A House Divided: Multidimensional Federalism and Its Democratic Ramifications on Post-Abolition United States

Abstract In Shelby County v. Holder , Chief Justice Roberts tied the notion of equal state sovereignty to the constitutional order. Yet, asymmetric federalism has long existed in the Constitution and in practice. Asymmetry has long been theorized in comparative politics literature but is missing in American politics’ conceptualizations of federalism and democratization. By attending to multidimensional federalism, this paper moves the debate over federalism’s positive or negative consequences on democracy toward a more precise understanding of how different dimensions of federalism might strengthen democracy under historically contingent conditions. Analyzing multidimensional federalism, whereby federalism is characterized by the relationship between the federal government’s power over state governments (i.e., centralization), as well as how state governments experience federal authority relative to one another (i.e., symmetry), this paper examines how the federal government’s selective, concentrated oversight over Southern states shaped democratization efforts in the United States during the post-Civil War era. This study finds democratization occurred in the South during Reconstruction, in part, due to the presence of asymmetric federalism. In the face of democratic backsliding, asymmetric federalism may be used as a toolkit of democratization, especially when a democratically committed government lacks the state capacity and political feasibility to institute expansive reforms.