sition from the modern to the postmodern epochs, the
federal idea is resurfacing as a significant political force just
as it did in the transition from the late medieval to the mod-
ern epoch, which took place from the sixteenth to the eigh-
teenth centuries. ¹

Federalism is resurfacing as a political force because it
serves well the principle that there are no simple majorities
or minorities but that all majorities are compounded of
congeries of groups, and the corollary principle of minority
rights, which not only protects the possibility for minor-
ities to preserve themselves but forces majorities to be
compound rather than artificially simple. It serves those
principles by emphasizing the consensual basis of the polity
and the importance of liberty in the constitution and main-
tenance of democratic republics. Both principles are especially
important in an increasingly complex and interdependent
world, where people and peoples must live together
whether they like it or not and even aspire to do so demo-
cratically. Hence it is not surprising that peoples and states
throughout the world are looking for federal solutions to
the problems of political integration within a democratic
framework.

Since its beginnings, political science has identified three
basic ways in which polities come into existence: conquest
(force, in the words of Federalist No. 1), organic develop-
ment (for the Federalist, accident), and covenant (choice).
These questions of origins are not abstract; the mode of
founding of a polity does much to determine the framework
for its subsequent political life.

Conquest can be understood to include not only its most

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