The Epistemic Case for Federalism: A Framework and Critical Analysis

Abstract Philosophers of federalism and political epistemologists address common issues and face similar burdens in establishing their claims. Yet federalism studies and political epistemology rarely intersect, leaving core concepts in each undeveloped and core questions unaddressed. This work demonstrates the value of treating them together. It synthesizes prior work in both fields to specify and evaluate leading epistemic arguments for decentralization and federalism. It thereby provides a taxonomy of the leading epistemic arguments, motivates a new research agenda on the epistemic aspects of decentralization and federalism, and introduces tools previously unknown to federal studies that one can fruitfully use to pursue that agenda. It also provides substantive insights into how epistemic considerations implicate the legitimacy of decentralized or federal governance. It finds that each leading epistemic argument for decentralization comes with significant epistemic trade-offs, and even the best ones do not strongly support federalism. Any justification for federalism is, accordingly, likely to be non-epistemic.