Federalism May Not Be the Answer Either

It seems that the Philippine government is not ready to give up the idea of renegotiating the agreement on ancestral domain with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), according to this article, although talks in Manila have now included a proposal to amend the Philippine Constitution in order to convert the Philippines into a federal state in order to give greater autonomy to Filipino Muslims. I don’t know how federalism could solve a problem that is rooted on ethno-religious conflict, except perhaps exacerbate it. Federalism is supposed to cut across ethnic, religious, linguistic, cultural, and commercial lines when it divides power between national and local governments.

Filipino lawmakers are interested in the idea of federalism because they think that it offers the structural solution that will provide local governments in Mindanao more power to attend to problems endemic to the region. Before they rush into it, I think that they must first weigh the national consequences of adopting federalism. For such structural change in a tiny country of disparate islands, where 80 or so dialects are spoken, may lead to confused allegiances and disunity. But the more serious problem this portends is a potential disproportionate increase in the number of characters unfit to rule. As pointed out in the Federalist Papers, the disproportion of unfit rulers against available remedies might be greater in small republics rather than in large ones.