Federalismo plurinacionaluna teoría política normativa

Resumo

The author maintains that, despite studies of an empirical-positive kind having made enormous contributions over recent years to the understanding of federal systems and to the effects of their structures on aspects of political and social life, these contributions neither exhaust nor in themselves resolve the need for a substantial regulatory theory. For example, the question of the stability of federal systems, inherent to the empirical-positive theory, does not intrinsically resolve the other theory referring to the justice of political- territorial organisation in complex societies. In this sense, the article is organised into four sections and a range of conclusions. The first section reflects on the important regulatory component that, explicitly or implicitly, is the foundation and structure of empirical research; the theoretical bases inherent to regulatory theory are decisive in the formulation of questions, hypotheses and evaluations concerning the operation of federal systems. The second section discusses the theoretic silence, the invisibility of the federal principle in the canon of contemporary liberal regulatory theory, focussing the issue on the contribution made by John Rawls. The third section ques- tions the assumption that pactism, the basis of federalist ideas, need neces- sarily become a contractualist formulation of federalism. The fourth section analyses the nature of the common links necessary to a state of states and, with this in mind, highlights the need to reintroduce, though duly reformulated, a certain idea of nation into the debate.