The argument here is not that federalism is bad for transitional democracies, nor is it that transitional federations cannot afford to open up the political competition without endangering their own territorial integrity, even though both observations are in truth corollaries of our theory. Our argument is theoretical in nature and points out the need for the simultaneity of federal and democratic design as well as for a fixed initial investment in establishing the regime—an investment that in practice may take the form of relegating federal effectiveness to the place of a secondary goal, and prioritizing instead the commitment to stability and enforcement of the constitution. Even though the volume of literature on federalism is enormous, it offers little helpful guidance on how to design andimplementsuccessfuldemocratic federalism. One conclusion from the literature is that each federal case is unique, andfewifanyidentifiablefactors seemnecessary, whileitis unknown which factors together would be sufficient for success. Democratic federal success apparently depends on a complex interaction of many country-spe cific social and institutional factors. A party system is a global outcome of such an interaction, and theoretical studies identify it as a crucial factor in sustain ing federal stability—when it is characterized by the right pattern of inter party competition and cooperation. Successful federations possess decentral ized yet integrated party systems, with the pattern of competition promoting mutual dependence and coalition building among regional and federal-level politicians. Obviously, when the party system is not federally integrated, or when the pattern of political competition is barely emerging at the start of a democratic transition, it is highly uncertain whether party politics would evolve in the direction of maintaining institutional and territorial integrity. Polarizing extremism in electoral politics can be kept in check either in a democratic way or in a non-democratic way, while political competition must beconstrained in somesenseinbothcases,voluntarilyinthefirstandbyforce in the second. Both mechanisms would result in excluding federal issues from political competition; the difference is in the way in which the needed motivation to do so is supplied for the politicians. One very important con cern, and the one that we do not discuss here, is that the non-competitive federal model is not robust to the re-opening of political competition. Based on restricting potentially destructive campaigning, in its extreme, the non competitive modelessentially amounts to the state monopoly in all important areas of political competition. In economics, the state monopoly could help sustain non-competitive industries. But, as a rule, state protection poorly prepares the protected industries to the reopening of the markets. Similarly, even if the non-competitive federal model holds while the political competi tion is suppressed, it is likely to becomeunstable oncepolitical competitionre emerges. Rapid collapse of the former Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia upon the removal of constraints on political competitiveness are vivid illustrations of this model’s potential for failure (Roeder 1991, Bunce 1999). As soon as the mere expectation of some form of political competition was aroused in those countries, it stimulated political entrepreneurs to mobil ize popular demands inconsistent with federal stability.

학기초에는 나름 잘 읽혔는데 요즘따라 왤케 잘 안 읽히는지 모르겠다