FEDERALISMO E COMPORTAMENTI FEDERALISTICI

The basic assumption of this contribution is that federalism cannot be reduced to the institutional aspect alone. On the contrary, federal institutions stand up, over time, only if they are underpinned by an autonomous social behaviour that can be identified as true federalist behaviour. In fact, only if there is a kind of split loyalism towards the different institutional levels in which a political community is organised can one speak of federalism. If there is no federal society, there can be no federal statehood, and one cannot stand without the other. From this point of view, the very notion of ‘people’, if understood as an exclusive entity, will probably have to be revised. The socio-historical conditions of the rise of federalism and the reasons for its decline are then examined. Finally, if federalism can be identified as the instrument through which one can think of world unification, it is also true that one must take into account the warnings of Karl Jaspers and, above all, of James Madison’s Federalist Paper No. 51 (“if men were angels, no government would be necessary”). The transition phase to a world federation is just as decisive as the final goal and, from this point of view, the strengthening of existing institutions of multilateral cooperation, and the creation of new ones, is of crucial importance for the establishment of a new world order.