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John Kincaid, the Robert B. and Helen S. Meyner Professor of Government and Public Service, recently addressed some sensitive political issues of war and power-sharing abroad. From June 18-27, Kincaid traveled for the U.S. Department of State to Sri Lanka and Maldives to discuss issues of federalism, devolution, and constitutional reform with government officials and civic leaders.
His first stop was the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, a country entrenched in a bloody, ethno-religious civil war for more than 25 years. According to Kincaid, the root of the conflict is a demand for recognition and self-governing autonomy by Sri Lanka’s primarily Hindu and partially Muslim Tamil minority in the North and East. The Tamil demand was triggered by the national government’s declaration of Sinhalese as the national language and by the re-naming of the country from Ceylon to Sri Lanka in the 1970s. The Sinhalese, who are mostly Buddhist, make up about 83 percent of Sri Lanka’s population.
A militant Tamil guerilla group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), known as the Tamil Tigers, controls much of the North. Many countries, including the United States, have labeled the LTTE a terrorist organization. Among other tactics, the LTTE invented suicide bombing. Nonetheless, the United States wants to foster a peaceful resolution of the conflict through the creation of a federal system or at least a devolution of substantial powers from the national government to the provinces.
“Bilingualism would be another step toward peace,” adds Kincaid.
He consulted with many Sinhalese and Tamil officials engaged in efforts to forge a federal or devolutionary resolution to the civil war.
“Federalism, like U.S. federalism, provides constitutional guarantees that powers granted to the provinces cannot be reclaimed unilaterally by the central government,” clarifies Kincaid. By contrast, “devolution transfers powers from the national government to provincial or local governments in the context of a unitary state where powers can be reclaimed by the central government.”
“Unfortunately,” adds Kincaid, “federalism is the “F” word for many Sinhalese because they believe federalism would encourage the Tamils to seek secession from Sri Lanka. Many Sinhalese leaders and Buddhist monks have a sacred unitary vision of Sri Lanka because it has the world’s longest unbroken Buddhist heritage dating back to the second century B.C.”
“The U.S. embassy concluded, therefore, that I should not give public lectures on federalism, but instead, meet one-on-one with leaders,” says Kincaid.
The Republic of Maldives is an archipelago of 26 atolls and nearly 1,192 coral islands, 200 of which are inhabited by the country’s 329,000 people. All Maldivians are officially Sunni Muslims; no other religions are permitted. The legal system is based on Shari’ah and British common law. President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom has governed the country in an authoritarian manner since 1972.
Several years ago, Gayoom initiated a reform agenda to write a new, more democratic constitution, modernize the legal system, and improve rights protections. “Political parties, for example, were legalized for the first time in 2005,” notes Kincaid.
He met with ministers charged with developing a devolution program. He also met with the country’s attorney general and with the chairman of the committee responsible for drafting a new constitution.
“A draft plan for devolving powers and establishing elected local governments for islands and atolls is quite good,” says Kincaid. “However, the Parliament is moving very slowly on reform, and many national officials believe that Maldivians lack a tradition of democracy and an ability to sustain local self-government.”
He also delivered a public lecture entitled, “Empowering People through a Republican Constitution,” which ignited a lively discussion.
“I sought to explain the characteristics of modern democratic, republican constitutions, including principles of human rights and equality,” he says. “For example, there is quite a problem of police beating confessions out of people. I mentioned this specifically during the lecture because there is an attempt to reform the police, and there were about 30 police included in the lecture’s audience.”
“Equality for women is a major issue, too,” adds Kincaid. “Equality has taken on more importance in recent years because Islamic fundamentalism is seeping into Maldives. Young men educated in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia return with these radical ideas. As a result, during the past decade, more women than ever have begun wearing head coverings and other concealing garb, not always voluntarily but because of threats and intimidation from men.”
Kincaid affirms that he met his goals of injecting new ideas and provoking new thought on the key issues addressed during his visit to the two countries. “Providing a comparative perspective from the outside,” he notes, “is always helpful.”
“Some people expected me to come with a draft constitution or federalism plan,” he comments. “But that was not my job, nor am I an expert on these countries. The essence of a republican constitution is that it is crafted by the people themselves, not by an outsider. Likewise, Sri Lankans need to negotiate their own federal or devolutionary resolution to their civil war.”
Experiences working on issues of federalism and local government in other countries have contributed significantly to Kincaid’s teaching. He knowledgably provides his students with comparative perspectives in his Lafayette courses on American federalism and on state and local government.
Kincaid hopes his students will better understand ideas important to the United States from his experiences abroad. For example, he refers to James Madison’s famous analysis in The Federalist of the problem of the “tyranny of the majority” in a democracy.
“Most students,” he says, “have trouble understanding this concept. However, as an illustration, I can explain the disadvantageous position of the Tamils overwhelmed in Sri Lanka by the huge Sinhalese Buddhist majority that can make all the rules by democratically outvoting the Tamil minority. I ask them how they would feel if they were part of the Tamil minority. This helps them understand that majority voting in a democracy can still produce tyranny for a minority.”
Kincaid also wants his students to grasp federalism’s many forms. There are about 25 federal countries in the world, and 39 percent of the world’s peoples live in those federal countries. Federalism also is a key mechanism for accommodating human diversity.
A large portion of Kincaid’s career has been dedicated to furthering federal ideas around the world.
Last fall, for example, Kincaid participated in a conference in Istanbul, Turkey, on “Safeguarding Judicial Independence in a Federal Iraq,” presided over by the chief justice of Iraq’s Supreme Court. As one of five international experts, he helped 35 Iraqi judges, attorneys, and law professors consider how best to achieve judicial independence and structure a court system in a federal Iraq.
Kincaid is senior editor of the Global Dialogue on Federalism, a joint project of the international Forum of Federations and International Association of Centers for Federal Studies (IACFS). One product of the program is a series of scholarly books on comparative federalism. He served as co-editor of the first book, Constitutional Origins, Structure, and Change in Federal Countries, published in 2005. Two other books have been published to date: Distribution of Powers and Responsibilities in Federal Countries (2006) and Legislative Executive and Judicial Governance in Federal Countries (2006).
He was named Distinguished Federalism Scholar in 2001 by the American Political Science Association, recognizing his outstanding contributions to the study of federalism and intergovernmental relations. The association is the major professional society for American political scientists.
President of the IACFS from 1998-2005, Kincaid has lectured and consulted on issues of federalism, intergovernmental relations, constitutionalism, and regional and local governance in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.
He is the author of various works on federalism and intergovernmental relations, served as editor of Publius: The Journal of Federalism from 1981-2005 – a quarterly scholarly journal with a worldwide readership – and editor of a book series, Governments and Politics of the American States.
Kincaid served as executive director of the bipartisan U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations in Washington, D.C., from 1987-94, when he joined the Lafayette faculty. He is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
He is a recipient of the Donald Stone Distinguished Scholar Award from the Section on Intergovernmental Administration and Management of the American Society of Public Administration; coeditor of The Covenant Connection: From Federal Theology to Modern Federalism (2000); coeditor of Competition Among States and Local Governments: Efficiency and Equity in American Federalism (1991); editor of Political Culture, Public Policy and the American States (1982); and author of other scholarly works.
He has also mentored numerous students in EXCEL, honors, and independent study research. David Stamm ’08 (Holland, Pa.), a government and law major, worked with Kincaid while researching the Bush administration’s attention to federalism and the federal relationship with state and local governments. Sandamali Wijeratne ’06 (Mt. Lavinia, Sri Lanka), who graduated with an A.B. with majors in English and international affairs, looked for a federal solution to the strife of her native land with Kincaid as her honors thesis advisor.