How should political power be divided within and among national peoples? Is the nineteenth-century theory of the sovereign and unitary State still fit for purpose in the twenty-first century? If not, can federalism provide a viable alternative model? This collection looks at federalism from the perspective of constitutional law. Taking the United Kingdom as a case study, Part One tracks the historical evolution of the 'Union' and explores the various expressions of federalism that emerged between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Part Two then assesses the experience of sovereignty-sharing with other nations in the context of international cooperation. Drawing on the expertise of the foremost commentators in their field, The United Kingdom and the Federal Idea provides a timely and reflective evaluation of how constitutional authority is being re-ordered within and beyond the United Kingdom.

The United Kingdom faces with two major federal constitutional debates. The first is about the nations which comprise the British state and hence the division of power between Westminster and regional parliaments of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The second surrounds the United Kingdom and the European Union. This text explores the British engagement with the federal idea from the early 1600s onwards, and sets contemporary discussions in context. In the past four centuries, the British have often looked to the federal idea as a possible solution to problems of the unity of the United Kingdom and of the British Empire. This period has also seen successful adoption of federalism by many countries, including Britain's former colonial possessions. John Kendle examines the break-up of the first British empire and the development of modern federalism. As well as discussing the Anglo-Irish relationship and the United Kingdom's relationship to Europe, the author focuses on other contemporary issues such as the world order, imperial federation and decolonization.

A significant part of the world's population lives under some sort of federal arrangement. And yet, the concepts of federalism and federation remain under-theorised. Federalist theorists have, for the most part, defined their object by opposition to the unitary state. As a result, they have not developed public law theories that capture the specificity of this type of polity. Bringing together contributions from leading public law theorists and intellectual historians, this volume explores the foundations of federalism. It develops novel perspectives on the core problems of traditional federalist theory and charts new departures in federalist theory and federal power-sharing. At a time when we look for more inclusive ways of ordering public life, the volume fills an urgent theoretical and political need.

Challenging orthodox assumptions concerning British federalism, The British Tradition of Federalism offers a unique revisionist critique of Britain's recent constitutional past. The central themes of Empire, Ireland and Europe provide the empirical focus of this volume. Together, they reveal a fundamental continuity of British federal ideas: a single intellectual tradition which spans the last century. By reinstating a neglected dimension of the larger British political tradition, Burgess shows how the continuing relevance of this federal tradition serves as both the source of and inspiration for a wide range of constitutional reform proposals in the 1990s.

Federal Democracies examines the evolution of the relationship between federalism and democracy and features case studies on USA, Russia, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, Canada and the European Union.

Uncovers the transnational movement by Ireland's unionists as they worked to maintain the Union during the Home Rule era. The book explores the political, social, religious, and Scotch-Irish ethnic connections between Irish unionists and the United States as unionists appealed to Americans for support and reacted to Irish nationalism.

Federalism is a very familiar form of government. It characterises the first modern constitution-that of the United States-and has been deployed by constitution-makers to manage large and internally diverse polities at various key stages in the history of the modern state. Despite its pervasiveness in practice, this book argues that federalism has been strangely neglected by constitutional theory. It has tended either to be subsumed within one default account of modern constitutionalism, or it has been treated as an exotic outlier - a sui generis model of the state, rather than a form of constitutional ordering for the state. This neglect is both unsatisfactory in conceptual terms and problematic for constitutional practitioners, obscuring as it does the core meaning, purpose and applicability of federalism as a specific model of constitutionalism with which to organise territorially pluralised and demotically complex states. In fact, the federal contract represents a highly distinctive order of rule which in turn requires a particular, 'territorialised' approach to many of the fundamental concepts with which constitutionalists and political actors operate: constituent power, the nature of sovereignty, subjecthood and citizenship, the relationship between institutions and constitutional authority, patterns of constitutional change and, ultimately, the legitimacy link between constitutionalism and democracy. In rethinking the idea and practice of federalism, this book adopts a root and branch recalibration of the federal contract. It does so by analysing federalism through the conceptual categories that characterise the nature of modern constitutionalism: foundations, authority, subjecthood, purpose, design and dynamics. This approach seeks to explain and in so doing revitalise federalism as a discrete, capacious and adaptable concept of rule that can be deployed imaginatively to facilitate the deep territorial variety that characterises so many states in the 21st century.

Contains the 4th session of the 28th Parliament through the 1st session of the 48th Parliament.

How should political power be divided within and among national peoples? Is the nineteenth-century theory of the sovereign and unitary State still fit for purpose in the twenty-first century? If not, can federalism provide a viable alternative model? This collection looks at federalism from the perspective of constitutional law. Taking the United Kingdom as a case study, Part One tracks the historical evolution of the ‘Union’ and explores the various expressions of federalism that emerged between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Part Two then assesses the experience of sovereignty-sharing with other nations in the context of international cooperation. Drawing on the expertise of the foremost commentators in their field, The United Kingdom and the Federal Idea provides a timely and reflective evaluation of how constitutional authority is being re-ordered within and beyond the United Kingdom.--