Comparative Federalism and Its Proposition to Operationalize the Concept of Federalization across United States of America and European Union

연방주의 비교 연구를 토대로 한 연방주의화의 조작적 정의: 미합중국과 유럽연합 사례를 중심으로

The United States of America is privileged in that social stratification is not directly linked to the division of powers. Nonetheless, America endured the devastating Civil War only to consolidate her national identity when a nation was not defined. In fact, state governments preexisted as a sovereign long before the federal government came into existence as a national government. As a consequence, intergovernmental relations have persistently been contested long after the Civil War ended. In contrast, the European Union was founded on the political will to establish regional integration such that her member states would never repeat the bloodshed in catastrophic wars. Since the principle of subsidiarity precipitated political endeavor in regional integration, the EU developed into a bifurcated system of transnational and international organizations. In this paper, I evaluate the US and the EU by applying the perspective of federalism in which separation and integration are perennially at tension.