Bulletin n. 2/2016
December 2016
INDICE
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
  • Jahn Egbert
    Federalism as a Way to Integrate or to Disintegrate States Comments
    in Federalist Debate (The) , Year XXIX, Number 2, July 2016 ,  2016
    Federalism as a way of uniting different states into a supra-state The concept of federalization is in theory first of all connected with the idea of peace, but also with common economic interests and attempts to preserve different regional peculiarities in a state. But in reality the rise of federalism is very often connected with the experience of war and the threat of war by external enemies of the uniting states. Thus, the first modern federation was created after the war of thirteen confederated American states against the British Empire in 1789, with the perception that the United States of America could face in future the aggression of European colonial powers. The confederation and later the federation of the small Swiss states in 1848 was also based on the central motivation to defend their common liberal and constitutional freedoms against potential external enemies, while keeping the peculiar characteristics and interests of the uniting states. Although the unification of Germany in 1871 was connected with the imperial interests of Prussia too, it was first of all motivated by a common interest of the uniting states and princes of most members of the German Confederation of 1815, which wanted to preserve the essence of their traditional regional characteristics and to defend themselves against external threats. Differently from temporary military alliances, federalism has predominantly defensive military functions.
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