The Introduction discusses the relevance of federalism to different aspects of climate governance. Drawing on the existing literature, we review the key advantages and disadvantages that federalism may offer for the adoption of ambitious climate policies.

Climate change governance in Spain is framed between international commitments and EU legislation and encompasses several levels of government and stakeholders. Numerous climate strategies and policies have been adapted at all territorial levels over the last decade, however, there are no formal vertical channels of influence for Autonomous Communities (ACs) or local actors on policy formulation at the federal level, which limit climate policy diffusion at the vertical dimension. Moreover, the coordination mechanisms for the implementation of climate policies are not very effective and do not consider the early phases of public action nor the participation of all involved authorities. However, the ACs and local governments have ample room for policy experimentalism in adapting their climate change strategies to the peculiarities of their different territories. In this regard the Spanish State of Autonomies has provided a favourable context for policy experimentalism in climate change governance, but not a favourable framework for effective decision-making between levels of government.

This chapter reflects on key findings in this book and how they enhance understanding of the relationship between climate governance and federalism around the world. federalism and federal-type arrangements work in crosscutting ways, facilitating climate governance in some respects, hindering it in others. Divided jurisdiction’s effects vary according to a range of institutional, political, social, economic and geographic factors.

This chapter outlines a situation where a country with heavy reliance on carbon-intensive energy resources has faced substantial greenhouse gas dilemmas; where those dilemmas manifest themselves in strong ideological and partisan differences; and where both the central government (the Commonwealth) and the States have broad licence in climate change policymaking. It finds that the need for coordination can be exaggerated and that federalism has been a facilitating rather than a hindering factor in Australia, with constituent unit action compensating for central government inaction.

South Africa adopted a system of decentralised government more than two decades ago. This government’s ability to see to collaboration and cooperation across line functionaries, the executive, the legislature and the judiciary is put to the test by, among others, the demands of an adequate national response to climate change and an established practice of centralised governance. This chapter gives an overview of the practice of federalism in South Africa; the country’s climate change profile; the way the federal government system links up with the demands of climate change governance; and a case study of tangible decentralised climate governance practices and developments. The focus is specifically on the challenges and opportunities presented by the multiple forums for law, policy and decision-making, rather than on matters of experimentation and diffusion. The chapter concludes with a brief assessment of the government’s performance thus far and suggestions for moving forward on its climate-resilient development trajectory.

Drawing on abundant fossil fuels endowments, Canada has built one of the most carbon-intensive economies in the world. Within the Canadian federation, provincial governments control the vast majority of natural resources, including both hydro-electric potential and fossil fuels. However, the uneven distribution of those resources has yielded tremendous variation in the carbon intensity of provincial economies, and equally great variation in provincial governments’ climate ambitions. In this chapter, I identify three phases in Canadian climate federalism. From 1990 to 2006 a ‘joint decision trap’ prevailed in which the most fossil fuel-dependent provinces vetoed national solutions. From 2007 to 2015 a truncated innovation and diffusion dynamic emerged in which provincial leaders adopted ambitious and sometimes innovative climate policies. However, fossil fuel-dependent provinces did not follow their lead. Emissions reductions hard won by provincial leaders were undone by emissions growth by their recalcitrant neighbours. The third phase, since 2016, is characterised by federal unilateralism. While the mere threat of federal action initially yielded provincial collaboration in an ambitious pan-Canadian climate plan, successful implementation ultimately turned on the federal government’s willingness to follow on that threat. I conclude that, on balance, federalism has exacerbated the challenge of climate action in Canada.

This chapter identifies and analyses the main climate change strategies at federal, state and municipal levels in Brazil, focusing on two processes: (i) the favourable context for decentralised policymaking and (ii) the scope for experimental policymaking and associated learning process among the constituent units. Two features of Brazilian federalism are highlighted. One is the fact that all levels of government have constitutional responsibilities for climate change policy, with a distinguished range of policymaking powers relevant to climate change governance, including both mitigation and adaptation. The subnational level of government (state and municipal) has been taking the lead in climate governance, especially to compensate for the federal level refusal to deal with climate change. Brazilian states and municipalities have developed climate change policies in order to govern issues relating to both mitigation and adaptation. The second is the availability of multiple forums for ‘experimental’ policymaking triggering processes of policy diffusion among the constituent units. Such forums constitute institutional arrangements that encompass multi-level units as well as agents from different segments of society, such as transnational cooperation networks and agencies, research groups, among others.

The United States case demonstrates the challenge of adopting and implementing effective and durable policies to address climate change in a political system that combines federalism with formal separation of powers at both federal and state levels. Federal legislative and executive branches have regularly failed in past decades to produce climate legislation, frequently limiting federal policy engagement to unilateral executive actions in select presidencies that often fail to endure. These challenges are exacerbated by growing hyper-partisanship and deep divides between states and regions in recent decades, whereby state opposition coalitions often form to veto or weaken federal initiatives. Some states have sustained their own climate policy regimes, contributing to some reductions in national emissions and providing potential models for future federal adoption. But state policy diffusion has generally proven uneven and demonstrated little capacity to motivate vertical diffusion through federal adoption.

This chapter outlines the different analytical perspectives that can be used to study the EU. It first discusses three different integration theories (neo-functionalism, intergovernmentalism and postfunctionalism) and their spin-offs. These theories seek to explain why and how countries have decided to establish European cooperation and what role key actors (governments, interest groups, the public, politicians and civil servants) play in this. The chapter subsequently outlines theories of EU politics which seek to explain the actual functioning of the EU. In doing so it places a strong emphasis on the comparative politics approach, where the functioning of the EU is analysed by employing theories and concepts that are used in analysing domestic political systems. Additionally the chapter also discusses multi-level governance and federalism as two additional ways to understand EU politics. These theories provide complimentary insights in to the EU’s functioning. The choice to employ a certain theoretical perspective depends upon the types of questions asked and the actors that are of interest.

This chapter unpacks the legality of investment migration, scrutinising the interface of state sovereignty and international law. I approach the subject matter of this volume through the prism of the core challenges that the sale of citizenship and residence pose, including the risk of fraud and the new demands on due diligence and the implications of citizenship and residence by investment for international tax planning, as well as issues around the extradition and denaturalisation of investment citizens in light of international and European law.

This chapter supplies a detailed presentation of the rules of international and European law applicable to investment migration. We explain the problems behind the usual misconstruction of Nottebohm’s ‘genuine links’ – especially in the light of contemporary EU law – and offers in its place the promising concept of ‘relevant links’.

This chapter focuses on Union Now, Streit’s first and best-known book, published in 1939, spotlighting the interaction of two factors to explain its visibility on. One factor is Streit’s energetic promotional campaign. Streit proved remarkably resourceful in attracting attention, exploiting the possibilities offered by newspapers, radio, public lectures, and the emerging practice of celebrity endorsements. The chapter highlights Streit’s first promotional strategy, that of courting a select group of opinion-makers, through case studies of several influential figures: Henry Luce, John Foster Dulles, Thomas Lamont, Dorothy Thompson, and Russell Davenport. The second factor is the cult of the US Constitution and its federal system during the interwar years but which began in the post-Civil War period. This cult provided fertile ground for Streit’s Atlantic federal union project modeled on the US Constitution.

Chapter 1 presents the theoretical framework used throughout the book. We argue that the federalist system creates varying layers of inequality for women in their human security. We argue that it is crucial that we understand how and under what circumstances domestic violence policies are adopted so that we can better assess what the laws are intended to fix and how reformers can utilize these pathways in the future to address domestic violence. We provide an overview of the scholarship on federalism as well as descriptions of domestic violence offenses, the rates of domestic violence , and a roadmap for the rest of the book.

We conclude our book by summarizing our findings and discussing their implications. We circle back to where we began: violence against women remains a significant and serious impediment to achieving equal status for women in all dimensions of their lives. We offer suggested reforms for improving domestic violence laws and policy implementation at the federal and state levels while recognizing the limits of the federal government in dealing with what is essentially a very localized problem. The reality is that federalism creates unequal conditions for the human security of women across state lines. We end this chapter with proposed avenues of future research that explore more holistically the ways that communities deal with domestic violence. In expanding attention to domestic violence as a source of suppressed citizen participation by women in the United States, we hope to encourage the discipline of political science as well as policymakers and practitioners to address it more consistently and effectively.

Using quantitative data, we construct an explanation of the adoption of policies that address the intersection of firearms and domestic violence. Removing guns from perpetrators of domestic violence, including domestic violence among unmarried couples, decreases intimate partner deaths. Beyond the very positive effects that laws on DV gun ownership by domestic violence perpetrators can have to make women safer, the sponsorship and passage of these laws over the last thirty years have increased. Using our original dataset of domestic violence firearm law (DVFL) enactments, we analyze the circumstances under which states adopt these laws. We find evidence that state and federal factors that influence policy adoption employ a set of political and demographic indicators as independent variables, particularly, the number of gun-related homicides, legislative partisan control, citizen ideology, federal legislation, and election years influence the likelihood of DVFL enactments. We also find support for the effects of vertical policy diffusion but not for horizontal policy diffusion across states. We found no effects associated with support for gun ownership or the percent of women state legislators.

We analyze the gap between public policies regarding domestic violence and the prosecution and defense of such policies in the courtroom. The prosecutors and public defenders we surveyed are on the front lines of domestic violence cases as they enter courtroom; nearly 25 percent of their caseloads involved domestic violence cases and of those, about 50 percent involved repeat offenders. We utilize the information from the public defenders and district attorneys to understand what types of domestic violence cases they see, who the victims are, and what happens to those who are convicted of domestic violence crimes. We also analyze the reported outcomes of domestic violence cases to see whether specific domestic violence laws have any influence on the punishment of domestic violence offenses. We present the first-hand perspectives of some of the individuals who are involved with domestic violence cases on a daily basis. We find that the implementation of public policies regarding domestic violence, such as mandatory arrest and gun removal, is implemented inconsistently across states, and we demonstrate that different policies and implementation practices lead to diverse outcomes of domestic violence cases in the courtroom.

The conclusion situates the politics of legal pluralism within a comparative perspective by contrasting Chechnya with other Russian regions and other contexts of postcolonial and post-conflict political development. The concluding chapter discusses the broader implications of this study for our understanding of the “dark side” of legal pluralism as an instrument of domination and of state law as a “weapon of the weak.” It outlines a future research agenda on the role of international law in legally pluralist environments and legal pluralism in diasporas. Finally, the chapter reflects on the implications of the findings for post-Soviet Russian politics and asks why the Kremlin allows Kadyrov’s lawfare.