SUMMARY:

In the introduction to the forum “Political Imaginaries at the End of Empire,” Karuna Mantena and Rama Sundari Mantena remind readers that the original projects for postimperial society did not necessarily envision the ideal of the nation-state. One of the most prominent alternatives proposed to the nation-state was the idea of federation, which ranged in form and scale from imperial and regional supranational configurations to more pluralistic domestic constitutional arrangements.