Small regions can best govern their own affairs

The argument

Local governments have a better understanding of their own problems than central governments do, and can more easily distribute goods and services in a timely and appropriate manner. The claim is about information rather than virtue: issues such as local transport, infrastructure, and spending on local projects all require local knowledge and expertise that is held by the people who live with the consequences, and that is expensive for a distant administration to acquire. Typically, regions within a country will need different approaches to similar problems, and a highly centralised democracy will struggle to manage the myriad solutions needed, because a single policy must be written generally enough to apply everywhere and therefore fits nowhere particularly well. Proximity also changes accountability. Government is more likely to be held accountable when things go wrong at a local level, whereas centralised governments have the excuse of being too far away from certain problems to notice them, and of having too much to do to meaningfully engage with regional problems. Those excuses are not merely evasions — they describe a real limit — which is why the argument treats distance itself as the obstacle to answerability. There is a corresponding benefit at the centre. In a federal system, the central government is free to consider national issues such as defence and the economy, instead of being inefficient and overburdened by the need to come up with policy for every region. Devolution therefore improves government at both levels rather than trading one against the other. The democratic payoff follows. Federalism creates better solutions to local problems, where in a centralised state small local issues are frequently overlooked or poorly addressed, and it creates accountability by placing decisions close enough to voters that responsibility for them can actually be assigned.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Some regions will have great difficulty tackling local problems such as traffic, infrastructure, and the maintenance of local institutions due to poverty. A lack of centralization can sometimes mean poorer regions that are unable to help themselves are abandoned. There are many versions of federalism, and many do not delegate regional powers in a meaningful way. Striking the balance between local and national issues is difficult. Many people disagree on what the central government should do, and what should be left to local government. Often local government is required to solve its own problems without having the powers to do so. Often the central and local governments will shirk responsibility for the same issue. Far from being more efficient federalism can make government extremely inefficient. The organs of government are multiplied to create multiple competing bureaucracies, which are frequently poorly connected to each other. Federalism does not suit regional governments that are poor or lacking in resources. Striking the balance between national and regional powers is difficult and sometimes results in a system where nobody is held accountable for things that do not get done. Having many governments leads to a larger more confusing bureaucracy.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Proximity supplies local knowledge but not capacity, and the premise conflates them: smaller authorities are typically weaker in revenue, expertise and administrative depth, so knowing what a place needs does not establish an ability to provide it. [Rejecting P2] Efficiency is asserted where duplication is the more usual result, since a federal arrangement multiplies legislatures, agencies and inspectorates and creates overlapping responsibilities in which each level can attribute failure to the other — which weakens the accountability the argument claims as its main gain.