Paper Titles & Abstracts

With growing interdependence, the divergence between jurisdictional and actual policy boundaries of federal political systems increases as well (in other words there is a growing disconnection between the legal and political trends of integration), creating quite a paradox. Despite the over fifty years of integration and federal institutionalization, the European Union (EU) lives through a renaissance of intergovernmentalism, as it attempts to speak to this paradox and address the tension of further coordinating member-state jurisdictions without formally transferring any more responsibilities to the federal / European level. Consequently, this paper asks how, and under which conditions do constituent units of federal political systems turn to intergovernmental policy coordination instead of the traditional governing methods of cooperative federalism?In order to be able to understand this turn to a renewed and reformed intergovernmental activity, this study advances a constructivist approach to federal theory that attempts to finetune the idea of 'collaborative federalism' (Cameron and Simeron, 2002) by juxtaposing it with the 'deliberative turn' (Neyer, 2006). Focusing on different aspects of the creation of economic union in Canada (internal trade) and the EU (economic governance), this comparative study argues that the lack of 'deliberative capacities' in the system, which are built upon the idea of 'communicative action' (Risse, 2000), creates an incentive for further intergovernmental coordination, and then effective policy making depends on these same capacities of the newly created intergovernmental mechanisms. Furthermore, the study addresses the consequences of these intergovernmental developments on power and legitimacy, major themes of any federal theory.The paper sums up the findings based on a number of interviews conducted with government officials and public servants in Canada and the EU.