ABSTRACT
Federations are not static entities, and as such it is not surprising that some of the most influential students of federalism, including Livingston (1956), Riker (1964) and Elazar (1987), have stressed the evolving nature of federal arrangements. However, as recently argued by the editors of Federal Dynamics (a book on the evolution of federations), ‘there obviously is a shortage of theoretically informed studies on this aspect’ (Benz and Broschek, 2013: 2). Edited by Benz and Broschek, Federal Dynamics constitutes an outstanding attempt to outline some of the key factors accounting for the evolution of federations, such as party systems, ideas and sequences of political development.
