Confederation

A confederation is a union of states that retain their sovereignty while delegating certain common functions, typically defence, foreign relations and sometimes trade or currency, to joint institutions. Those institutions act mainly on the member states rather than directly on individual citizens, decisions on important matters often require unanimity or large majorities, and members typically retain the right to leave. A confederation sits between an alliance (looser, usually limited to defence) and a federation (a single state in which central and regional governments both act directly on citizens).

The term has been applied to arrangements as different as the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Old Swiss Confederacy, the United Provinces of the Netherlands, the United States under the Articles of Confederation, the German Confederation of 1815–1866 and, by some scholars, the European Union.

The classical analysis of confederation comes from its critics. In The Federalist, Hamilton and Madison argued that the Articles of Confederation failed because the central government legislated for states "in their corporate or collective capacities" rather than for individuals: it could request money and troops but could not compel them. Federalist No. 15 described this as the "great and radical vice" of the American confederation.

Murray Forsyth's Unions of States offers a more sympathetic theory: a confederation is a contractual union of states that creates a common authority by treaty, a form suited to communities that want cooperation without merger. Contemporary theorists of democratic confederalism, drawing on Murray Bookchin and Abdullah Öcalan, use the term differently: for them, confederation means a bottom-up network of self-governing communes and councils, coordinated by delegates with recallable mandates, as an alternative to the nation-state.

Confederation, federation and alliance

• Haudenosaunee Confederacy. A league of Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and later Tuscarora nations, governed by a Grand Council of chiefs nominated through clan mothers, with decisions by consensus. Its founding is dated variously from the twelfth to the sixteenth century.
• Old Swiss Confederacy. From the late Middle Ages, cantons were bound by a network of alliances and met in a federal diet (Tagsatzung). After the brief Sonderbund civil war of 1847, the 1848 constitution transformed Switzerland into a federal state, though it retains the name Confederation.
• United States, 1781–1789. The Articles of Confederation, in force from 1781, created a Congress in which each state had one vote, major decisions required nine of thirteen states, and amendment required confirmation by every state legislature. The common treasury was supplied by the states, whose legislatures laid the taxes. The Constitution of 1787, in force from 1789, replaced it with a federation.
• German Confederation, 1815–1866. A league of German states with a federal assembly in Frankfurt, dominated by Austria and Prussia, dissolved after the Austro-Prussian War.
• Short-lived unions. The Senegambia Confederation (1982–1989) and the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro (2003–2006) ended when one member chose to leave.
• European Union. The EU has a parliament elected by citizens, a court whose rulings bind member states and directly effective law, so it exceeds a classic confederation; yet member states remain sovereign, can leave (as the United Kingdom did in 2020) and decide many matters by unanimity. Germany's Federal Constitutional Court in its 1993 Maastricht judgment called it a Staatenverbund, an association of states, rather than a state resting on a European people.
• Democratic confederalism. The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria has attempted a confederal system of communes and councils.

• Collective-action failure. When the centre depends on contributions from members, each has an incentive to free-ride. Federalist No. 15 complained that the Confederation's requisitions for men and money were in practice mere recommendations.
• Paralysis. Unanimity or high thresholds give any member a veto, slowing or blocking common action, a problem familiar from the Polish–Lithuanian liberum veto and from EU decisions on foreign policy and taxation.
• Instability. Confederations have frequently either centralised into federations (the United States, Switzerland, the Netherlands later) or dissolved.
• Accountability gaps. Central bodies composed of state delegates may be remote from citizens and difficult to hold accountable.
• Asymmetry. Dominant members can control the union, as Austria and Prussia did in the German Confederation.

Confederation has proved a useful transitional or coordinating form: it allows communities with strong identities to cooperate on defence and trade without surrendering self-rule. Historically, however, most confederations either evolved into federations or broke apart, largely because of the collective-action problems that Hamilton and Madison diagnosed. The EU is the most important contemporary test of whether a union of sovereign states can sustain deep integration with strong common institutions while preserving members' sovereignty and right of exit.

• U.S. National Archives: Articles of Confederation
• The Federalist No. 15, Avalon Project
• Murray Forsyth, Unions of States: The Theory and Practice of Confederation (Leicester University Press, 1981)
• Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, Maastricht judgment, BVerfGE 89, 155 (1993)