Federalism and Democracy: Conceptual Connections or Elective Affinites?

The narrative of federalism as an instrument systematically connected and conducive to democracy is dominant in democratic theory and intellectual history, presenting federalism as an inherently democratic innovation of the 18th century. Federalism is an established feature of the language of democracy. By highlighting a different semantic tradition, the paper will expand on recent empirical and theoretical work criticizing this assumption of „ideal“ democracy as federative. The structural affinity of federal arrangements with non-democratic agendas such as empire will be highlighted through an approach of comparative conceptual history. The adaptability of federal elements – apparent in the case of the British Empire, Germany after 1871, but also more recent debates – questions the widely prevalent claim that they are exclusively tied to a well-functioning democracy, thus highlighting the tension between the contested concept of democracy and the no less malleable concept of federalism.