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Modern federal thought emerges in the wake of the Westphalian State system. In an attempt to make sense of the “Unions of States” that existed in the seventeenth century, classic international law conceives them in treaty terms. Federal Unions are based on a foedus – an international treaty – that safeguards the sovereignty of its Member States. The emergence of the United States of America at the end of the eighteenth-century triggers the greatest semantic revolution in the history the federal principle. Federalism comes to be identified with a mixed structure between international and national organisation. When this second tradition crossed the Atlantic, Europe’s obsession with indivisible sovereignty pressed the novel ideas into a third format – the national tradition of federalism. This Chapter analyses the European Union in light of these federal traditions. In particular, it explores the analytical potential of the American federal tradition for understanding the he European Union; and examines three constitutional denials of the European federal tradition.

Renaissance Europeans were “certain” that they had reached the pinnacle of human endeavor. Religion, culture, art, society, and behavior were elements that differed from Europe to America. The motivations of European missionaries involved the attempt to instill those elements into Native American societies. Spanish missionaries were aided by the Union of Church and State.

This chapter examines the longevity of the union state in Scotland. The Anglo-Scots union has thrived on the strength of a great range of relationships and institutions, spreading its roots and its liabilities widely and intricately. It has, in its time, successfully attached Scottish patriotism to the broader British and union cause. It has provided a framework within which an effective and lasting British identity has emerged. The union has survived individual blows of devastating proportions: epically bloody wars, economic freefall, and the dissolution of empire. This survival and longevity is ultimately to be explained by the diversity of its support.

This chapter examines the longevity of the union state in Ireland. It emphasizes the malleability of the union, as well as some of the cultural means by which Britishness was insinuated into 19th-century Ireland. One further, critical, aspect of the argument has been that some of the factors, agencies, and institutions which sustained the union in contemporary Scotland operated, albeit in a much weakened manner, in Ireland. These distinctions were grounded partly in the fact that, while Scotland and Ireland shared an experience of union, this joint constitutional condition masked distinctive national experiences not only of England but also of the British Empire. The longevity of the Irish union can also be explained in terms of military and police action. Ireland was permanently garrisoned by British soldiers, and by the armed policemen of the Irish or (after 1867) ‘Royal Irish’ Constabulary. Ireland was ultimately bound to the union, not only by complex social, cultural, and economic ties, but also by the threat, and sometimes the reality, of force.

This chapter discusses the spiritual, economic, and imperial dimensions to union, which illustrates the broader contours of the distinction between the Scots and Irish experiences. It examines the factors behind the longevity of the Scottish and Irish unions. For the Scots, the union was sufficiently capacious and flexible to allow the flourishing of distinctive Scottish institutions and patriotic sentiments. For the Irish, the union permitted the survival of a range of distinctive Irish institutions, although the problem was that for most of the 19th century these remained under the control of the Ascendancy interest, and thus did not function as a means of reconciling the national sentiments of the majority population to the union state. The Irish union failed because it could neither permanently accommodate nor defuse a distinctive Irish national sentiment. The pathology of Scottish failure appears to be somewhat different. The Scots union has survived thus far because it has, in fact, been able to contain and represent much Scottish national feeling.

The aftermath of World War I sees the granting of suffrage to women (by the narrowest of margins). The Great Depression makes these deficiencies dramatically clear. The New Deal is an attempt by non- or semi-socialist forces in America to deal with the weaknesses of the American state, now that America had grown into the major industrial power. The forces behind Roosevelt soon split into two main factions. Roosevelt’s 1944 State of the Union Message lays out a new bill of rights that is strongly of the Wallace vision. Wallace is Vice-President until 1944 when he is replaced by Harry Truman. Truman is much less open to co-existence with the Soviets. The USSR is increasingly aggressive in Western Europe – the Cold War is on the doorstep and enters with the publication of George Kennan’s famous ‘Long Telegram’ advocating a policy of containment. Containment is in turn made cheaper by the development of atomic weapons and delivery systems that would have to be in flying range of the USSR. Domestically the fear of Communism leads to a vast shrinking of the political spectrum deemed legitimate.

This chapter talks about Sir Ivor Jennings, who observed in the context of decolonization in the 1950s that one must first decide who are the people before one can decide how the people are to govern themselves. It proposes a constitutional renewal project that must recognize the United Kingdom as a complex 'Union state' made up of distinct nations. It also describes the United Kingdom as a messy amalgam of two kingdoms, a principality, and a dismembered province that were forged together by civil wars, bribery, and dynastic wrangling. The chapter looks at the geographical, cultural, historical, and demographic complexity of the polity being constituted that will determine much of its constitutional architecture even when fairly standard Westminster Model constitutionalism is applied. It illustrates India and Bangladesh, two countries whose constitutions are thoroughly Westminster influenced but show different design because of the demands of context.

This chapter discusses the developments of international policing in Europe, focusing particularly on German police institutions. It shows how police institutions undergo crucial changes in terms of bureaucratization and professionalization from the mid-19th century onwards. It highlights the Police Union of German states, an international police organization established in 1851, which may count as one of the first multilateral international police organizations in modern times. It also examines the cause and course of the internationalization of the police function following the revolutionary year of 1848 and describes how the socio-political conditions influenced international policing.

Collective action of teachers and their unions is assumed to be a powerful weapon, amongst the most formidable opponents of school reforms. The analytical literature on policy reforms considers them as classic examples of self-interested actors, who work together only to protect their vested interests and demand mainly higher wages. However, the empirical evidence on state-teacher relationships, and how unions have acted during the course of reform implementation in Andhra and Bihar, is counterintuitive. Andhra has a very competitive and vibrant presence of a number of teacher unions, with units at the state and district level. The State acted politically in negotiating with the largest Panchayati Raj Teachers Union, whose main demand was for government status, not higher wages. In the process, state gained the support of teachers for implementing new policies. Collaborative strategies were helpful for unions as well (in gaining the allegiance of existing members) and this was a disincentive to colliding with the state. Bihar was a contrast with one union the Bihar Rajya Prathmik Shikshak Sangh holding monopoly control, and disinterested in negotiating with the state on teacher issues.

The central argument of this book is that devolved government was the culmination of processes that had evolved over many decades but devolution was never inevitable. The original different unions have been important in the development of the UK's territorial politics but so too have been other forces. Social and economic pressures gave rise to different conceptions of what the state at the centre should do, how much it should intervene in society and the economy, and this had consequences for its territorial constitution and issues of territorial management. The greatest problem with the idea of the UK as a union state is that it focuses exclusively on only some or even one of the unions which created the state. If the unitary state understanding of the UK was inadequate because it only described the English polity, the union state understanding is inadequate because it ignores England and Wales.

This chapter examines former U.S. President Gerald Ford's 1975 State of the Union Address. In this speech, Ford first introduced his new energy program, then explained his plan to fight unemployment. He also described a $16 billion tax cut proposal and promised to return quickly to the economy the new revenues from energy conservation taxes, totalling $30 billion. This chapter also discusses the reaction of the Democratic members of Congress to Ford's speech and his proposed economic policy.

Continuing the examination of the contextual constraints that would bind Scottish constitution-makers in the event of independence, this chapter discusses the existing political and legal institutions of Scotland and their development from the beginnings of the Scottish national movement to 2016. It examines the emergence of distinctly Scottish constitutional ideas and institutions, from the legacy of the pre-Union Scottish kingdom, through the years of the ‘Union-state’ prior to devolution, to the design and operation of devolved bodies. It also examines responses by the Scottish national movement – both devolutionists and supporters of independence – to developments in British politics, especially the reaction against the winner-take-all and executive-dominated politics associated with the period from 1979 to 1997. The chapter concludes the first half of the book by summarising the basic conditions and requirements of a viable and acceptable constitution for Scotland in the event of independence.

The chapter develops an argument in favour of an interpretation of the European Union (EU) as a compound union. To do that, it will confront the main interpretations of the Union that have accompanied its development, that is the economic community’s view and the two rival political interpretations of the EU as an intergovernmental or supranational organization. The euro crisis has highlighted the difficulty, if not impossibility, of keeping those different visions of the EU within the same project. The euro crisis has brought to the surface the existence of more than one Union, none of them able to give a coherent perspective of development to the EU. From this analysis, the chapter elaborates a proposal for setting up a compound union, based on the euro area member states and structured around an original model of separation of powers.

Between 1976 and 1980, Mamardashvili lectured at the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow—the oldest and most prestigious film school in the Soviet Union. A common thread among the lectures he delivered there, and all his philosophical work, was his emphasis on the problem of consciousness and its role in the existential, transcendental, and moral lives of human beings. This chapter looks at the earliest direct cinematic nod to Mamardashvili, Sokurov’s short film Demoted, within the broader narrative of Mamardashvili’s philosophy of consciousness and the political discourse of the late Soviet period. I show how Demoted can serve as a cinematic portrait of Mamardashvili’s paradoxical, but ultimately celebratory, view of human consciousness experience and the struggles that being human entails. The structure of this chapter serves as a model for the remaining chapters, in which I read one or more films side-by-side an idea that was important to Mamardashvili’s philosophical project.

The governor is the ‘linchpin of the constitutional apparatus of the state’, reported the Sarkaria Commission in 1988. His role ‘has emerged as one of the key issues in Union–State relations’. India's experience with ‘governors’ was millenia-old. To keep the governor functioning constitutionally, as defined by the Supreme Court, three approaches were recommended. The first of these approaches had to do with the appointment of the governor, the second with his security of tenure, and the third with prohibiting government-offered inducements that might prejudice the governor's behaviour in favour of the central government. This chapter describes gubernatorial independence, the discretionary authority of the governor, and the reservation of bills.

This chapter details the changes in mandate rhetoric. Between the presidencies of Herbert Hoover and Barack Obama, presidential mandate rhetoric has changed in frequency, context, and content. When presidents did refer to election results, they invoked broad issues and, in many cases, presented the president as a national trustee. Indeed, the contexts chosen for mandate rhetoric have expanded beyond inaugural and State of the Union addresses, with mandate references appearing in a steady percentage of news conferences, minor addresses, and remarks to members of the executive branch. A transformation in the content of mandate rhetoric has also occurred, with more efforts to present the president as a “delegate” of the people and more emphasis on specific policies and ideological themes.

In the new context after Independence, the most urgent problems before the governments of India and Punjab were rehabilitation, the language issue, and integration of the princely states. Rehabilitation created Hindu majority in the province, with Sikh majority in six districts. The Sachar Formula to solve the language issue enabled the Arya Samaj leaders of the Punjabi region to exercise their preference for Hindi over Punjabi as the medium of education. Sardar Patel considered various possibilities and decided to form the Patiala and the East Punjab States Union (Pepsu). The caretaker government formed under Gian Singh Rarewala kept the Akalis out. Article 371 of the Constitution of India enabled Sardar Patel to intervene in the affairs of the Pepsu more effectively than in the affairs of the Punjab.

Chapter Two begins to connect our theory with practice, testing our contentions that over roughly the last five decades our elected officials have advanced a ubiquitous and open-ended notion of the heroic figure. In particular, we consider the incidence and content of presidential and congressional citations of heroes in both high-profile and more “workaday” political speeches, and we try to account for historical patterns in this usage.