Abstract:
The study of federalism brings together both political scientists and
constitutional lawyers. It is one of those fields of study where the scholarly and the
applied are inextricably interlinked. However, studies on and from the non-Western world tend to be underrepresented in the field, subsequently leading to both
scholarly and applied shortcomings. This article is an attempt to start undoing that
unevenness by identifying four lessons from the African continent. While doing so,
we pursue two simultaneous intellectual goals: One is to use Africa to help sharpen
the theoretical insights and conceptual tools of comparative federalism in general
– applicable to both the West and the rest. And secondly, running parallel to this,
the article also exposes the reader to the varieties of federalism in Africa. This
not only enriches our scholarly repertoire but will also help nuance and finetune
some of the prevailing theoretical assumptions in the field, and thus improve the
chances of federalism to deliver on its promises in applied terms. The comparative
lessons drawn from the African experience can be grouped under four categories. 1)
The article builds on the conceptual distinction between federalism and federation;
and argues that ideas and practices of federalism in Africa are more numerous
than the formal federations of the continent. 2) The pre-colonial and imperial
history of the continent is marked by British-style amalgamations of constitutional
documents, practices, unwritten rules, and customs – some at the imperial level,
some regional, some local. 3) International-level factors, especially the arrival of
colonialism, and then later, the geopolitical pressures of the Cold War, played key
roles in influencing the choice and workings of constitutions on the continent. 4)
History has left each African country with certain dynamics unique to them making
cutting and pasting best practices from abroad without attention to the local context
problematic.
