Federalist Thinking

Federalist Thinking is an attempt to achieve a synthesis among several intellectual contributions in order to reassess the nature of federalism. Professor Lucio Levi points out unobserved relationships among classical thinkers belonging to distant, and generally unrelated, cultural areas. These areas include political and constitutional thinking (from The Federalist Papers to Kenneth Wheare), international relations, philosophy (Immanuel Kant), law, economics (Lionel Robbins and Luigi Einaudi), and history (John R. Seeley and John Fiske). The study also explores the federalist aspect of different political tendencies such as liberalism, democracy, socialism, communism and nationalism (Giuseppe Mazzini). The most recent development of federalism is the trend to become an independent political behavior, represented by towering personalities such as Altiero Spinelli and Albert Einstein, who were among the founders respectively of the movements for European and world unification. A concise and comprehensive account of the development of federalism from its starting point in history to present, this book focuses on disparaging theories and delves into that history.

Lucio Levi teaches Political Science and Comparative Politics at the University of Torino in Italy.