Running parallel to Wilson’s initiative in the United States, a few intellectuals, politicians and activists in the Old Continent, whose bodies and minds still suffered the consequences of war, were starting to conceive a different configuration of Europe, one that would put into question the centrality of nation-states and their borders. They were the pioneers of contemporary European regionification (Van Langenhove 2011, 67).

The rise of regionification

Even though heavily influenced by French exceptionalism (Imbert 1989), the writer Jules Romaines imagined common economic institutions in Europe alongside with a European civil society. His ideas were shared by the French Prime Minister Joseph Caillaux, who even pushed for a single currency (Pasture 2015, 104). In their book European Federation or League of Nations?, published in 1918, the Italian economist Attilio Cabiati and the entrepreneur Giovanni Agnelli argued in favour of a European federation with legislative, executive and judicial powers (Ibid, 102). Following a similar line, the German pacifist and satirical author Kurt Tucholsky advocated for the United States of Europe (King 2001, 169) and criticized the intergovernmental structure of the LoN, that made the organization weak and ineffective against international crises.

Indeed, within Europeanist circles many voices raised in favour of the League’s reform and more precisely of its decentralization, so that it would shift its focus from the global level to a regional one. We could refer to this approach as “open regionalism”, which considered the LoN complementary to the deepening of regional integration (Richards 2012, 234).

However, demands of European unity did not come solely from pacifists and internationalists, but attracted attention from other areas of the political spectrum as well. Some conservatives and reactionaries made the case for a united Europe out of concern that Europeans and their colonies would lose their privileged centrality on the world stage in favour of the emerging powers such as US, Japan, USSR (Pasture 2015, 106)

These selected examples show that a certain willingness to shape a new regional community was already present in most of Western Europe decades before the first bricks of the European Union were laid. However, these sentiments were met with strong scepticism by policymakers and hardly attracted any support from common citizens.

The liberal internationalist underpinnings were targeted with harsh criticism especially by the classical realist school, which conceived the international system as inherently anarchic and state-dominated;. The absence of a global government with the monopoly of violence, according to them, left the international arena at the mercy of states and their pursuit of self-interest. Liberal internationalism would later be renamed “idealism” by classical realist scholars because of its prescriptive, rather than descriptive nature: internationalists dedicated much time to explain how the world should be, but not much to enucleate the causes of war and power politics (Carr 1939).

Kalergi: being European in the interwar period

It was the undertakings of Count Richard Von Caudenhove-Kalergi that left the mark of pan-Europeanism on the interwar period. Son of an Austro-Hungarian diplomat and a Japanese noble-woman, he grew up in a cosmopolitan environment that would mark his future self. His thought, sincerely pacifist as well as proudly conservative and aristocratic, can be acknowledged as a synthesis of the many integrationist voices raised in that period.

In the book Pan-Europa, published in 1923, he addressed the disunity of Europe in a world by that time grounded on regional blocs. He referred to the Soviet Union and the United States as military and financial dictatorships respectively, to which Europe had to represent an alternative. The third threat was to be found within Europe, and that was the perennial Franco-German rivalry. With a proposal that sounds prophetic today, he suggested to entrust a Pan-European Coal and Steel Community with the management of French and German resources (Prettenthaler-Ziegerhofer 2012, 92). However, Europe’s rationale to create a cohesive bloc was not only determined by external and internal threats; indeed, he conceived arts, science and the common Christian-Hellenic roots as potentially unifying factors (ibid, 97).

While Kalergi’s concept of united Europe was rather similar to those introduced by contemporary intellectuals, his aristocratic origins granted him access to a plethora of high-ranking contacts among European political élites that he employed to gather consensus around the idea. Throughout the interwar years and beyond, he committed with perseverance to the pursuit of peace and convinced notable personalities that the attempt to unite the continent in order to avoid another vicious conflict was worth of consideration.

Following the publication of the book, Kalergi set up the Pan-European Movement with the aim to popularize the program and pressure policymakers; the extent of his influence is represented by the Briand Plan. In 1929, following heavy persuasion from Kalergi, the French President put forward the idea of a “European federation” at the ninth Congress of the LoN after having previously discussed the issue with the German president Gustav Stresemann, who had agreed even though with less enthusiasm.

However, Britain’s opposition and Stresemann’s sudden death delivered a fatal blow to Briand’s plan (Stirk 1996, 37). Later on, Hitler’s rise to power endangered the very existence of the Pan-European movement, which eventually ended up being outlawed by the Nazi regime (ibid, 99). Like some of the personalities previously mentioned, Kalergi was initially hopeful that the LoN would help re-establish international peace, but as events unfolded – the 1936 Italian invasion of Abyssinia, for instance – he became dominated by a sense of frustration and disappointment.  Nationalism, indeed, had come to rule once again the European political scene, leaving no space to grand designs of revolutionary stamp.

Pan-Europeanism and regional awareness       

The idea of Pan-Europeanism can be analyzed more in dept through the theories of regionalism. Hurrell’s theoretical perspectives, in particular, can help shed light on the reasons that triggered integrationist activism and on the obstacles encountered on its way towards actual regionalization. Two levels of analysis strike as most useful in this context: the systemic and regional.

Systemic level

For what concerns systemic theories, neorealism is of little help in understanding the emergence of early pan-Europeanism but provides a rather satisfactory explanation on why it failed in its endeavour. While Kalergi feared that Europe would find itself unprepared in case of a Soviet invasion, there was no meaningful geopolitical pressure exerted by outside powers that would push European countries together during the interwar years. These, instead, were too busy at keeping Germany at bay, while the US were not considered competitors but generous allies (see the Young plan).

Constructivism stresses the importance of ideas, values and other non-material factors in international relations; Kalergi and other conservative Europeans saw in bolshevism a sword of Damocles hanging over Europe. But as long as Nazi Germany kept threatening its neighbours, only a few were paying attention to the propagation of the communist ideology from the East.

In summary, the fragmentation of Europe was indeed perceived by some as problematic in a global context where the Old Continent was being outpaced by new geopolitical powers – the two dictatorships, in Kalergi’s words – incubating dangerous ideologies. However these feelings were not widespread at all as the German Question monopolized the minds of European policymakers.

Regional level

The regional level of analysis offers more valuable insights on early Pan-Europeanism as it investigates intra-regional dynamics rather than outside-in global pressures (Hurrell 1995, 58), whose extent was at the time limited. A constructivist reading would focus on the role of ideas behind Pan-Europeanism and the mechanism of élite socialization conceived to transform the new imagined community (Anderson 1983) into something concrete.

Pacifists identified the nationalist ideology as a source of major concern for the stability of the continent. Indeed, inter-state hostilities had produced countless deaths in Europe’s battlefields only a few years before the Pan-European Movement was set up. Consequently, many feared that the heavy toll imposed on Germany with the Treaty of Versailles (1919) could revive negative sentiments and drive Europe towards another destructive war.

Kalergi devised a stepped process that would embed European countries into a supranational framework thus preventing them to wage war against each other. First a Pan-European conference and then a series of arbitrary treaties and a customs union (Stirk 1997, 26) would constitute a regional linkage eventually leading nations to mold reciprocal sentiments of solidarity. The cultural premises of such architecture were to be found in the Christian-Hellenic roots that European countries shared and the consequent “cognitive region” (Amitav 2012, 188) that these elements would potentially inspire.

However, national interests and material factors ended up prevailing over the ideational considerations put on the table. Despite attempts to expand the network, the process mainly involved personalities from European epistemic communities – diplomats, bankers, aristocrats, intellectuals; in fact, Kalergi’s Pan-European project suffered from an elitist, top-down and, to some, anti-socialist nature (ibid, 27) that would ultimately prevent it from reaching the masses and popularize its message. Regional awareness only concerned a small percentage of individuals as common citizens and most of government officials remained attached to the state-centric paradigm inaugurated centuries earlier with the Peace of Westphalia (1648).

The failure of the Briand Plan

The conceiving and failure of the Briand Plan can be better explained from a neorealist and regional perspective. It was strictly related to the interplay between France and Germany and, more in general, to the striving of Western countries to arrange a new balance of power in the continent. The plan was welcomed with mixed feelings by German officials. Some mistrusted Briand and saw in its proposal the creation of an anti-American organization that would overlap with the LoN and entrap Germany in a French dominated framework.

Although Briand spoke of a European Federation, he guaranteed that all the members would have retained full sovereignty. This contrasted with the very definition of federalism, which necessarily entails some kind of sovereignty transfer from the state to the federal level of governance. Ultimately, the Briand Plan can be understood as a tool for France to reassert its control over Germany, which it was progressively losing. This would later be testified in the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance (1935).

Britain also eventually opposed the plan, out of concern that it would interfere with the Kingdom’s transatlantic bonds and damage the cohesion of the empire. Moreover, the political nature of the plan deeply concerned both countries, as such leap forward would have threatened their autonomy (ibid, 37).

Conclusion

A similar dynamic would resurface in the post-WWII period, when Schuman presented his plan. France proposed once again a framework that would keep Germany under strict control. However, a definite contextualization could explain why this time the attempt was crowned with success.

First, the Community envisioned by Schuman was a strictly economic one (Schuman 1950). This setting, as neo-functionalists argue, triggered the spillover effects that would have ultimately led, out of necessity rather than out of idealism, to some form of political union (Söderbaum 2008, 480). Second, the US isolationist foreign policy of the interwar period had come to an end. Americans started challenging the USSR through a policy of containment that also involved pressures toward Western European countries to set up a flourishing economic community.

Lastly, with the Soviet geopolitical influence reaching the heart of Europe, the Christian-Democratic party élites at the time governing in most of Western Europe feared that communism would spread in their countries as well and therefore committed themselves to a regional solution.

Bibliography

An earlier version of this article was originally written for the University of Leiden. 

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How are federations classified?

While some authors (Burgess, 2006) consider federations as a single category, others (Fabbrini 2015) divide federations into two distinct sub-categories, i.e. federal unions and federal States. Federal unions derive from a process of integration (or centralisation, King 1982) amongst constituent units, while federal States come from a process of disintegration within previously centralised states (or decentralisation, King 1982). A third category of scholars (Law, 2013) consider federal unions as not being a subcategory of federations, but an intermediate step between confederations and federations.

Federations boast a variety of different features, depending from different geographic, historical, economic and cultural developments (Friedrich 1969, Burgess 2006). One of the greatest distinctions that we can draw is that between national (or rather, mono-national) federations and multinational federations (Elazar 1987, Watts 2007, Kymlicka 1995).

Kymlicka (1995:10-16) is one scholar who gave a comprehensive definition of those terms. By applying them (Watts, 2007), multinational federations are all those containing more than one single national group, where each group sees itself as separate. Therefore, each one demands various forms of autonomy or self-government, in order to survive as a distinct society, boasting a different culture, language, traditions and institutions.

National federations, on the other hand, contain only one single national group and therefore their territorial constituent units do not follow linguistic or cultural boundaries. Empirically however, national federations have often contained multiple ethnicities themselves. Multiethnic/polyethnic States are those containing distinct cultural groups that do not wish to be recognised as a separate community. Typically, these cultural groups try to make mainstream society more accommodating towards their cultural diversity, while on the other hand accepting to be assimilated to the mainstream cultural group.

Accordingly, Germany, Austria, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, the USA are considered national federations. This is because there is a mainstream, majority cultural group, which has assimilated (or is assimilating) culturally diverse groups. The latter have nevertheless influenced the history, political environment and overall culture of their countries. Differently, countries like Switzerland, Belgium, Bosnia Herzegovina, Ethiopia, Canada, India and Russia are classed as multinational federations, since they recognise linguistic divisions and cultural identities as part of their constitutional framework.

Multinational federations display a higher degree of autonomy than national federations, since, in addition to the core areas of federal self-rule, like policing and tax collection, the constituent units have constitutional tools to preserve their cultural and linguistic identity. In terms of constitutional provisions, this could develop into exclusive competences in the area of schooling and higher education, promotion of linguistic diversity, promotion of the mother tongue abroad, but also, for instance, in policies for integrating migrants into society. Multinational States can hardly be centralised, since the demand for self-rule matches the demand of self-determination by subnational groups.

Conversely, national federations display a higher degree of centralisation than multinational federations. This occurs because the lack of cultural boundaries among internal groups tends to inhibit struggle for autonomy and independence compared multinational models. In a calculation of the degree of centralisation that Requejo made in a publication (2015: 157-176), in a 20-points degree scale, multinational federations displayed on average 15 points, while national federations only 9.625.

For instance, Austria represents a model of a national federation with a very high degree of centralisation. Because of its limited size, the high degree of cultural and linguistic uniformity, and the de facto limited powers of its states, Austria might represent a case of a de facto unitary state (Erk, 2004. Huegelin & Fenna 2006). In fact, despite having a federal constitution, local constitutions just mirror the national one, the party system follows mostly national lines, and the federal Upper House has a limited role in the policy-making process. It appears that Austria, despite being constitutionally a federal country, has a lower degree of decentralisation compared to, for example, a non-federal, but regionalised state like Spain.

What makes a federation united?

The success or failure of a federation depends on different factors. The will of an absolute majority (or at least a strong, consistently powerful, and organised relative majority) is important in determining the survival or the collapse of a federal system. Similarly, common interests and cultural and economic similarities might play a meaningful role in determining whether a federation will thrive. More generally, there should be a common ground that, for pragmatic or ideal reasons, fosters the desire for unity.

When a common national background is missing, other elements might play a significant role. Michael Burgess in his 2012 publication, In Search of the Federal Spirit, made a list of different values and principles that make the existence and the success of a federation possible. It is a moral dimension, encompassing human dignity, liberty, equality, justice, empathy, tolerance, recognition and respect.

From a constitutional point of view, this translate into autonomy, partnership, self-determination, comity, loyalty, unity in diversity, entrenchment and mutuality. This is why multinational federations, as well as mono-national federations, can survive thanks to a form of “civic (or liberal) nationalism”. Under such a model, national features are not shaped by ethnic or cultural elements, but by the rational adoption of a set of civic (or liberal) values on a voluntary basis. Attachment to a set of constitutional values that shape the character of its citizenship – i.e. constitutional patriotism – is also a factor that allows federations to thrive.

Success and survival of a multinational society is therefore down to the prevalence of a federal spirit, that can integrate and combine different national experiences. Should the EU ever become a federation, its success would depend on the ability to combine the principle of “unity in diversity” with some of the traditional characters of sovereign statehood.

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Defining Decentralisation

The definition of decentralisation changes accordingly to different States and constitutional traditions, but generally, decentralisation means the transfer of legislative powers to subnational bodies, as well as fiscal and administrative powers. Sometimes, decentralisation includes all of these three elements, but sometimes not.

Federalism on one hand and devolution/decentralisation on the other are two concepts which are strictly interconnected, but essentially different. Indeed, federalism means that State sovereignty is distributed across different level of government, according to a combination of self-rule of the constituent units, and shared rule through federal institutions. Normally, this process of distribution happens country-wide: all territories are affected by the new framework at the same time.

More importantly federal principles must be legally protected within the constitutional framework, so that, while asserting the unity of the federation, the self-rule of its constituent states is intrinsically part of the federal constitutional framework. A constant feature of federal States is that the Upper Chamber/Senate represent the interest and the opinions of constituent units in the law-making process, therefore they must follow subnational boundaries.

Unlike federalism, devolution is the conferral of powers in some limited areas to subnational parliaments. Despite being democratically legitimate bodies, said parliaments remain legally subordinate to the supremacy of the central parliament. This means that, theoretically, the central parliament can recentralise said powers just following an ordinary constitutional procedure or even by simply issuing a parliamentary act. Shared rule is also very limited or non-existent, so that the territorial units have very limited say in the shaping and implementation of nation-wide policies. Additionally, while federalisation is applied to the whole state, devolution can be applied to only one territory or more territories, but not necessarily all of them.

Ultimately, devolution implies a narrow subset of competencies for devolved entities; more importantly, it doesn’t enjoy the same degree of constitutional protection as constituent units in federalism.

Two Ways To Decentralise

Federalisation and devolution are two different ways to perform decentralisation and manage internal differences. In light of these differences, federal States are those that adopt federalism, while decentralised, regionalised or devolved States are those that adopted some form of devolution. Watts collected all the latter under the definition of decentralised unions (Watts 2007: 16): i.e. unitary states adopting some form of decentralisation without being federal.

The difference in constitutional guarantees and conformity to a framework does not necessarily imply a difference in levels of autonomy. On the contrary, it can happen that a region in a decentralised State has relatively the same or even more autonomy than a constituent unit in a federation. Some scholars for instance agree that, although Spain is not a federal State in a classical term, Catalonia has a degree of autonomy that is somehow comparable to that of constituent units of federal States (Ferran Raquejo, 2017). The same can be argued for Scotland within the UK.

There are at least three cases of devolved/decentralised States in Europe: these are the United Kingdom, Spain and Italy. All three have some common patterns, but very different features. The Netherlands too represents another case of decentralised unitary state, even if the Dutch case will not be explored in depth here.

The United Kingdom

The UK is the quintessential case of a devolved State. The country is the result of the merger of two kingdoms in 1707, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland, leading to the dismissal of the Scottish Parliament and its merger into Westminster. Similarly, the acts of Union of 1800 led to the merger of the Parliament of Ireland into the Parliament of the United Kingdom, a settlement that lasted until Irish independence.

Centuries after this merger, the United Kingdom underwent a process of devolution beginning in the 1990s. In this process, the Scottish Parliament was re-established. In the following years, through a series of acts, the Westminster Parliament conferred a series of fiscal, political and administrative powers, previously the prerogative of Westminster, to Holyrood. After the 2014 independence referendum, and following the report of the Smith Commission, Scotland was given more powers over some fiscal and administrative areas.

Wales underwent a similar process and, after a devolution referendum in 2011, it enjoyed a further increase in competences. Similarly, Northern Ireland enjoys self-rule and devolved powers. The United Kingdom remains a strongly asymmetrical system, since Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland have three different forms of devolution and, unlike the others, England does not have a national parliament. Westminster makes laws for England thanks to an “English Votes for English Laws” procedure. Ultimately, because of the absence of a written constitution, devolution is guaranteed by parliamentary acts only and the ultimate authority rests with the UK Parliament.

Spain

The case of devolution in Spain has sparked considerable debate. In fact, even though some scholars argue that Spain is a de facto federation, others (Gagnon-Keil-Mueller 2015, Requejo 2005, Filippov–Ordeshook-Shvetsova 2004, Griffiths-Neremberg 2002, 2005, Watts 1999, Stepan 1999, Elazar 1991) argue for the opposite: i.e. that it is a devolved system, including many elements of federalism, but not entirely a federal State. Therefore, some define Spain a quasi-federation.

The Spanish Autonomous Communities are not constituent units. Some of the current communities have deep historical roots, others were artificially created after the new constitution came into force. The judicial power is still centralised, and the Senate, unlike Upper Chambers in federal systems, is not linked to the Autonomous Communities; thus, reducing their role in making state-wide policies.

Similarly, on the field of taxation, autonomous communities (with the sole exception of the Basque countries) have limited tax-raising powers, which remain in the hands of the central government, providing for redistributing fiscal resources to the Communities. Again, Autonomous Communities have no official role in the constitutional reform process, which remains mostly in the hands of the central parliament and to State wide referendums. These main elements are the reason why, although Spanish Autonomies display a high degree of agency that is typical of federal States, classifying Spain as a federation is inaccurate: its constitution simply does not reflect it.

Italy

Italy is an asymmetric system combining both elements of federalism and devolution at the same time. The result is that Italy shows traits of being a federal State under development (Palermo, Woelk 2007), stuck between those two different solutions. The federalisation of Italy has been a very long process, but the turning point is represented by the constitutional reform of 2001, amending the 5th Title of the Constitution, and increasing the competences of ordinary regions.

Italy is divided into twenty regions, five of which are designated as Regions with Special Statute (RSS). The remaining fifteen are Regions with Ordinary Statute (ROS). While the statutes of the Autonomous Regions are ranked with the Constitution in the hierarchy of Italian laws, the statute of the other ordinary regions ranks as ordinary law, and therefore subordinate to the Constitution. This disparity makes Italy an asymmetrical political system following two different tracks of decentralisation: the one applied to the RSS, modelled after a federalist paradigm; and the one applied to the other fifteen regions, modelled after a devolved system. It’s a devolutionary, asymmetric federal hybrid system, still in development. (Palermo, Woelk 2017).

In addition to this fundamental element, RSS have both exclusive and residual legislative powers, while ROS only have residual ones. Ordinary regions enjoy limited fiscal autonomy, although their degree of administrative autonomy is relatively high. In fact, while the Special Statute Regions have a constitutional right to their fiscal revenues, the other regions do not, and are subject to State transfers.

Unlike Spain and the United Kingdom, the Italian Senate follows a regional allocation criterion, as stated by Article 57. Nevertheless senators are not elected by regional bodies, and generally do not represent regional or subnational interests, but normally follow national partisan lines. Regional minority parties in Special Statute Regions are an exception to this.

The many attempts to change the nature of the Senate into a House of Regions have so far met with no success. Currently, the Senate isn’t the chamber of local interests and autonomy, but a perfect equivalent in powers and prerogatives as the Chamber of Deputies. The Permanent State and Regions Conference plays that role of forum for the national and regional governments, but it is a consultative body, with no role in the law-making process.

For these reasons, Italy is strongly regionalised but mostly decentralised unitary state, since it lacks the features that most federal States have.

Conclusions

Devolution and federalisation represent two possible paths of distributing powers within a polity. They are conceptually different systems, but hybrid solutions are possible; more, they can both lead to the outcome of boosting and securing local autonomies and manage internal diversities. There is no better or worse option, since the final outcome of both processes very much depends on a series of factors: like, for instance, the different cultural, economic and institutional backgrounds, the way it is introduced and the constitutional framework underlying.

This article is the second of the series “United, But How?”, which aims to illustrate key concepts of federalist theory. For the first episode, click here.

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Both models are Federal Political Systems, i.e. systems consisting of two or more level of governments. Federal systems combine self-rule of the constituent units with shared rule through a common government and a common institutional framework. However, they differ in some key areas.

A Useful Model

Forsyth (1981), King (1982), Elazar (1987), and Watts (2007) gave the following definition of confederation: a Federal Political System, in which the confederal government is no more no less than an agent of its members. In a confederation, the key features of sovereignty, those traditionally linked to the concept of statehood, are exerted by the constituent States, while the confederal authority has a very limited sovereignty, a very limited or indirect democratic legitimacy, and its fiscal revenues, defense and foreign policy essentially rely on its Member States.

Unlike the former, federations are compound polities (Watts, 2007: 10) based on strong constituent units and a strong central government, in which each level of governments has its own democratic legitimacy, its own fiscal resources, and its own legislative and administrative powers. In these systems the traditional features of the State like defense, monetary policy and foreign policy are usually performed by the federal level.

As with all models, the federalism/confederalism dichotomy is a simplification, useful for categorizing the two phenomena but not entirely precise. Reality is more complex and in some instances, federal and confederal elements coexist or have coexisted, especially in the looser models of federation.

Early Federalism

European history is full of experiences of “confederal” unions. The most important case is that of the old, pre-Napoleonic Swiss Confederation, but that was not the only one: the Dutch Republic was another meaningful example of confederation. It is perhaps possible to compare other medieval leagues to these political systems: however, all these cases are very far from the current concept and theory of statehood.

In fact, both Switzerland and the Netherlands were forms of permanent or semi-permanent military alliances, where the constituent units had the possibility to discuss and settle their disputes thanks to some common institutions. However, since the end of the 18^th Century, with the development of the current concept of statehood in the Americas and in Europe, the very ideas of federation and confederation started changing dramatically.

Still at the end of the 19^th century, for some authors (Sigdwick 1903) federalism was just a term to describe those forms of governments and polities that were not unitary states: so that the dichotomy was essentially between unitary state on one hand and federal polity on the other. However, the main difference between the term confederal and federal emerged with the debate between Federalists and Antifederalists in the early years of the USA and the adoption of the US Constitution.

Federalism and Confederalism in the United States

The first form of constitutional document binding the Thirteen Colonies together was called “The Articles of Confederation”, which was no more and no less than an intergovernmental treaty, since the Articles of Confederation was mostly a military alliance, with very loose common institutions. Unlike the “Articles of Confederation”, the US constitution had the purpose to create a state founded on the principles of federalism.

The debate on the new constitution put Hamilton, Madison and Jay, the three traditional supporters of the new federal model, against a long series of critics, later dubbed “the Antifederalists”, who rejected the new federalist proposal and who advocated a different arrangement for the United States and in some cases, they saw the “Articles of Confederation” as a preferable arrangement.

Although now these interventions are now known as the “Antifederalist Papers” in opposition to the Federalist Papers, at the time the authors did not claim to be anti-federalists, on the contrary they accused Hamilton and Madison to support the creation of a national State, while they claimed to defend federalism. So, essentially an argument between federalists supporting two different forms of federal political systems (Burgess, 2006). One was looser, with States as sovereign actors, and the other was an enhanced system in which the federal government and the State governments had different areas of sovereignty. Basically, one was a confederal model, the other a federal polity.

This dichotomy eventually exploded with the American Civil War, when the breakaway states of the South decided to form the “Confederate States of America” adopting a looser form of federalism, in which the rights of the states prevailed and in which the confederate government was much more limited in its competencies. With the Civil War, American political literature first developed the idea that federalism and confederalism were different ideologies, advocating for different polities.

Subsequent Developments

Conclusions were openly stated only after the Civil War. In fact, when declaring their secession, the Southern States claimed that the federal constitution was no more no less than an international agreement. In so doing, they asserted that they had the right to leave the United States just like any European power could abandon or reject an alliance. In the same years in Europe, the Swiss confederation was facing the same struggle. While the Catholic, traditionalist Cantons were looking forward to return to the old pre-Napoleonic confederal model, the protestant and urban cantons advocated the adoption of a form of federalism that combined the Swiss tradition of federalism with the new forms of statehood. Most scholars agree that, from 1848 onwards, Switzerland is to be considered a federation in all but in its official name.

Currently, there are 27 states that completely or mostly match the definition of federation. The United Arab Emirates, on the other hand, are the closest match to definitions of confederalism. In fact, the UAE is a union of monarchies, in which the main constitutional features are exercised by the seven Emirs, and more importantly by the two primary ones: the Eemir of Abu Dhabi, who serves as federal president, and the Emir of Dubai, who servers as Prime Minister. The emirs gather in the Supreme Federal Council, the highest legislative and executive body of the country. The emirs also directly appoint a half of the Federal National Council, the legislative body of the UAE.

Most scholars are still arguing about the nature of the EU. To some extent, many of its key features match the definition of confederalism: the Council appoints the head of the Commission, the budget is very limited and based on Member State contributions, and more generally, Member States are masters of the treaties. However, it is possible to point out that in some areas, the European Union has developed and is developing some features that are already very close to that of a state, i.e. a federation.

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