[Biweekly Symposium] No.323, Federalism and Constitutional Government
Author:Unirule
Time：2006-11-24 14:12:52 Clicks:
Topic: Federalism and Constitutional Government Lecturer:Dr. Wang Jianxun, China University of Political Science and Law Discussants:Prof. Gao Quanxi, Chinese Academy of Social Science;Mr. Wu Jiaxiang, Independent Scholar;Dr. Liu Haibo, Chinese Academy of Social Science;Dr. Feng Xingyuan, Chinese Academy of Social Science;Prof. Zhang Boshu, Chinese Academy of Social Science
Mr. Wang’s speech contains five parts: simple introduction of federalism; theoretical foundation and core values of federalism; principles of federalism; the relationship between federalism and constitutional government and the relationship between federalism and China’s reform of constitutional government reform. In the first part, he introduced the origin of federalism. Early federalists in America contributed to the development of federalism. Small commonwealths were connected to form a big republic country. And Madison called this kind of country “expanded republic”. In the second part, he said that Hayek’s papers Economics and Knowledge (1936) and The Use of Knowledge in Society (1945) laid the foundation for the theory of federalism. From his perspective, no person or institution has the monopoly of all knowledge. Therefore, decisions should be made by many people or many institutions together rather than a single one. As far as some core values of federalism are concerned, Mr. Wang thought that the goal of a country is to protect every member’s freedom and power, if a country has a supreme power, there is no room for freedom and constitutional governance. In the third part, he said that the constitutional governance in the United States is based on the relative independence of every state. In this situation, the risk of political reform or political innovation is small. Innovation could start in a state and if it is very successful, other states may adopt the same policy. So any failure of an innovation or reform may not have a wide-spread influence. In the fourth part, relations between federalism and constitutional governance are discussed. Theoretically, constitutional governance aims at restricting power and protecting members’ freedom. So in a federal system where supreme power does not exist, every small state has real freedom. Economically or historically, constitutional governance and federalism have a certain relationship. Almost all countries advocating federalism have constitutional governance. And in countries where supreme power exist, there is no room for constitutional governance. Finally, he analyzed the relationship between federalism and China’s reform of constitutional governance. The first barrier in this process is supreme power. In China, the highest level of power is controlled in a certain organization. Therefore, not all members could freely express their ideas when they gather to discuss a certain issue. And there is also a uniform law in China. However, in a constitutionally governed country, because of differences of resources, environment and culture, it is not realistic to adopt a uniform law in the whole country. The second barrier in the process is nationalism. Mr. Wang thought that a nation should not be independent from people. And the final goal of constitutional governance is not to build a strong nation but to ensure the freedom and power of every single member.
