ABSTRACT
When I received the honour to be invited to participate in this book and celebrate the contribution Michael Burgess has made to the study of federalism and federation, the topic I was proposed to write on was ‘federalism as ideology’. The goal was very challenging as the two terms ‘federalism’ and ‘ideology’ are both considered as elusive in the field of political science, referring to a multiplicity of interpretations. Therefore, they are often contested as concepts, as there is no agreed definition about these terms.
