This Essay reflects on the relationship between “federalism” and “national democracy.” More specifically, it considers the way in which the operation of formal state institutions can change the quality of national bodies necessary to democratic politics. State-level action can reduce the quality of national democracy even if it is motivated by national
artisan forces. For example, state-level instruments can influence the possibility that national institutions either do or do not experience capture by minority factions, and are instead capable of roughly tracking the ebb and flow of majoritarian preferences over time. Without state institutions, national actors would lack instruments to achieve such certain antidemocratic effects. The resulting descriptive taxonomy illustrates the ways by which state institutions can serve as vehicles for democratic backsliding in the operation of national representative institutions. As such, it provides a cautionary analysis of state institutions’ having a net-negative aggregate effect on the quality of a nation’s democracy.
