An Evaluation of The Relationship Between Federalism and Democracy with refrence to the law of Emirates an Malaysia

Abstract

Federalism refers to the distribution and configuration of power between the central government and its constituent units. As can be deduced from this definition, when studying federal systems, one must always consider the relationship between the two levels of government. In some federal Islamic states, like the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia and in some other federal countries such as the United States of America and Canada, the boundaries of powers between the federal state and its constituting states and provinces are blurred, and each acts independently in advancing the political life of that state (dual federalism). In others, such as Germany, there is a mechanism for cooperating and synergy of the tasks of the two levels of government (cooperative federalism). There’s no doubt that the type of interaction between the federal government and its constituent units affects the implementation of democracy in a federal government. On the other hand, how a federal government adheres to the requirements of democracy, such as collective participation or guaranteeing the citizen equality principle, is a result of that state's political system type (parliamentary or presidential). Studying federalism and democracy, we realize that although federalism and democracy intersect in many aspects, they are different in conception. Federalism looks at how power is distributed between two levels of government, which is ultimately a diagram of the legal and political form of government, while regarding democracy, we move from the form of government to the realm of ensuring the political participation of equal citizens. The main concern of the present article is to examine the relationship and integration of democracy and federalism in political society. The main finding of this study is that despite the compatibility of federalism with democracy in terms of providing a platform to ensure pluralism, in federal governments, due to the existence of two levels of government, the implementation of democracy faces legal and political complications.

Keywords

• consensus democracy
• dual federalism
• cooperative federalism
• majority democracy
• presidential democracy