The elusive concept of cooperative federalism

Much as India desires the existence of cooperative federalism, what it often witnesses is competition

- M GOVINDA RAO

Serious scholars studying and working on the Indian Union instinctively refer to it as "cooperative federalism". In this context, the observations made by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud, who retired on November 10, in a lecture delivered in Mumbai on October 26, are interesting and warrant a relook at how we think about Indian federalism.

While stating that "cooperative federalism" is at the core of democratic governance in India, he emphasized that it does not require states to toe the Union government's policy line. He referred to the 1977 Supreme Court ruling that the model of federalism in India is predominantly "cooperative", where the Union and the states iron out their differences through deliberations to achieve their shared developmental goals. However, he argued that federal principles should be nurtured through discussions and dialogues, with cooperation being just one way to uphold them. Equally important are discussions that can vary from cooperation on one end of the spectrum to contestation on the other, both essential in a healthy democracy. Indeed, contestation can also include competition.

The term "cooperative federalism" is a frequently vaunted cliché, often an academic obsession, even when none exists. It is a normative construct, closely aligned with the concept of a benevolent state. Albert Breton, an eminent public choice economist and a member of the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects of Canada (1985, popularly known as the MacDonald Commission), was intrigued by the oft-repeated cliché of "cooperative federalism". He started thinking about whether the basic vertical and horizontal interactions between units were truly cooperative and competitive and wrote an incisive minority report to the Commission titled, "Towards a Competitive Federalism," and later published it in the European Journal of Political Economy (Vol.3. Pp. 263-329, 1987).