Political confederation
By: CREMER, Jacques
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Contributor(s): PALFREY, Thomas R.
Material type: 
ArticlePublisher: New York, NY : Cambridge Unversity Press, March 1999American Political Science Review 93, 1, p. 69-84Abstract: Episodes of political confederation or the opposite, political dissolution, are widely observed and important phenomena. Yet, the forces underlying the processes of confederation are not well understood. There are many different levels of political units, ranging from towns and villages to states or provinces, to nation-states, to supranational bodies such as the United Nations and the European Union. Generally rules exist that govern both the interaction between units of different levels and the allocation of decision-making authority among them. It is the determination of such rules and the development of a theoretical foundation for studying them that we address in this article. We call this the problem of political confederation.
Episodes of political confederation or the opposite, political dissolution, are widely observed and important phenomena. Yet, the forces underlying the processes of confederation are not well understood. There are many different levels of political units, ranging from towns and villages to states or provinces, to nation-states, to supranational bodies such as the United Nations and the European Union. Generally rules exist that govern both the interaction between units of different levels and the allocation of decision-making authority among them. It is the determination of such rules and the development of a theoretical foundation for studying them that we address in this article. We call this the problem of political confederation.
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