Federalism in a Post-Modern World

Abstract

[extract] Its [federalism's] popularity has been described as representing 'a paradigm shift of major proportions from a world of states modelled after the ideal of the nationstate … to a world of diminished state sovereignty and increased interstate linkages of a constitutionalized federal character'. This paper is concerned with this new interest in federalism, both as a theoretical understanding and as a (re)structuring principle for nations and groups of nations as divergent as Afghanistan, Iraq, the European Union, and the Carribean Community of the former West Indies. Federalism in this context is used in its widest sense to include con-federal structures for groups of nations and federal constitutions for single nations. This paper is a survey of many of these developments in federalism.