Global federalism is a political theory affirming the division of powers between two or more institutional levels of government: the central global power and the powers of federate communities. In organizing political power on several levels, global federalism benefits from the advantages of both universalism and localism, in that it permits applying the principle of self-government (thus preserving the identity of the units) to a plurality of centers of independent power, consistently and democratically coordinated. Every citizen is subsequently subject to two powers (dual loyalty) without this implying the renunciation of the principle of “uniqueness of decision” thanks to the mechanism of subsidiarity. Rejecting the traditional model of double indirect representation through states’ representatives, federalism proposes a democratic rather than diplomatic union of states, according to which all political representatives are directly elected to a law-making assembly by the people,...
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Marchetti, R. (2011). Global Federalism. In: Chatterjee, D.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Justice. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9160-5_82
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