Differences and commonalities between authoritarian and liberal federations

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National Research University

Higher School of Economics

HSE Saint-Petersburg School of Social Sciences and Area Studies

Differences and commonalities between authoritarian and liberal federations

in the field of study 41.03.04 `Political Science'

Student of Group No. 163 (`Political Science and World Politics' degree programme)

Maria Andreevna Plotnikova

Saint Petersburg, 2020

Abstract

The correlation between political regimes and federalism is still a controversial question in political science. Most classic works say that federalism can exist only in democracies, but recent works try to present an opposite opinion. This research is dedicated to the qualitative comparative analysis of differences and commonalities between authoritarian and liberal federations. 24 cases of modern federal states were overviewed and studied with the fuzzy-set QCA strategy. In the course of the work, we found out that authoritarian and liberal federal states are mostly similar in the main federal structural elements such as the administrative autonomy, geopolitical division, direct governance, availability of the federal contract and established bicameral system. At the same time, authoritarian and liberal federations are different in the way how the federal system works within these structural elements, even in the case of federations within groups of federal states divided according to the established political regime.

Аннотация

Связь между политическими режимами и федерализмом на сегодняшний день является спорной в политической науке. Согласно большинству классических работ, федерализм может существовать только в демократических режимах, однако недавние исследования показывают, что сегодня данная точка зрения не является оправданной. Данная работа посвящена качественному сравнительному анализу сходств и отличий авторитарных и либеральных федераций. С помощью стратегии нечетких множеств качественного сравнительного анализа были рассмотрены и изучены 24 федерации. В ходе выполнения данной работы мы обнаружили, что авторитарные и либеральные федеративные государства схожи наличием федеративных структурных элементов, таких как административная автономия, территориальное деление, прямое управление, наличие федеративного договора в государстве и двухпалатной парламентской системы. В тоже время авторитарные и либеральные федерации различны в том, как федеративная система работает.

Table of Content

Introduction

1. The nature of federalism and federation

1.1 Federalism as the mechanism of state governance

1.2 The nature of federation

2. Political regimes in federal states

2.1 Classification of political regimes

2.2 Federalism and political regimes

3. Authoritarian and liberal federations

3.1 Methodology

3.2 Qualitative comparative analysis: findings

Conclusion

Bibliography

Literature

Empirical base

Appendix

Introduction

The phenomenon of federalism and federal states is a relatively new in political science. Today political scientists do not agree which states exactly can be named as federal and argue on true federal features. Some of them say that a federation is a political organization with at least two levels of power in which the federal sub-units (regions) are sovereign in some administrative fields that the federal contract (the Constitution, for example) guarantee Riker William Нarrison, Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1964), 11-12.. At the same time, many others say that it is not enough to investigate the federal states and develop other federal principles such as the self-rule and shared-rule federal model Elazar, Daniel Judah, Exploring federalism (University of Alabama Press, 1987), 5.. However, the majority of them agree with the following idea: federalism can exist only in liberal political regimes. Alexander Hamilton wrote about this in his work, which is named “The Federalist Papers”. His main argument was that federal structure creates safeguards for freedom through legitimate participation of administrative units in politics. Hamilton Alexander, Madison James and Jay Jhon, The federalist papers (Liberty Fund, 2001), 46. Andreas Schedler and Bert Hoffmann also added that authoritarian elites strive to keep the power in their hands that does not allow federal structure to work in such regime Andreas Schedler and Bert Hoffmann, “Communicating Authoritarian Elite Cohesion,” Democratization 23, no.1 (2016): 93-117. .

As a result, the federalism in democratic federal states today is well studied. That is how we can learn more about the history of German federalism Fritz W. Scharpf, "The jointЃ]decision trap: lessons from German federalism and European integration." Public administration 66, no.3 (1988): 239-278., for example, or to get some knowledge on the fiscal federalism development in Brazil Shah, Anwar, The new fiscal federalism in Brazil (World Bank Publications 124, 1990).. However there is a number of countries that, according to different indices, can be defined as authoritarian. For example, Russia constitutionally is a federal state and at the same time, according to the Freedom House, it is not free at all “Countries and territories,” Freedom House, 2019, . It is interesting that such cases also received high scientific interest among political scientists. Despite this fact, many studies on such states deny their federal affiliation and study them mainly from the point of view of administrative or fiscal (de)centralization Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, "Incentives to provide local public goods: fiscal federalism, Russian style." Journal of Public Economics 76, no. 3 (2000): 337-368.. Moreover, such research projects try to investigate the real federal relations and prove the absence of federalism in such states Rogoїa, Jadwiga, Federation without federalism. Relations between Moscow and the regions. (Oњrodek Studiуw Wschodnich im. Marka Karpia, 2014).. Most often, they deny the element of independence in such states trying to prove the absence of real federal relations, Lovise Aalen, "Ethnic federalism in a dominant party state: The Ethiopian experience 1991-2000." CMI Report 2002, no. 2 (2002). however, this only confirms the fact that the presence of a visible federal structure and its control can play in favour of authoritarian authorities through the non-independent federal structure.

We argue that the study of authoritarian federations is important from a scientific point of view, especially in relation to the political regime. There is a possibility that a federal structure in hands of authorities can be a great tool for holding the authoritarian political regime. Therefore, the argument of this research is that authoritarian federalism in some federal states exists, however it is not clear how it works in authoritarian circumstances.

So, this study will attempt to answer the following research question: what are the common features and differences between liberal and authoritarian federal states of the modern world?

The scientific relevance of this work can be considered from the point of view of existing studies on the topic of political regimes in federal states. As it has been pointed, this issue of possible is quite complex. In recent work, the term of authoritarian federations appears more often and it is not an accident. For example, Kropp proved the possibility of using this term. She did not refuse that “true” federalism can exist only in democratic regimes, but she claimed that authoritarian federalism could be studied as well as the democratic one because federalism can even contribute to regime changes while authorities can use it to keep non-democratic regime in stability. Kropp, Sabine, "The Ambivalence of Federalism and Democracy: The Challenging Case of Authoritarianism--With Evidence from the Russian Case." Configurations, Dynamics and Mechanisms of Multilevel Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham (2019): 213-229. Moreover, the decentralization, which is the main feature of federal states and logically lead to democratization, not always works like that. For example, uncontrolled decentralization during the Yeltsin's reign in Russia leaded to democratic regression. Obydenkova, Anastassia, and Wilfried Swenden, "Autocracy-sustaining versus democratic federalism: Explaining the divergent trajectories of territorial politics in Russia and Western Europe." Territory, Politics, Governance 1, no. 1 (2013): 86-112. All of it means that authoritarian federalism potentially can exist and decentralization that federalism assumes does not always work within democracies.

Political regimes in that case can be classified with the Andreas Schedler's approach. He divided two types of political regimes. Authoritarian regimes include the closed authoritarianism and electoral authoritarianism that is also divided into competitive and hegemonic once. Democratic regimes include liberal and electoral democracies. Schedler classified political regimes using different borderlines between different types of them. Schedler, Andreas, The politics of uncertainty: Sustaining and subverting electoral authoritarianism. (OUP Oxford. 2013): 78 - 79. All of these regimes can be found in contemporary de jure federal states, so we will use this approach in our work to conceptualize and operationalize the outcome for the analysis and answer the research question. The Freedom House, the index of democracy, will help us to understand what type of political regime was established in a given federal state. It is a suitable approach to divide one political regime form another just because it uses similar political regimes' characteristics to describe the real situation in states of the world.

At the same time, we should explain the nature of federal theory and federations that involves a constitutional separation of powers between the centre and the regions. Riker, Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance, 169. That is the Rikerian approach of defining federalism, which is not so full to understand the true nature of the federal structure. If we talk about real federalism, we also should remember about Elazar's approach, which says that the true federation should be self-ruled and shared-ruled. These two qualities suggest the presence of the three components of the federal system. They are the political autonomy, the administrative autonomy and the presence of the bicameral parliament with the chamber of regional representors at the national level of government. Elazar, Daniel J, Exploring federalism. (University of Alabama Press, 1987). In authoritarian federations, we cannot find clear implementation of all these three features of “true” federalism, however they “provide some power-sharing mechanisms that regions can potentially exploit” Kropp, “The Ambivalence of Federalism and Democracy: The Challenging Case of Authoritarianism--With Evidence from the Russian Case”, 213-229.. These mechanisms possibly can include some institutions that provide the administrative autonomy, now we do not know about it exactly. That is why we use the Rikerian approach to define the federal states and as a result, we make the following assumptions regarding the differences and similarities of authoritarian federations.

The main hypothesis of this work is that authoritarian and liberal federations are similar in their federal structure (administrative and political autonomy, bicameralism, written federal contract, geopolitical division and direct governance). At the same time, their main difference is in how the work of these institutions is carried out (administrative, fiscal and political centralization, independence, equality of representation and asymmetry). We also assume that:

1. Authoritarian federations are more centralized than liberal ones in all spheres (administrative, fiscal and political centralization)

2. Authoritarian federations do not provide the regional equality while liberal ones do (equality of representation in the Parliament, asymmetry in political, administrative or fiscal spheres);

The object of the research is modern liberal and non-democratic federal states while the subject is the common features and differences between them.

The aim of the research is to find the similarities and differences of modern liberal and non-democratic federal states.

To answer the research question and to test the hypotheses, we are going to complete the following tasks:

1. Learn the theory on the federalism and the nature of federations in order to find the appropriate definition of federation and distinguish the features of federals states' structure for the future analysis;

2. Learn the theory on the political regimes and on the political regimes in federal states in particular and prove the possibility of different regimes' existence in these states and how they can be implemented within them;

3. Select states which are federal according to chosen theoretical framework, determine their political regime and describe their federal structure in accordance to the chosen method of analysis;

4. Make the qualitative comparative analysis of common features and differences of non-democratic and liberal federal states;

5. Make conclusions with regard to the research hypothesis based on the results obtained.

In order to answer the research question, we need to choose federal states from all the states of the world, determine their political regime, study their structure and its characteristics. As we have already noticed, we are going to understand the federation as a state where regions have at least one administrative autonomy in some field, which is guaranteed by the Constitution of the federal state. Riker, Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance, 169. Today we have about 24 federal states that fit this description. All of them are different in their history and geography, but we will not pay special attention on those factors because it will only complicate the course of the study. In the empirical part, we will pay more attention on defining federal states for studying and describe their federal structure. Political regime of federations will be determined using Schedler's classification and the Freedom House index. After completing these tasks, we will learn the Constitutions and the facto governance of defined federations for the presence / absence of conditions, which will be in more details described in the theoretical part.

Since the main focus of our work is political regimes in federal countries, we will examine the federal conditions under which these regimes in federal states exist. That is why as a method of analysing the collected data, we will use a qualitative comparative analysis. The main advantage of this method is that it combines the basic ideas of quantitative and qualitative methods, which, on the one hand, helps us study cases more deeply, and on the other, gives a brief description of them. This method involves the study of a limited number of cases from 10 to 100, which is fully suitable for our study. The basis of this method is the study of the conditions under which a particular descriptive factor, in our case, a political regime exists. Ragin, Charles C., The comparative method: Moving beyond qualitative and quantitative strategies (Univ of California Press, 2014), 21-24. It will help us not only determine what distinguishing features are inherent in authoritarian and liberal federations, but also show under which set of such conditions they exist.

The research is divided into two parts: theoretical and empirical. Theoretical part is also divided for the first and the second. In the first part, we are going to provide the theory on the existing literature about federalism and federations. It will help us to understand how federations should normatively work and what features they have. The second theoretical part will be dedicated to political regimes in federal states. This is the crucial part of the research because we are debating on the issue of possible existence of non-democratic regimes in federal states and theoretically setting boundaries for non-democratic and liberal federations. In the empirical part of the research, we are providing the qualitative comparative analysis on common features and differences of authoritarian and liberal federal states and setting boundaries between them.

1. The nature of federalism and federation

1.1 Federalism as the mechanism of state governance

Federalism is not new in the world of politics. Political scholars say that the first explanation of federalism was given by Hamilton, Madison and Jay in their work “The Federalist Papers” Johnson E.A.J. "Federalism, Pluralism, and Public Policy." The Journal of Economic History 22, no. 4 (1962): 428-430.. In the Federalist No. 39-45, James Madison explained the importance of federalism in building the welfare state for citizens as well as the way the government should be structured and described the concrete policy fields that should be divided among regions and the national government. According to his ideas, the centre should be responsible for foreign issues and security, while regions that are the closest to people should be logically responsible for local development and governance. At the same time, the main regional institution in the frames of the national government is the House of Representatives that should perform as the control power for the central authorities. Hamilton, Madison and Jay, The federalist papers, 193-241. We see that the federal plan that was described by these politicians successfully works in the USA and it made the basement for the future development of the federal theory as it established the main its principles. However, this explanation is not appropriate enough in the theoretical explanation of federalism as it was concerned only one concrete state, which is just one of examples of federal arrangement and was not focused on the empirical evidences.

The next step in the federalism development was made by Carl Schmitt in the “Constitutional Theory”. According to some scholars, his explanation on the federalism is the first ever-existed adequate theory on that issue as it “provides a historical overview of modern federations and in so doing an analysis of the main problems of federalism” Gary L. Ulmen, "Schmitt and Federalism: Introduction to “The Constitutional Theory of the Federation”." Telos 1992, no. 91 (1992): 16.. Schmitt based on two interesting cases as the examples of federal arrangements: the Weimar Constitution and the League of Nations. Despite the principles of the division of power and the regions or units representation in the central institutions, he also added that the federal relations between the unit and the centre authority should be based on the contract between them. As we understand this contract is presented as a legal treaty or the Constitution that describes these kind of relations and guarantee the federal division of power between federal levels. Schmitt Carl, Constitutional theory (Duke University Press, 2008): 396. The broader description of Schmitt's theory will be given in the second paragraph of this part of the research as this scholar concentrated mostly on the nature of federation and its main characteristics describing his theoretical approach.

The understanding of federalism and federal principles was further developed by Kenneth Wheare. He investigated four federalism examples, which are the United States, Australia, Switzerland and Canada. According to him, these states are the only once to the moment of the middle of the 20^th century that were really federal. The main idea that he claimed is in the core of the federalism is a complex system of state governance that can be seen in multiple levels of power existence. It is important that the scientist said that these levels should be equal and supreme governing people at the same time. That is why these system of regional and central governments should have the clear division of responsibilities in the federal contract. Wheare Kenneth, Federal Government (London: Oxford University, 1963) Kenneth Wheare formulated possibly one of the main ideas of federalism that presupposes the existence of double direct control over citizens, established at the legislative level.

The systematic widespread modern federal theory was presented by William Riker shortly after Carl Schmitt and Kenneth Wheare in the “Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance” and in the “Handbook of Political Science”. According to him, federalism is a political organization in which the political activities are divided between regional and central governments in a way when each of it has the administrative autonomy in the policy field on which it makes final decisions. Riker, William H., Fred I. Greenstein, and Nelson W. Polsby. "Handbook of Political Science." ed. Fred Greenstein, Fred y Nelson Polsby (1975): 101. What is interesting, he also argued on the role of parties in federal system. From the one hand, he said that federalism is more about the decentralization of power but it can be limited by the party control on each level of power. Riker William Нarrison, Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1964) Overall, Riker developed the federal theory making additions of administrative autonomy, decentralization of power and the role of parties in this system. However, Rikerian approach has some visible shortcomings like the American focus for study and the lack of the depth of theoretical framework where only one federal principle of decentralization in accordance to division of power in the field of policy implementation is studied. Despite that fact, many scientists use this theory in their works to investigate and describe different types of federal arrangements. For example, the administrative autonomy is sufficient condition for calling the state federal in the “Forum of Federations” project. Benz A., Stein M., Kinkaid J. “Introduction to Federalism,” Forum of Federations, http://www.forumfed.org/federalism/introduction-to-federalism/

Following Riker's ideas, Mikhail Filippov, Peter Ordeshook and Olga Shvetsova marked the importance of elections in the federal system. They claimed that the administrative autonomy is important for federalism but not sufficient, so they added the political autonomy as a federal characteristic. It means that at each level of power “the chief policy makers - governors, presidents, prime ministers, legislatures, parliaments, judges - are elected directly by the people or (as with judges) appointed by public officials thus directly elected at that level”. Filippov, Michail, Ordeshook Peter Carl and Shvetsova Olga, Designing federalism: A theory of self-sustainable federal institutions (Cambridge University Press, 2004): 9. It is not clear in their work if the political autonomy is about the federations only whether about federalism. We will use this characteristic as the feature of both of them. Incidentally, they used it to limit the federalism by the democratic regime because this rule creates the basement for region's independence, for example, in federal states, what makes the state more democratic. Ibid. We will talk about federalism and its connection with political regime in the next part of the research and recall this characteristic.

The combination of all previous approaches in explanation of nature of federalism can be found in the Elazar's book that is called “Exploring Federalism”. In this approach, the federalism is the result of contractual noncentralization that lies in the diffusion of power among many different centres Elazar, Daniel Judah, Exploring federalism (University of Alabama Press, 1987): 33.. Additionally, according to the Elazar, “federal principles are concerned with the combination of self-rule and shared rule”. Self-rule presents the administrative and political division of power while the shared rule suggests the opportunity to make the common policy of federal community through the constitutionally established federal structure. This opportunity is possible when there is the representative institution in the centre, like the House of Representatives in Madison's view, for example. Ibid. 5-6. Elazar's theoretical framework is the most popular in the political science today. It presents the ideal type of federal structure that presents the strong efficiency and high level of democracy to which any society should seek. Taking into account the normative basement of this theory, we will not use it in investigation of federations in the empirical part of our work, but this approach presents good features for their comparison.

The described federal principles are the main principles of federal theory, but there are some alternative once. They were developed, for example, by Inman and Rubinfeld in their research called “Rethinking federalism”. They said that the aims of federalism are the efficient allocation of resources, fostering political participation and development of democratic community, liberties and freedom protection. As the result, scholars created three federal models in accordance to aims and described their principles. These models are economic, cooperative and democratic federalism. All of them “prefers the most decentralized structure of government capable of” the sphere it concerns. Robert P. Inman, and Daniel L. Rubinfeld, "Rethinking federalism." Journal of economic perspectives 11, no. 4 (1997): 43-64. The term “decentralization” does not appear here by accident. Most scientists apply it to the federalism description. We can even claim that it is the main characteristic to distinguish the concrete federal arrangement or to divide the federations and the unitary states from each other. Moreover, all previous information and approaches are connected with this term in one or another way.

Decentralization can be static or dynamic. Daniel Treisman, "Defining and measuring decentralization: a global perspective." Unpublished manuscript (2002): 3. Political scientists mostly describe it like the dynamic process. For example, Tulia Faletti distinguishes three types of decentralization: fiscal, administrative and political once. Fiscal decentralization lies in the increasing of revenue and fiscal responsibilities of federal subunits. The administrative one is about the increasing of number of autonomies that transfer to the subunits' administration in some public spheres. Political decentralization is similar to the political autonomy. It is about the independence of subunits in the election of its own officials. Tulia G Faletti, "A sequential theory of decentralization: Latin America cases in comparative perspective". America Political Science Review 99, no. 3 (2005): 329. All of these types can be also studied as static features of federalism and this is what we are going to do in our research. However, this theoretical framework would not full, if we have not mentioned another scholar who also said about decentralization types. Daniel Treisman wrote almost the same but he divided the administrative and political decentralization into five others: vertical, electoral, decision-making, personnel and appointment types of decentralization. Treisman, “Defining and measuring decentralization: a global perspective”, 3. Despite the fact that his approach if deeper than Falletti's one, it is unfortunately too difficult to explain and use. For example, it is not clear how to split up the appointment and the personnel types of decentralization. That is the reason why we will use the first described approach on the decentralization types.

The decentralization is a vertical characteristic what means that measuring it, we are looking at central - federal subunits relations and how responsibilities are divided between them. However, this process often leads to one interesting thing - asymmetry. The feature shows that non-central subjects of federal relations are not equal in what they can do and in which way they can do it. For example, asymmetric federal system can be found in Canada or India. In the core of this kind of inequality can be a given to the federal subunit status or just unequal power sharing. Burgess Michael. Comparative federalism: theory and practice (Routledge, 2006): 209. It is interesting to study this feature in federalism and its types because as well as decentralization it can have negative and positive consequences. In the case of political regimes studying these two features as conditions for authoritarian or liberal types of federal states can be unpredictable and interesting.

In accordance to decentralization process and asymmetry characteristics, we can also add the way, how the federalism appears. Stepan says about two ways how it can happen. The first way us the bottom-up approach or the coming-together federalism that born in the process of responsibilities transfer from regions to the centre. This is how the USA formed, for example. The second way is the top-down approach or the holding-together federalism. It follows the way of responsibilities centralization as it happened in Belgium or India, for instance. Stepan A.C. "Federalism and democracy: Beyond the US model". Journal of Democracy 10, no. 4 (1999): 19-23. In that sense we should understand that coming-together federalism appears as the establishment of voluntary absolutely new federal contract between all federal units while the holding-together appears as the establishment of the new rules in already existing legislation conditions. That is the main reason why we should follow the way of formation of federal arrangements to understand why they differ because the historical background always matters especially in a way of state structure formation and institutions inside it. However, the historical formation is not important enough in his research. It can be study in some future research.

To sum up, federalism is a specific political organization that normatively should have the following features: administrative and political autonomy, share rule or the opportunity of subunits to be represented at the central level of power (bicameralism in federations, for example) and the written federal contract that, actually, can be presented by the written Constitution, treaty or by any other legislation. It can be described through the fiscal, administrative or political levels of decentralization, availability of asymmetry between federal subunits and the way in which the federalism historically formed (by top-down or bottom-up way of formation). All previous federal characteristics can be applied to any “true” kind of federal arrangements, which can be consociational polities, unions, leagues, federacies, associated state arrangements, common markets, confederations or federations, of course Elazar, Exploring federalism, 7. . All of them exists in modern world, but in this concrete research, we are going to study the most popular type of them, which is the federation. However, what specific features does the federation have? How can we distinguish it from other federal arrangements and states? In addition, what states are, actually, federal in modern world? This is what we are going to discuss in the next paragraph of this research.

1.2 The nature of federation

Federation as well as federalism is a controversial term. It is probably even more arguable than the second one, because it is not only built on the main federal principles but also has some specific once. The theoretical approaches to federation often lie in setting borders between it and other types of federal arrangements and unitary states. It is clear that it is not an easy task because there are no precise lines in any type of classification between objects. By the way, political scientists can orient on the sufficient conditions to divide different types of states from each other. The federal type of a state as well as the basic federal theory principles was firstly described by Hamilton, Madison and Jay in the work “The federalist papers” that has been previously mentioned. They created the American federalism and the way in which it should work in federal state. They said that federation is something that lies between unitary or consolidated and confederated state. It means that from the one hand, federation is a union of independent states but from the other one, this union should have the central national authority in its structure. This kind of a balance should be supported by the bicameral system in the legislature and this is actually the main structural component of federal system according to “The federal papers”. Hamilton, Madison and Jay, The federalist papers, 196 - 197.

Talking about bicameralism it is also important to notice that one of the main question that arises when we are talking about federations is a question of representation, which is directly connected with the principle of federal democracy that we will discuss later. By the way, the representation of different interests in the national and sub-national levels is important for federations and one of the main federal principles that implement it is the bicameralism that Hamilton, Madison and Jay presented in their paper. According to many scientists bicameral system is essential for federation and can be even the difference of it put of other types of states. However, this statement is really criticized as well. Burgess, Comparative federalism: theory and practice, 192 - 193. Burgess notices that United Kingdom and France, for example, have the bicameral legislature but they are not federal. Ibid. 204. If the United Kingdom is an arguable in a sense of calling it as non-federal Andrew Gamble, "The constitutional revolution in the United Kingdom." Publius: The Journal of Federalism 36, no.1 (2006): 19-35., France is recognized as unitary state so the bicameralism is important for federal system but it is not a feature that make it different from other kind of states. Interestingly, the bicameral system in federation can show the equality or inequality of representation. Therefore, according to Parameswaran, “equal representation to states or provinces has the obvious effect of over-representing regions with smaller populations”. Some states solve this problem through the proportional system of representation of units in the Parliament. Giri Parameswaran, "Bargaining and bicameralism." Legislative Studies Quarterly 43.1 (2018): 101-139. By the way, this is what should be kept in mind learning bicameralism and representation in federal states that in accordance to the political regime presents the institute of liberty what is interesting for our study.

Following an American federal state idea, the German federalism appeared. Carl Schmitt was the one who described it and established new federal principles in his approach. According to him, the most important thing in federation is the written federal contract or the Constitution in German case that creates the special status for members of the federation and guarantees the protection of this status within the state. In addition, he said that federation is not a federation if the federal contract does not allow the centre to be involved in regional affairs. Schmitt, Constitutional theory, 381 - 395. The question of necessity of the written federal contract in federation is arguable today. Most scholars distinguish it as the main federation feature: if the Constitution of the state is federal, the state is federal. However, this feature has a two-side problem. From the one hand, not all federal Constitutions shows that the state is truly federal. Somalia or Nepal are the bright examples. From the other hand, there is a list of states that global community today distinguish as federal, but they do not have the federal contract. Spain can be an example here as it is recognized de facto but it is still not de jure federation. By the way, this question is still underdeveloped so in our research we will claim that the federal contract is a crucial condition for the federation.

According to William Riker, federation is a result of bargain. In the same way as Carl Schmitt and more others, he highlights the importance of the Constitution as a guarantee of federal relations in a state. Talking about the nature of federation, Riker does not divide the federalism from the federation in his works, that is why the federal theory ideas that was previously described are obligatory features of federation for him. These features are at least two established levels of governance, administrative autonomy and the written federal contract. Riker, Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance, 11 - 12. This minimalistic approach is the most widespread to distinguish federal states out of unitary and confederated once, but many contemporary federalism followers say that it is still not enough to find out real federations, other types of federal arrangements and decentralized unitary states. Despite that fact, we will take the Rikerian approach as a basement for the research in the case selection process and review other theoretical approaches to understand what other scholars think of that issue and may be choose some features for the conditions for the analysis.

Therefore, one of the models that was suggested to divide different types of states belongs to Daniel Elazar. In the core of such classification, he takes the way in which the power is sharing between centre and some territorial organizations. According to his research, there are three systems of power sharing: hierarchic, organic and covenantal. The first and the second once describes the way in which unitary states are governed while the third one shows the federal governance. The key difference of federal and unitary models here is the existence of centre. Elazar says that federal state does not have one central authority; there are a lot of them. At the same time, their communications are constitutionally described and present the equal bargaining of different policy fields and branches. Daniel J. Elazar, "Contrasting unitary and federal systems." International political science review 18, no. 3 (1997): 237-251. In practice, this system is difficult to imagine because it is quite complex and have many different connections.

The scientist described it broader in his work named “Exploring federalism”. According to him, it calls the noncentralization, where no one has more responsibilities than other does and these authorities are spreaded over different centres and institutions. Elazar, Exploring federalism, 34. Despite the fact that this system can be hardly found in the modern world, Elazar distinguishes the important thing that makes federations and unitary states different: the number of centres and the way in which they divide their responsibilities. Federations tend to be decentralized to create an equality between centre and regions and at the same time, each region in this system has the institutions that also can be named central for those on which they have direct governance. What is also important, this status for regions and the list of responsibilities should be written in the constitution.

The “Exploring federalism” book is also known by its systematic approach to the federal arrangements classification. Analysing book's description of different types of them, we will see that the main difference of federation out of other federalism examples is the fact that federation is a nation- or citizen- state that consists of “federated or constituent” states. Other federal arrangement Elazar divided for three groups: “legislative unions, constitutionally decentralized unitary systems, and consociational unions on a nonterritorial basis”. All of them use some federal principle but not all these principles to become a “true” federation. Ibid. 44. These federal principles were described in the first paragraph of this part of a research and previously in this paragraph.

However, there are two types of federal arrangements that always make people confused. We should mention them in our research paying more attention than to the other once. These federal arrangements are a consociation and a federation. According to Lijphart, federation has something that in political language presents the guarantee of regional autonomy, or, the constitution. Arend Lijphart, "Non-majoritarian democracy: a comparison of federal and consociational theories." Publius: the journal of federalism 15, no.2 (1985): 499-515. That is not a new statement for our research but we see the importance of the written contract in that sense that is one more time proved by the appropriate research. Lijphart also says that the federation can be a consociation if it is decentralized, asymmetric, democratic and has a plural society. At the same time, it is not a consociation if it does not have at least one of these features. Ibid. 509 - 510. It means that even in the case of federation and consociation there is no clear boundaries that can be investigated today.

One of the latest approaches that combine almost all principal for federal states features was suggested by Jenna Bednar. She said that there are tree simple sufficient features of federal states that can clearly describe them. These features are the geopolitical division, the direct governance and the independence. In a broader sense, it means that federations are regionally divided political organization, in which regional and national centres have direct power over people under them in at least two levels and these centres control each other through the electoral system or the right of veto on the decision of other level of power. The absence of one or two of these features make the state a quasi-federation. Bednar, Jenna, The robust federation. (Principles of Design, 2009): 18 - 19. Quasi-federation is also not a new term. It is discussed and well represented in many works. Today it is used more often to represent states that are actually federal but does not have all federal features that “true” federations have. Watts, Ronald L. "Origins of cooperative and competitive federalism." Territory, Democracy and Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, London (2006): 201-223. All these features we have described previously in other theories. We will not pay special attention to such federation because of the lack of scientific evidences in that sense and take the Bednar's features of federation as conditions for the analysis.

Overall, we see that there is no concrete explanation of borders between federations and other types of states. Some of them are too complex; while others are not clear enough or do not really reflect to the reality. As a result, federation as a political organization is a tough question today; the complexity of the concept requires the complex theory. In this research, we are going to use the clear explanation of federal state that was given by William Riker that assumes: the federal state is a state where the administrative responsibilities are divided between at least two levels of power and they are guaranteed by the written Constitution. Other theories that were earlier described in the first and the second paragraphs will be presented in the empirical part of our work as features for comparison of authoritarian and liberal federations. The next theoretical part of the research will be dedicated to political regimes and their possible variation in federal state. Today, the possibility of authoritarianism in federation is controversial, because federal idea requires the democratic regime. By the way, can the federation be authoritarian? In addition, in a broader sense, what are the differences between authoritarian and liberal states?

2. Political regimes in federal states

2.1 Classification of political regimes

Political regimes were always in the core of political science. Today, thanks to these two concepts, states are ranked in the level of development and well-being of society. Today, there are an infinite number of different interpretations of democracy and authoritarianism. This happened because each person puts his own values into the conceptualization of democracy. It can be an equality, freedom, or even the level of economic development. However, everyone agrees that democracy is impossible without fair, equal and honest elections. It all started with the minimalist definition of Joseph Schumpeter's democracy in 1942, which today is classic for understanding this concept. He defined democracy as an institutional device for political decision-making, in which individuals acquire the power to make decisions with competing for votes. Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, socialism and democracy. Routledge (2013): 269. Respectively, those states in which there is no such electoral institution will be considered as authoritarian once.

By the way, many scholars agree that the division for the authoritarian and democratic regimes is two simple division that does not reflect to the real picture of modern states development. That is why there are many developed typologies pf political regimes. We will overview some of them in this part. Therefore, one of the first typologies proposed by scientists was the typology of authoritarian regimes. Barbara Geddes proposed varieties of undemocratic or authoritarian regimes in her typology. She attributed to the one-party regimes, military regimes and personalist regimes. Everything is quite logical, military regimes imply a high legitimacy of violence, which by itself undermines human rights, one-party regimes undermine the representativeness of citizens in politics, while personalist regimes can be safely compared with dictatorship. An example of such a regime may be the USSR. Barbara Geddes, "What do we know about democratization after twenty years?." Annual review of political science 2, no. 1 (1999): 115-144. The modern authoritarian regimes typologies are partly based on this classification.

One of the most famous and widely used typologies of authoritarian political regimes today is the typology of Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way. Despite classical democratic and authoritarian regimes, they introduced such a kind of authoritarian regime as a competitive authoritarianism. In this regime, there are formal democratic institutions that, despite such a definition, are used by the ruling elites as a tool to maintain power. Elections under this regime look democratic, several parties or candidates participate in them, but they use unfair rules of the game for the opposition, such as high barriers. Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, "Elections without democracy: The rise of competitive authoritarianism." Journal of democracy 13, no. 2 (2002): 51-65. This kind of authoritarianism is the most widespread among authoritarian countries as well as among theoretical approaches to political regimes. Moreover, it is the most interesting regime to study as it provides the interesting mechanisms to make the regime stable and strong. Overall, we have discussed the main classical approaches to the authoritarian regimes, now we are going to look at the democratic once.

Therefore, Arend Lijphart proposed two types of democracies: majoritarian and consensus. In his work, he studied 36 countries and determined their appearance according to 10 different characteristics. Talking about which type of democracy gives a better outcome, scientists primarily call consensus democracy. Arend Lijphart, Democracies: Patterns of majoritarian and consensus government in twenty-one countries. (Yale University Press, 1984) However, Lijphart considers only 36 countries in order to create a classification, it is argued that the typology is good or that consensus democracy has a better political outcome. Unfortunately, since this typology was developed, no one has yet managed to develop it to a higher level of reliability. This is the reason why this approach is not used today; however, it made a great impact in the development of the classification principles in political science.

The following interesting classification was presented by Larry Diamond who classified democracies into two regimes: liberal and electoral democracy. He referred to electoral democracy as a democracy in which fair and regular elections are held, and citizens are endowed with a certain minimum of democratic rights and freedoms. Liberal democracy is a democracy that is closest to complete democracy, but in it the ruling elites allow themselves such things as, for example, media control. Larry Diamond, Developing democracy: Toward consolidation. (JHU Press, 1999) This typology of democratic regimes is often used in modern political science. However, the liberal democracy in most cases is the democracy in full its understanding. It represents the high level of political and human rights in a state.

Almost all of the above classifications are reflected in the work of Andreas Schedler. He created a model consisted of five political regimes of two groups, authoritarian and democratic once. Democratic regimes, according to his classification are the liberal and electoral democracies, while authoritarian once are the closed, hegemonic and competitive authoritarianism. All of them differs in some institutional characteristics such as the quality of “checks and balances, bureaucratic integrity, an impartial judiciary” and the quality of elections. Schedler, “The politics of uncertainty: Sustaining and subverting electoral authoritarianism”, 79-80. The only problem is in the operationalization of these kinds of regimes.