Approaching the phenomenon of federal failure

![CDATA[Why study federal failure and how to conceptualize its instances? These are the queries that have spurred this investigation. One of the pioneers of the comparative study of defunct federalisms, Thomas Franck noted the difficulty in establishing a 'common terminology' in assessing the phenomenon of federal failure (Franck 1968, 168). In such setting, the contention would be that federalism belongs to the family of 'essentially contested concepts' (Gallie 1964; Garver 1990). Therefore the purpose of this introduction is to clear the conceptual minefield of the literature on federalism and define the dominant terms involved in the study of defunct federalisms. At the same time, this introduction also outlines the methodological and theoretical research agenda for the study of federal failure that steer the interpretation of the particular contexts of defunct federalisms in this volume.]]