Daily Archives: April 13, 2022

Introduction

One great achievement of the American founding was the creation of an effective constitutional structure of political institutions. Two important aspects of the U.S. Constitutionfederalism and the separation of powersrepresent, in part, the framers efforts to divide governmental power. Federalism limits government by creating two sovereign powersthe national government and state governmentsthereby restraining the influence of both. Separation of powers imposes internal limits by dividing government against itself, giving different branches separate functions and forcing them to share power.

What is federalism? Why did the Founders adopt a federal rather than a unitary system? What kinds of federal relationships did the Constitution establish and how? How and why has the federal balance of power changed over time?

How did the Constitution divide power between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government? What are the different roles played by each of these branches in American national government?

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Chapter 3: Federalism and the Separation of Powers ...

By Micah Erfan April 13, 2022

Juana Garcia/The Cougar

If the state of world politics over the past few decades has shown anything, its shown that the United Nations is in major need of some power. In other words, its time to revisit global federalism.

Global federalism refers to having a lawmaking entity at the global level to deal with worldwide problems that cannot be effectively solved on a smaller scale.

The international system based entirely on diplomatic relations between nation-states is destined for continual shortcomings if not eventual collapse.

No better example remains than the Paris Agreement, which has demonstrably failed at sufficiently countering climate change. An outcome that shouldnt be surprising since the agreement consisted not of legally binding requirements but rather only on the ever unreliable promises of politicians.

According to the World Meteorological Organization, the planet is now on track to far exceed the 1.5 Celsius warming limit, a point which climate scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have marked as the limit beyond which the damage from warming will dramatically escalate.

If things continue as they are now, the consequences will be a catastrophic loss of biodiversity, human lifeand economic output that will impact the people of all nations.

Similarly, despite over 100 U.N. resolutions condemning them, the Israeli government continues its reprehensible apartheid against Palestinians. This occurs as Ethiopias genocidal civil war, which has claimed up to 500,000 lives in the past 16 months, rages on, and Russia continues its fascistic expansionist efforts in Ukraine.

All this while the lack of any global economic governance has incentivized a race to the bottom in national labor standards, worsened inequality, permitted large-scale tax avoidance and allowed long-term trade imbalances to persist.

When taken in tandem with the inability of the current system to deescalate the ever-growing global polarization in the competition between the U.S. and China and the continued proliferation of nuclear weapons, these facts should make it clear that the status quo is not acceptable.

The reality is that global problems require global solutions. In practical terms, this means that there is a need for current international structures to be transformed into ones that have some actual authority.

However, this greater endowment of authority must also be accompanied by sufficient measures to ensure these institutions are transparent, democratic and only exercise power over issues that lower-level governments cant properly handle.

Luckily, many ideas already exist for how this can become a reality. There are movements to democratize the U.N. by adding a permanent Global Citizens Assembly. Some activists and social scientists have advocated reforms to the U.N. charter that would create for it distinct, albeit limited, powers of taxation and international law enforcement.

One approach could be to revisit an idea that economist Yanis Varoufakis has recently revived. The idea is to create an international unit of currency exchange. Once accepted, this could be used to penalize activities that violate international law.

These institutions would then be able to create policies that could solve many of the aforementioned issues facing the world. For instance, these policies could mandate basic labor and environmental standards, establish a global carbon tax, create powerful incentives for nations to reduce their trade imbalances and so on.

With a new level of democracy at the global level, humanity would be able to enter another era. An era where conflict can finally be quelled, where the governments of the world are no longer devising how they can best dominate, exploit and destroy other nations.

Instead, governments could refocus their full energies on solving the genuine problems humans face, and where people of all nations would be able to communicate, travel and trade more freely than ever before. For this, global federalism is necessary.

Micah Erfan is an economics freshman who can be reached at[emailprotected]

Tags: Climate Change, federalism, government

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Global federalism is necessary to solve world problems - The Cougar - The Daily Cougar

Quebec Premier Franois Legault responds during question period on Feb. 22 at the legislature in Quebec City.Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press

It is never a wise idea to read too much into the results of a single by-election, no matter how neatly they fit into your preferred narrative of the political lay of the land.

That is why Quebec Premier Franois Legault should avoid crowing too loudly about his Coalition Avenir Qubecs victory on Monday in a Montreal-area riding that the Parti Qubcois had held almost uninterruptedly for four decades.

In the end, the PQ held its ground in Marie-Victorin, winning an almost identical share of the popular vote as it did in the 2018 election. The CAQ increased its share by six percentage points, obtaining 35 per cent to the PQs 30 per cent.

Considering the extraordinary resources the CAQ poured into winning the riding sending most of Mr. Legaults top cabinet ministers to campaign door to door with CAQ candidate Shirley Dorismond, an ex-vice-president of the Quebec nurses union the partys victory in a low-turnout by-election was underwhelming.

After all, it followed a provincial budget that included sending $500 cheques to almost every Quebecker, a goody that did not go unnoticed in Marie-Victorin, where household income hovers below the provincial average and most residents are renters.

Nor could Marie-Victorin voters have been indifferent to Mr. Legaults mid-campaign declaration that they would have more influence in the National Assembly if they chose a candidate to sit on the government benches.

When you have a CAQ MNA who comes from the government, it is a lot easier to transfer local files to ministerial colleagues, Mr. Legault said in a March 17 radio interview. Maurice Duplessis, the pre-Quiet Revolution Union Nationale premier, could not have said it better.

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Still, Mr. Legault seemed to take special pleasure in defeating his former party in a riding where the Yes side won more than 60 per cent of the vote in the 1995 sovereignty referendum. Across Quebec, Mr. Legaults 10-year-old CAQ has stolen PQ voters with a Duplessis-style nationalist platform that treats the Canadian Constitution as a minor detail. He effectively runs the province as an independent country, without having to give up federal transfer payments or the loonie.

For voters, it comes down to this: Why vote for an openly separatist party, and all the potential chaos that could entail, when the CAQ already provides the next best thing to independence with none of the inconveniences that sovereignty implies?

Mr. Legaults strategy is working, for now. The CAQ is strongly favoured to win a second term in October. None of the four opposition parties represented in the National Assembly is polling above 20 percentage points on a provincewide basis. Among francophone voters, the CAQ had a 32-percentage-point lead over its closest rivals in a March Leger Marketing poll.

The CAQs main opposition in the fall election could turn out to be the Quebec Conservative Party, which has surged past the PQ and Quebec Liberal Party among francophone voters in recent polls. The QCP, led by former radio host ric Duhaime, has tapped into populist anger over pandemic restrictions and the CAQs heavy-handed governing style.

Its candidate in Marie-Victorin, actor Anne Casabonne, compared COVID-19 vaccines to a pile of excrement. She managed to win more than 10 per cent of the vote in a riding that typically leans centre-left. In the right-leaning Quebec City region, the fall election is shaping up as a two-way CAQ-QCP race.

The biggest loser in the by-election was by far the provincial Liberal Party, which has held power for most of Quebecs history since Confederation but which captured less than 7 per cent of the vote in Marie-Victorin on Monday.

Leader Dominique Anglade has repositioned the QLP as a progressive alternative to the far-left Qubec Solidaire, scrapping the partys traditional centre-right focus on the economy. She has alienated the QLPs anglophone base by waffling on Bill 96, the CAQ legislation aimed at strengthening protections for the French. Anglophone leaders denounced an amendment to the bill introduced by the QLP that would require students in English junior colleges to take three regular courses in French. Talk is rife about the creation of a new anglophone-rights party that would challenge the QLP for the English vote in October.

The days when the QLP under premiers Robert Bourassa, Jean Charest and Philippe Couillard stood out as an unapologetically federalist defender of all things Canadian are good and well over. No one is quite sure what it stands for now.

The result is that no party in the National Assembly stands up for Canada. That is bound to matter, sooner or later.

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Opinion: In Quebec, the only thing deader than sovereignty is federalism - The Globe and Mail

The newly elected Aam Aadmi Party government in Punjab is at the receiving end of the Oppositions ire over party chief Arvind Kejriwals meeting with senior Punjab officials in the absence of chief minister Bhagwant Mann. The Shiromani Akali Dal and the Congress alleged that the Punjab government was being run through remote control from Delhi.

News agency PTI quoted sources in the AAP saying that Kejriwal held a meeting with top officers of Punjab on Monday to discuss ways to implement the partys promise of providing 300 units of free electricity in the state.

Former chief minister Amarinder Singh called Bhagwant Mann a rubber stamp while Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu alleged it is a breach of federalism.

Congress Legislative Party leader in Punjab Partap Singh Bajwa claimed that people of the state did not vote for the government which was to be remote controlled from Delhi.

Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal also dubbed Kejriwals meeting as unconstitutional and unacceptable.

Taking a dig at the AAP, Punjab Congress chief Amrinder Singh Raja Warring asked whether senior state officials will have to be present in Kejriwals darbar.

Referring to the meeting, Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu said it is a breach of federalism. Punjabs IAS officers summoned by @ArvindKejriwal in CM @BhagwantManns absence. This exposes the Defacto CM & Delhi remote control. Clear breach of federalism, insult to Punjabi pride. Both must clarify, said Sidhu in his tweet.

However, there was no immediate reaction over the controversy from the Delhi government headed by Kejriwal.

On Monday, Kejriwal had held a meeting with the Punjab chief secretary, secretary (power) and chairman of the state power utility in Delhi over the electricity-related issue, even as Bhagwant Mann was not present in the meeting, the sources said.

Mann, who met Kejriwal in Delhi earlier in the day, tweeted in Punjabi and Hindi, Had a good meeting with our leader and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal. Will give a good news very soon to the people of Punjab.

Kejriwal retweeted Manns tweet saying, We will together change Delhi, Punjab and the entire country. People are very much sad and distressed. They are fed up with dirty and corrupt politics of politicians and parties. We have to work day and night for people.

When asked about the meeting, Punjab Transport Minister Laljit Singh Bhullar said Kejriwal is the partys national convener and even if he has held a meeting, then it should not be a big issue.

AAP spokesperson in Punjab Malwinder Kang said, People come from far and wide to see the Kejriwal model of governance. If he has held an informal meeting, which is for the benefit of the people of Punjab, then it should be welcomed.

(With PTI inputs)

Link:

Kejriwals meeting with Punjab officials in Manns absence draws flak, Oppn calls it breach of federalism - The Financial Express