SUMMARY:

In this editorial introduction to the thematic forum “Political Imaginaries at the End of Empire,” Alexander Semyonov, explicates the ambivalently hybrid nature of federalist projects as influential scenarios of the postimperial political order that bridged the seemingly unsurmountable gap between imperial and national principles (with the effect of producing an original form of composite polity). Semyonov also points out problems in the reception of federalism citing the U.S. case, which is often viewed as paradigmatic, but obscures the fact that most of the world population now lives in federations created by the reformatting of formerly imperial spaces. Federal and quasi-federal arrangements of today are thus a direct consequence of imperial diversity, and they often reveal the same challenges of ethnoterritorial nationalism, uneven development, and de facto layered citizenships.