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pablo beramendi Widely regarded as the solution to the problems of enlarging governments, the attractions of federalism seem to never fade away. Discussions about the allocation of power across levels of government have been at the forefront of political analysis since the dawn of modernity. And they continue to be as European democ-racies struggle with the scope of the process of integration, whereas state-building processes are in progress in Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, an increasing share of the world’s population lives under federal rule, making ever more truthful Riker’s old assessment that we live in an age of federalism. Along the way, decentralization of political authority has managed to keep some pedigree as a way of promoting economic prosperity and democratic governance around the world. Yet, under this appearance of unwavering attention, the understanding of the origins and workings of federalism has been subject to profound transformations, ultimately reXecting shifts of similar magnitude in the scholarly approach to the subject. The time when comparative works on federalism were seen as ‘‘few in number and spotty in quality’ ’ (Riker 1964, 157) is long gone. Back in those days, the Weld was primarily made of legal analyses of constitutional designs.1 Based on the premiss that constitutions shape and steer the life of nations, this line of work was pretty blind to the realities of politics. Today’s analyses are anchored on the opposite prior. Consti-tutions, much like business contracts, ‘‘do not spell out the rules and procedures to be followed in every conceivable instance in precise detail’ ’ (Dixit 1997, 20). As