陈独秀国家统一思想述论

陈独秀的国家统一观经历了前后截然不同的两大阶段.第一阶段,他主张国民党、进步党、北洋官僚三大势力平分政权,实行联邦制以结束国家的分裂状态.这一时期陈独秀对国家统一问题的认识是模糊的、肤浅的乃至于错误的.第二阶段,陈独秀的国家统一观发生了质的变化,提出了通过人民革命方式,打倒帝国主义与军阀,最终建立中华联邦共和国等系列观点,从而构成了关于国家统一的完整的思想体系.陈独秀的国家统一观虽存在若干失误,但与同时代人比较,仍不失为最激进、最彻底、最可行的国家统一观.     

From laissez-faire to supranational planning: the economic debate within Federal Union (1938–1945)

This article focuses on the early years of Federal Union (FU), the leading British federalist association created in 1938. It sets out to demonstrate that FU members heavily disagreed about the economic powers of the future Federation and that these divisions weakened the appeal of the federalist cause. Archival evidence suggests the organisation shifted from economic neutrality, favoured by allegiance to nineteenth-century liberalism, which emphasized the benefits of free trade while keeping a minimum of centralized force in order to prevent interstate rivalries from boiling over into war, to a radical advocacy of supranational planning, aimed at enforcing social rights and welfare entitlements granted to all the citizens of the member-states. This swing to the Left had several implications, including abandoning the prospect of an Anglo-American union, developing a more sympathetic attitude towards the Soviet system, and breaking ties with influential members of the British establishment who had initially lent support to FU, such as Lionel Curtis and William Beveridge. By pointing at the tension between the models of ‘Federation Pure and Simple’ and ‘Federation Plus’, this article also highlights the supple and muddled nature of federalism as an ideology.     

‘The dearest sacrifice’: Catharine Maria Sedgwick and the Celibate Life

Catharine Maria Sedgwick, America’s most respected and popular female novelist of the early nineteenth century, never married. Yet while she chose a life of celibacy, most scholars have argued that her life represented ‘a deviation’ from the more conventional women’s roles she prescribed in her fiction. This article places Sedgwick’s marital decision within the context of several converging influences – her family history, her Federalist upbringing, and most important, her conversion to Unitarianism. Read through the lens of the complementary religious and social principles of Unitarianism and Federalism, Sedgwick’s novels reveal a persistent exploration of several themes – the ability to realize and advance truth, the centrality of character and moral cultivation, and the obligation to serve one’s community. Sedgwick’s exploration of these themes illuminates her choice of celibacy, and her conclusions contain a radical commentary on the appropriateness of marriage for women.     

The Continuing Transformation of Italian Politics and the Contradictory Fortunes of the Lega Nord

There has been considerable academic debate about the transition in Italian politics, which began in the early 1990s and has continued ever since. The most significant recent milestone in this transition has been the May 2001 general election and this article focuses upon one important outcome of the election - the sharp electoral decline of the Northern League. The League has been one of the principal forces of change in Italian politics, so its decline needs to be fully understood. Even though its support has declined considerably, the League is part of Berlusconi's government and therefore, somewhat paradoxically, it remains a potentially important force, raising questions about the direction in which the Italian transition is heading.     

Debating federal Europe in the British Parliament,c. 1940–49

Federalism, or the fear of it, worked as a catalyst in the British pre-referendum debate on Brexit in June 2016. In this paper, we focus on the pre-European integration context and ask what kind of an alternative federalism was seen to afford in British politics during and after the Second World War. We limit our discussion to parliamentary debates, which have only rarely been used as primary sources for studying European integration history. The British Parliament was one of the key political arenas for debates on foreign policy, not just in terms of informing the party lines but also guiding the public discussion. In the early part of the 1940s, the British federalist movement was able to generate political debate on the issue and gain the attention of many leading politicians. We argue that the approach to the use of the concept was politically charged but remained open to various context-based interpretations, which did not eventually lead to any concrete proposals. During the latter part of the 1940s, the majority of British MPs were open to different ways of creating unity in Europe. The emphasis on national sovereignty, however, continued. As a result ‘federalism’, attached to structures for unity, gave way to more pragmatic political solutions.     

“The Glorified Municipality”: State formation and the urban process in North America

This article revisits the debate over whether and to what extent the cities of the United States and Canada can be understood as a common ‘North American city’ by reconsidering the role of the their common federal system of government. Drawing on a Marxist theory of the capitalist state and the municipal histories of New York State and the Province of Ontario, the article traces the institutions and patterns of urbanization in the two countries to a dialectic of political conflict between the sub-national states and the industrializing cities, conditioned by federal divisions of sovereignty and grounded in the expanding social property relations of capital. The final section connects this dialectic to historically new conditions for the expanded reproduction of capital, specifically in the constitution of land as a commodity form. It also speculates briefly on the implications of this analysis for a more spatially informed theory of the capitalist state.     

Federalism,constitutional recognition and Indigenous Peoples: how a new identity-based state can be established in Australia

ABSTRACT

The debate on constitutional recognition of Indigenous Peoples in Australia has highlighted the desire for meaningful responses to Indigenous Peoples’ claims to sovereignty and self-determination. One potential response is to apply federal principles and establish a new state, or states, for Indigenous Peoples in Australia. This proposal has been most prominently put by Tasmanian Aboriginal leader Michael Mansell. Others have followed. However, (at least) one fundamental problem with this federal idea has not been properly addressed, namely the dispersal and limited geographical concentration of Indigenous people in Australia. This paper asks whether and how federalism can be used to institutionalise the shared and self-rule of widely dispersed minorities, or more specifically, Indigenous Peoples in the settler-majority country of Australia. It demonstrates that a non-territorial approach can be applied to federalism in Australia, and that it may form one possible response to the Uluru Statement from the Heart.