The strange non-death of Federalism in the historiography of European integration

From the 1970s, federalism was the earliest historiographical paradigm used to analyse the process of european integration. In spite of this initial success, it became increasingly marginalised in the expanding historiography of this booming field of historical research. This was, to a large extent, due to the increasing domination in this field by researchers coming from the history of international relations and social and economic history. Having been used as a powerful narrative within and outside european institutions, federalist historiography lost momentum. Such a loss of centrality took place in spite of enjoying institutional support, and although some its hypothèses and conclusions had been confirmed by some of the most recent research. This article aims to explain such a paradox through an overview about the relevance of the federal principle in the context of the recent evolution of the historiography of european integration.