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Comment by junto | Hacker News Reader

I like the Swiss 'canton' concept, where each canton is fairly autonomous, with its own constitution and courts. These cantons were previously completely separate states, ironically formed as part of the Treaty of Westphalia:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland

I'd like to hear any Swiss opinions on this system, since they have to live in it, but as an outsider I've always considered this local governance, with limited national state powers to be attractive. However, I'm not sure whether this kind of model is applicable everywhere. I'm guessing there are some historical, geographical, cultural and/or economic reasons for its success in Switzerland compared to other countries.

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One need look no further than the US to see the folly of a weak federal system.

There are a lot of people who would say that the biggest problems the US face are because the Federal Government is too strong and more power should be given to the states.

There are also a lot of people that believe in angels and think we should switch to you-keep-what-you-kill libertarianism, both questionable viewpoints.

IMO, the federal government is much too strong in the US and consistently gaining strength, especially in the last eighty to ninety years. Why do you say it's a weak federal system? I can't think of anything a national government should (and shouldn't) do that it does not have the power to do.

> Why do you say it's a weak federal system?

The US can show the problems of a weak federal system without the current US government being a weak federal system: the system under the Articles of Confederation was a very weak federal system; the system under the Constitution prior to the Civil War was a weak federal system. Both the issues that the former produced that resulted in the Constitutional Convention and the latter system's end in the Civil War can be viewed as illustrating problems of a weak federal system.

I would disagree that Civil War represents the example of why weak federal system is unworkable. The question of slavery, which ultimately led to secession and the war, was arguably impossible to resolve within the unified state politically, as the sides were disagreeing on the most basic questions, such as whether half of the population of the state can be deemed subhumans and excluded from the human rights system altogether. Absent such fundamental difference weak federal system may very well be workable.

In addition, the federal government was controlled by the Southern pro-slavery majority until about 1850. They would have tried to use any strong federal power to suppress the antislavery movement and prevent the question of slavery from ever arising.

I'm not sure if this would have prevented the Civil War. The Gilded Age robber barons would eventually have amassed enough economic power to challenge the southern planters. If they avoided the slavery question, the Union might have held together until mechanized farming made slavery obsolete, perhaps during the 1940's. Northern industrialization would likely have involved more turmoil. The U.S. might also have taken over various Caribbean and Central American nations. I doubt this situation is an improvement over the real historical one.

> I would disagree that Civil War represents the example of why weak federal system is unworkable.

I understand why one might (or disagree that the failure of the AoC is a good illustration of the same point) -- my point was simply to illustrate that the "no need to look farther than the US" proposition does not require the current US government to be a weak federal system. Whether particularl issues that occurred under the past weak federal systems in the USA (including that of the CSA) each really illustrate problems inherent to weak federal systems or whether each is simply an example of problems that happened to a country with a weak federal system that aren't inherently related to having such a system is a whole series of other arguments.

Yup. Also, the system set up by the Confederate States during their brief existence was a weak federal system too. (Jefferson Davis spent the whole war trying desperately to convince the Confederate Congress to strengthen it, because he quickly realized that it was too weak to successfully conduct a full-scale modern war. He never succeeded, though.)

The federalist experiment in the U.S. ended in 1865. While technically state and local powers have control over certain domains, it is nothing like what the OP argues for. My understanding of Swiss politics is that there is a similar situation there, albeit to a lesser degree.

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