The Challenges of the Federative Principle in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

The federal principle has been applied to integrate spare polities since the classical days of Roman Empire. It has proved its ability to solve integration problems of legally and politically autonomous communities that, in order to confront mutual challenges and problems, face the necessity to become a new entity without losing their own political and legal identity.

In modern times, the federal integration paradigm was designed and adopted by the United States of America after their independence from Great Britain.

This paper tries to demonstrate that such model can be, abstracting it from its original application to that polity, applied as well to organize political communities other than countries, including supra-state structures, such as European Union or even the global community.