In the U.S., just about any sub-national government of size is involved (constantly it seems) in litigation with other local governments or with the feds. Is this true in other countries? I don’t know if it is only true in other countries with federalist features (which are whom, btw? Germany?) or if is part of the system of government in other nations, too.
Thanks.
In Spain they usually get the central government to do it for them, although we tend to send things to Parliament or to a relevant Ministry rather than sue. The US seems to have a much more suit-prone culture than any other country.
Navarra had long protested about Euskadi’s completely illegal use of our coat of arms as a part of theirs. Finally we called in the lawyers (Navarra won).
Both Navarra and Euskadi have peculiar tax arrangements for historical reasons: we have our own IRSs. For the rest of the country, direct taxes are levied by the central government and doled out as needed; in our case, they’re defined, collected and managed locally; we send our surplus to Madrid. There’s some rules that these taxes can’t be too brutally different from the rest of the country. Every time that Navarra or Euskadi change the tax tables, Madrid sues. Every time, Madrid loses. Keeps 'em lawyers occupied, I guess.
I once went to pay my water bill (in Venezuela, yes, we had to do it in person) and they had no power because they hadn’t paid their electric bill. They were both government run then.
I agree that the U.S. seems to be considerably more litigious in its subgovernment-to-subgovernment (“STS”?) dealings. That probably reflects a number of things: our general willingness as a society to take each other to court, our typical (of course, there are always exceptions) confidence in the courts’ fairness and impartiality, and the absence of as ingrained an “old-boys” system of running things as is found in many other countries.
I seem to recall not long after the Soviet Union fell, the central state-run power company shut off power to a a major government department when it didn’t pay its light bill. Don’t know that they ever went to court over it, though.
In Germany, reasonably often, but my impression is that cities, districts, states and the federal government sue each other much less often than they are sued by citizens (because the issues between governmental entities (like questions of sharing obligations and revenue) are often amenable to be settled by legislation on the state/federal level, while the issues between citizens on the one hand and towns/states/the country on the other hand (like whether you got unjustified conditions on a building permission, or your school test was unfairly graded) usually are specific cases that need litigation.
In the Southwestern United States, lawsuits regarding water rights are nearly common between state governments. *“Whiskey’s for drinkin’ Waters for fightin’!” *
Yes, Australian states take legal action against each other on occasion.