Although he was recognized as a "Founding Father" of European unity in the last years of his life, Altiero Spinelli has become the subject of study only after his death. And yet his thought remains, on the whole, not well understood and appreciated. The basic reason for this lies in the extraordinary character of state unifications (the focus of Spinelli's activity) and the lack of adequate knowledge of the historical significance of these events. On the basis of federalist theory, Spinelli identified the basic contradiction of our time between the national size of political power and the internationalization of the process of production and formulated an overall judgement about it. He imagined the European unity, conceived as the first step on the way to world unification, as a political alternative, which did not only entail a change in government, but also a real change in the state, namely the transformation of nation-states in member-states of a European federation.

Consequently, he concentrated all his energy in the unbounded effort of providing the impetus for widening the size of the state. His great contribution to federalism lies in the field of political action. Indeed, he developed a theory of action as a separate and new branch of federalist thinking.

This book contains the proceedings of a symposium, which gathered in Torino in 1988 personalities coming from Europe, Asia and America. It represents an important contribution to the analysis of the work and thought of Spinelli in the light of the problems which contemporary federalism faces in Europe and in the world.