SAIFAC Webinar: The Ambiguities of Federalism by Thilo Herbert
DATE: 23 March 2022
TIME: 17h00—18h30 South African time (GMT+2)
RSVP: naomi@saifac.org.za
Connect with this link to join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85788813624?pwd=cnR6aWN6ZURsQ3k2UUhaVGpjRUJXZz09
About the speaker:
Thilo Herbert is a Research Fellow and Ph.D. candidate at the Chair of Public and Comparative Law at Humboldt University Berlin (Prof. Dr. Philipp Dann). He studied law in Frankfurt and Paris. His research interests lie in authoritarian constitutionalism, federalism, comparative methodologies, and legal history. He is the review-editor of the quarterly journal “World Comparative Law” that focuses on public law in the Global South.
About the event:
Constitutional scholarship commonly answers the question of the functionality of federalism along two rationales. First, as federalism presumably entails additional levels of participation, it is conceived of as a tool to foster democracy. Second, similarly to its horizontal counterpart the vertical separation of powers is perceived of as a system of checks and balances that restrains state power. This restraining function, it is argued, strengthens individual freedom. In short, the dominant narrative about the functionality of federalism relates to an organizational principle that promotes democracy and a liberal social order.
Against this narrative, the presentation will be two-folded. The first part challenges the dominant narrative on a conceptual level and asks the following questions:
Whether federalism is open to any form of government?
Whether federalism resists its functional appropriation by authoritarian regimes?
The second part of the presentation seeks to:
Assess the relationship of federalism to authoritarianism from an empirical point of view.
Examine South Africa’s “homeland” policy during the era of "Grand Apartheid" and carve out the extent to which an authoritarian state functionally used the federalization of its own spheres of power.