Of swords and shields: Federalism and territorial democratization in the United States

Alfred Stepan has long called for theory building about the relationship between federalism and democracy. As one of the founding fathers of the now-burgeoning field of comparative federalism, Stepan has also generated important theories of his own about this relationship. His insights into how federalism can constrain the weight of democratic majorities at the center in national decision making provided new ways of comparing federal systems. They also revealed that federalism divides countries not only into multiple and overlapping governments but also into multiple and overlapping electorates. How they are structured in relation to one another tells us much about power and representation in federal democracies. In this and more recent work, Stepan has revealed the tight institutional interconnections that exist between federalism and democracy, as well as the significance for democratic regimes of how such institutional arrangements are "crafted" by political actors.