows a long process of centralization. Nonetheless the Supreme Court is only one actor among others, and a limited one, in this process.

La fin du bicaméralisme au Québec

American or Australian readers will not be surprised, at least at first glance, that a province should have kept a bicameral system for so long as Quebec since in their own country all but one of the states has a second legislative chamber. For other readers, and Canadians particularly, the survival of a Legislative Council poses a whole series of problems which, for the most part, are explained by the economic and social evolution of Quebec. Why has Quebec maintained an upper chamber for so long when the other Canadian provinces have never had one or have abolished it a long time ago? The facts here presented confirm on several counts the classical theories about bicameralism, and add to them certain points arising specifically from Quebecs unique socio-cultural context: the overrepresentation of privileged social classes, irrespective of partisan attachment; or the representation in the Legislative Council of the English-speaking minority whose spokesmen were, however, closely tied to the French-speaking members by a community of economic interests. It was during the last century that the Legislative Council exhibited most energy; it frequently interfered with the most progressive projects of the different Liberal governments. In the twentieth century, however, it was thought wiser to adapt itself to the changing mood, and it gradually became more self-effacing with respect to the elected chamber. Therefore its reasons for existence became doubtful as it either adopted without question all the proposals of the Legislative Assembly (and so provoked the accusation that it did nothing), or if it did object to anything in any way, it was accused of going against the wishes of the elected representatives of the people. Groups which had supported it finally decided that the council had become obsolete and their representatives have allied themselves with the enemies of the council to vote out of existence the last provincial upper chamber in Canada.