During the past fifteen years, I have moved from a concern
with one federal system, that of the United States of Amer-
ica, to a consideration of the comparative dimensions of
federal systems. My own curiosity led me into this explora-
tion to discern the extent to which the American system was
special, unique, and different, as "everybody" always says it
is, and the extent to which it is like other federal systems.
My goal was to develop more sophisticated questions of
comparison than the simple one that is perhaps the founda-
tion of curiosity about all things political.

To my great pleasure, I discovered that there was a place
in my own scheme of things for pursuing these lines of
inquiry. I also discovered after reading through the field
that, although one could learn a great deal from what had
been written already, questions still remained unanswered.
This book is a summation and reflection of what I have
learned to date. In addition, it is designed to suggest an
agenda of questions that have occurred to me as being of
particular importance for investigation or, perhaps more
accurately, for further investigation.

If this book has any purpose beyond the conveyance of
the joy of the exploration, it is to demonstrate that federal-
ism offers a way to approach political phenomena in its own
right and is not to be subsumed within other models of
political inquiry. If the federalist way has a particular intel-
lectual virtue, it is because, for students of federalism, every
good theoretical question must have a practical dimension

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