On the New Federalism in More's Utopia

As is has been documented (say by Jacob T. Levy), Benjamin Constant draws an important distinction between old and new federalism in Principles of Politics Applicable to All Representative Governments in his chapter “On Municipal Power, Local Authorities, and a New Kind of Federalism” (recall this post). The old kind of federalism involves a treaty directed against foreign enemies and is usually and fundamentally defensive in character. (Although sometimes such ‘leagues’ take the initiative as I note in reading Polybius’ Histories.) Crucially, in the old kind of federalism, the units involved need not be federal in character.

In the new kind of federalism, the participating states are internally also federal in character. This means that they have some kind of principle of representation from local units upward, and have some kind of legislative assembly or federal decision-making. Usually, the canonical early texts on this kind of political organization before Constant are the “Albany Plan of Union,” The Spirit of the Laws, Hume’s “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth,” the Federalist Papers, the Wealth of Nations, Kant’s Perpetual Peace, and Condorcet’s Sketch. So, this is decidedly an Enlightenment project in the context of much larger state building involving whole continents and even inclosing oceans. (This project overlaps with some of the more ambitious peace plans associated with names like Emeric Crucé, the Abbé St. Pierre, and William Penn.)

As I have noted, it seems incredibly likely to me (recall here; here) that Spinoza’s Political Treatise offers an early anticipation of the new federalism, and I am pretty confident it was read by Montesquieu. Spinoza’s federal project is clearly itself inspired by features of the Dutch republic.

So much for set up.

Back in the day, in his inaugural lecture as Regius professor at Cambridge, published as Liberty before Liberalism, Quentin Skinner noted that self-government requires federalism in Utopia in More’s Utopia (pp. 30-1). As regular readers know, this was eye-opening to me because in the larger narrative of the development of the new federalism in the salient works by Spinoza, Hume, Smith, and Kant there are explicit references and allusions to More’s Utopia. This year, while teaching More, I noticed a key feature of the new federalism in Raphael’s description of Utopia at the start of Book 2 of Utopia. Let me quote before I comment:

There are fifty-four cities on the island, all spacious and magnificent, entirely identical in language, customs, institutions and laws. So far as the location permits, all of them are built on the same plan and have the same appearance. The nearest are twenty-four miles apart, and the farthest are not so remote that a person cannot travel on foot from one to another in a day.

Once a year each city sends three of its old and experienced citizens to Amaurot to consider affairs of common interest to the island. Amaurot lies at the navel of the land, so to speak, and convenient to every other district, so it acts as a capital. Every city has enough ground assigned to it so that at least twelve miles of farmland are available in every direction, though where the cities are farther apart, their territories are much more extensive. No city wants to enlarge its boundaries, for the inhabitants consider themselves cultivators rather than landlords. (pp. 44-45, translated by Robert M. Adams, Third edition Cambridge University Press.)

Now, our attention might naturally be drawn to the fact the units of this federal state are identical in language, customs, institutions and laws. Such excessive homogeneity is a feature of Utopia. The new federalism does not require such homogeneity. I don’t mean to deny that the extent of variation in any (combination) of these is a non-trivial empirical and political question to this day. (And one may well wonder to what degree a common currency and common trade complicates answering this question.)

However, Utopia has another feature that is, in fact, intrinsic to the new federalism mentioned in the quoted passage: fixed mutual borders. For, while there are many motives to advocate and participate in the new federalism, the existential core is the abolition of war within the federal state. And this involves making mutual land-grabbing impossible. Interestingly enough, these fixed borders do not involve freedom of movement (which is highly regulated and discouraged in Utopia because of the necessity to maintain social cohesion and productivity at the local level).

As an aside, this week’s disastrous decision by the German government to reintroduce land border controls risk destroying Schengen-land within the EU. The freedom of movement and settlement within Schengenland is one of the greater benefits of the EU to individual citizens and families (and employers). To what degree this episode inaugurates the beginning of the end for the EU is worth pondering, but I leave that for another occasion. However, such freedom of movement — intrinsic to an open society — is not conceptually required in the new federalism (which is compatible with more closed societies).

I could stop here, but it is important to recognize that the abolition of war within the new federal state is not a negligible feature of the would-be-merits of Utopia. For, the management and prevention of war is one of the central features of Book I of Utopia. Book I notes repeatedly the tendency toward war-making within the Great European kingdoms of the day (and the disorder this causes domestically) as well as the non-trivial nature of civil war (the Cornish uprising is repeatedly mentioned). The three fictious examples of Book I (the Polylerites, who are vassals and have farmed out wars to their Persian overlords; the Macarians, which have institutionalized a funding structure that only allows defensive wars to its kings; and the Achorians, which have delimited the size of the kingdom) all involve limitations on offensive war-making and conquest.

Of course, even though the Utopians present themselves as near pacifists, the Utopians have not abolished war, not even the offensive kind. They use wars of conquest in the context of their colonial projects. These they treat as necessary (recall this post) when their population grows beyond the fixed equilibrium they have established, and they find land that is (purportedly) uncultivated. (Recall this post with references to Locke, Marx, and Barbara Arneill for all the juicy details.) And one may well wonder to what degree the stability of the new federalism requires foreign enemies or projects.