The Making of "Federalism" in Eighteen-century France. Between Reform and Revolution

Federalism is a debated issue in French political culture that has constantly evoked the French Revolution and the struggle between the Girondins and the Jacobins. Our approach mainly focuses on how the federalist idea has emerged in political debates during the eighteenth-century from the Old Regime to the Revolution and on how new semantic spaces gradually appeared. Particular attention will be paid to the contexts and contingencies that connected a family of words referring to the territorial reorganisation of the state to both reform and revolution, and the links in between. We will highlight how this perspective compels us to take into consideration wider issues such as the separation of powers, the idea of republic, the relationship between the legislative and the executive branches of the government, sovereignty and democracy. By means of a semantic analysis we aim to distinguish the phase of the political project from the moment of its manipulation.