IDEA FEDERALISTA. – Under the name of federalist idea, or more properly federalism (from the Latin foedus, alliance), are included the doctrine and political movements intended to promote the grouping of smaller state units within broader organisms, achieving this grouping through the renunciation by the federated units of some of their sovereign powers, with the aim of common defense and the progressive elimination of international disputes.
In its present state, federalism is divided into various currents, each of which offers, up to a certain point, a different formulation of the goal to be achieved and the means to be employed. There is no doubt that federalism is fundamentally directed toward the unitary organization of smaller political groupings; but some understand this purpose primarily as a defensive means for the group, thereby achieving, only indirectly, it is understood, the elimination of international disputes; others, instead, identify the purpose of federalism with the attainment of a single, general international grouping capable of realizing the pacifist ideal. In addition to this diversity of initial positions, federalism is also divided over the means most suitable for achieving federal unity and, in particular, over the extent of the powers to be assigned to the central organs of the federal institution and, correspondingly, over the more or less serious renunciation of sovereign powers by the federated States: thus, historically, federalism has so far assumed two typical forms (the confederation of States and the federal State), differentiated precisely by the more or less extensive sphere of sovereign powers left to the federated States.
Federalism has achieved numerous practical successes; it has been realized in its various forms in the union of the Swiss cantons, in the organization of the Australian and South African territories that were gaining emancipation from European colonization, and in the constitution of the Soviet Socialist Republics. Authoritative politicians who addressed the problem of the independent organization of the German and Italian States in the last century had looked to federalism (v. RISORGIMENTO ITALIANO): in Italy, Gioberti (v.) was in fact a federalist. In the more recent period, and above all after the Second World War, federalist doctrine has been translated into a vigorous political movement concerning the States of Western Europe: it is on this difficult terrain that federalism is now being put to the test; and it cannot be ruled out that the very variety of the motives and solutions inspiring the currents that converge within it may help indicate the most suitable solution for the grouping of political units that are, in certain respects, as different as those of Western Europe.