Year LXIV, 2022, Single Issue, Page 87
WORLD FEDERALISM AND ITS ANTINOMIES
The life and cultural vitality of the European Federalist Movement (MFE) were recently well illustrated by the debate on global federalism that unfolded during the MFE’s Vicenza congress and subsequent Ufficio del Dibattito meeting in Genoa. The Proceedings of the latter event, edited by Nicola Vallinoto,[1] confirm the richness of the cultural heritage that exists within the Movement and the great and spontaneous willingness of many federalist militants to engage personally in the development of more advanced visions of federalist culture. The event was animated by speeches and contributions that were anything but monolithic. On the contrary, they highlighted recurrent antinomies, important for the elaboration of federalist culture.
It is to be noted, first of all, that the antinomy-based methodological approach has characterised, and continues to characterise, this debate not only in Italy, but also in Europe and in the federalist world. Indeed, this approach plays a central role in federalist culture, which, through reference to antinomies, rejects and overcomes the ideological monism typical of traditional political cultures. Antinomian ideas can no more be reconciled than can the opposite poles of a battery, which are not only individually indestructible, but also, working together, generators of tension and energy; the problem, therefore, is not to merge them, which would be lethal, but rather to seek a balance, incessantly variable, between them. It is the same method that, moving from theoretical elaboration to political practice, allows federalism to act as a regulator of conflicts: the existence of a large body of philosophical, legal and political literature spares me the need, here, to examine this fundamental methodological approach in more depth.
The first of the antinomies recurring in our recent debate was that between the “process” and the “project”, both geared towards pursuit of world peace in a Kantian sense, with the process leading, through European and world federalism, to the project of a European and global federation. Like converging parallel lines, process and project merge asymptotically in the borderless community of destiny that is humankind, which, through European federation, has the power to ensure peace.
Due to the partiality of the theoretical analysis and to the intervention of historical events, the process and project visions have often intersected. In Europe’s case, as shown by its experience after the Second World War, historical events have made it less utopian to pursue, through the federalist process, the project of a European federation, whose seed was sown with the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), a model to which, in view of the need for institutional revisions of the Community apparatus, we are now turning once again.
As Francesco Rossolillo clearly explained,[2] and as we all repeatedly reiterate, the global dimension of federalism is the very condition for its full realisation, in terms of both values and institutions. Consequently, all federalists, both European and non-European, are ultimately globalists pursuing the federal unification of mankind as a community of destiny. But when it comes to turning theory into strategy, the process-project antinomy returns forcefully to the fore: it is not possible to have two strategic objectives, Rossolillo warns, and the European federation objective remains the primary and binding one for European federalists. It will instead fall to the “continental federal republics”, as he calls them, to foster and bring about world federalism, whose era, in world history, started with the phenomenon we call globalisation. In history, both past and present, only the United States of America, Australia and, in a rudimentary way, the European Union provide tangible examples of the project set within the ongoing process.
But a new international order, based on nation-states, is not to be confused with the order of a world community.[3] As Peccei said in the 1970s, we must accept that the sovereign nation-state is like an old brick: although scarcely usable for the construction of modern buildings, it is what we have to work with today. In other words, the nation-state, being the building block (or functional unit) on which the political structure of the world is based, is something we have to reckon with, even though it is a concept that comes from totally different times. In fact, it dates back to the era of the stagecoach and of absolute dynasties, and arose from the Peace of Westphalia, no less, at the end of the Thirty Years’ War. It is also something that, as we now recognise, does no credit to humankind.
There is another contradiction inherent in the process. On the one hand, there is the seductive idea that evolution of the UN will lead to federalist institutions, thereby allowing world federalism (incorporating the necessary subsidiarity) to emerge through the process of creating governance of globalisation: there already exists some tentative evidence in this sense, for example the fact that it has proved possible to achieve the essentially globally organised production of a vaccine against an actually global pandemic. On the other hand, though, we see the development of regional integrations (i.e., present in different parts of the world) activated by various pro-federation elements specific to the areas concerned. In this latter regard, our debate was enriched by experiential evidence not only from Europe, but also from Latin America and Africa, not to mention experiences from other world regions.
In addition, it should be noted that nature (as we are seeing with the issue of global heating), science and technology (as shown by the digital transformation) are the new political actors of an anthropogenic world that still does not have multipolar institutions equipped to address the relative evolutions. Which is why all areas of evolution — geological, anthropological, environmental, demographic, economic, political — appear to be in a state of permanent transition.
With regard the experience of federation projects in history, there have existed, and still exist, established federal systems in many important countries in the world, but history has also seen federations created and then dissolved, such as those of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, which sadly have now acquired renewed historical significance.
Intersecting the debate was the temporal aspect, namely the question, also antinomic, of serial as opposed to parallel processes (another electromagnetic analogy). Consideration was given to the possibility of revising a consolidated message of European federalism, namely the idea of “uniting Europe to unite the world”; it was suggested that the “or” might be replaced with an “and”, so that the two processes might temporarily be superimposed. In this case, too, the arguments for the two monisms actually neutralise each other in the face of the historical and also militant experience of European and global federalism, whose strategies aim and must aim at two federal projects that are equally important, but certainly different. This difference is confirmed at the level of political action, too: the action of world federalists, being of a functionalist nature, is characterised by a commitment to lobbying strenuously for the achievement of certain goals of an intergovernmental, institutional nature (the establishment of the International Criminal Court, the creation of a Latin American and Caribbean Criminal Court against Transnational Organised Crime, reform of the UN and in particular of its Security Council), while European federalists act in pursuit of a European federation.
In addition to the temporal aspect, the debate also saw frequent discussion, from an institutional perspective, of the question of the creation and abolition of borders. Here, there was no shortage of literary references, ranging from the “Folie des frontières” of the 1930s to the contemporary “Éloge des frontières” by Régis Debray. This immediately led the debate on to the question of citizenship at various geopolitical levels, and thus to that of subsidiarity in all its depth and scope. The idea of multilevel citizenship is increasingly recognised, both in principle and in practice, even though it is often abused. What is actually lacking in the global institutional system is global citizenship, which, as such, is inherent in human beings’ very existence in any time and space, and should not therefore need definition. It is, in other words, the same citizenship that Dante Alighieri envisaged in his celestial cosmos, outside of which there is only hatred and oppression, darkness, fear and ignorance: “In this miraculous and angelic temple, that has for confines only love and light”. In the debate, between discussion of regional integration projects and problems of recognition of citizenship (also examined from the perspective of migration and refugees), another issue was raised: that of European citizenship, a goal painstakingly achieved in the current European Union. This issue first arose immediately after the Second World War with the initial institutional attempts at European integration, the first of which led, in 1949, to the birth of the Council of Europe. The founding design of this institution, inspired by Sir Winston Churchill, was such that it should have led immediately to the United States of Europe; that this failed to happen, however, is due to the actions of the British themselves who, under Macmillan and Attlee, steered the project into intergovernmental territory. Obviously, they did this with the complicity of the other founding members (twelve in number, hence the twelve stars of the European flag). It should be remembered that these included Turkey, which was later deemed not to meet the requirements for joining the Union. The rejection of Turkey was also based on an antinomic logic, in this case religious differences that it was felt could generate neonationalist tendencies and consequences. The Council of Europe, with its Parliamentary Assembly, its intergovernmental Committeeof Ministers, its Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe, and its European Court of Human Rights, had, and still has, the merit of ushering in the most important subsequent Community process. Over time, the Council has expanded to embrace all peoples considered European, from North to South and from East to West, adopting a geopolitical definition of Europe that sees beyond the governments in office at any given time. The 47 peoples of Europe represented in the Council include all the Scandinavian countries and those of western, central and insular Europe; those of the northern shores of the Mediterranean, as well as all the Balkan, Caucasian and Eurasian peoples: Armenians, Georgians, Turkmen, Azeris, Kyrgyzs, Cossacks, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and a considerable proportion of the Kurdish population. Belarus has not yet been granted access to the Council due to the country’s failure to comply with the principles of the rule of law and fundamental freedoms, while Russia has been temporarily suspended for failure to respect these same principles (as Greece once was, during the Regime of the Colonels). All these peoples are European, then, which means that Russia’s aggression against the Ukrainian people casts a disturbing shadow of civil war in Europe. Considerable attention must be paid in contemporary debate to this latter aspect of European current affairs, given its profound geopolitical implications and the resulting harmonic waves that are spreading to the fields of energy, food, climate, security and international relations: all important dimensions that would favour the spread of world federalism.
Finally, it is important to mention the visible and growing presence of economic antinomies that, while not merely bearers of conflict, are nevertheless likely to be resolvable only on a global scale. Briefly, the economics of need and of development are now moving along increasingly and dramatically divergent trajectories, and this applies both at the level of individual nations and globally. Need- and survival-based economics, after seeming less prominent for a time, are back to the fore, and exposing the existence of situations of absolute poverty and relative levels of inequality the like of which the world has probably never seen before; on the other hand, on the development side, we are seeing the emergence of public and private models (illustrated respectively by the football World Cup in Qatar and the astronomical size of some individuals’ fortunes) that are placing some modern areas of development (communications, technologies) beyond the economic and institutional reach of many peoples and governments. Ernesto Rossi’s prophetic warnings on the need to “abolish poverty” (even by law!), like the call of global federalists for a basic subsistence guarantee, today sound like a fierce rebuke also to world federalism, which remains impervious to calls (such as those of Antonio Papisca in his time) for these guarantees of survival to be provided not only to single individuals, but also extended to the poorest states. Similarly, the universal civil service project (often invoked by European federalists), far from emerging as a concrete measure of European and world citizenship, is not even present on political and institutional agendas, even in settings where the current economic and social situation would make it a hugely valuable instrument.
What the occasional glimmers of European federalism and even weaker ones of global federalism show is that the path to follow is complex. It is therefore all the more important to embark on it with determination. In this regard, the need to raise awareness is clearly an urgent one for our civil societies.
Raimondo Cagiano de Azevedo
[1] Federalismo Mondiale, Ufficio del Dibattito del MFE, Genoa 2-3 April 2022, e-book with Creative Commons licence, https://www.mfe.it/port/documenti/doc-mfe/uffici/220402_eBook.pdf.
[2] F. Rossolillo, European Federation and World Federation, The Federalist, 41 n. 2 (1999), p. 76, https://www.thefederalist.eu/site/index.php/en/essays/1947-european-federation-and-world-federation.
[3] L’Europa e il dialogo Nord-Sud, Quaderni Federalisti del CIFE n. 14, Rome 1976, p. 4.
