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By Meghan Cloonan ’10
Professor John Kincaid has written an analytic introduction to the first translation of The Federalist into the Catalan language. The translation was published by the Institut d’Estudis Autonómics of the Generalitat de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain.
The Federalist (also known as The Federalist Papers) consists of 85 essays written in 1787-88 by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay to support ratification of the then-proposed United States Constitution. The Federalist remains one of the foremost primary sources for interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, as the essays offer a clear and persuasive argument for the philosophy and motivation of the proposed federalist system.
“The Institut d’Estudis Autonómics, a think tank, is publishing a series of Catalan translations of classic works of federalism,” says Kincaid, Meyner Professor of Government and Public Service and director of The Robert B. and Helen S. Meyner Center for the Study of State and Local Government. “The Federalist is certainly the most appropriate work to be published first in a series of federal classics.”
As the first Catalan edition of The Federalist, the translation holds important cultural implications.
“Catalan, the native language of Catalonia, is spoken by about 14 million people. When General Francisco Franco ruled Spain from 1936 to 1975, the people of Catalonia were prohibited from speaking Catalan,” Kincaid explains. “This translation represents not only the revival of the Catalan language since Spain’s democratic revolution of 1978, but also the revival of the Catalan nation. Catalonia is now an autonomous community within Spain. It is pressing for more self-governing authority and for the establishment of a federal system of government in Spain.”
An internationally recognized expert, Kincaid has lectured and consulted on issues of federalism, intergovernmental relations, constitutionalism, and regional and local governance in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Germany, India, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Maldives, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom. Kincaid served as executive director of the bipartisan U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations in Washington, D.C., from 1987-94.
He is the author of various works on federalism and intergovernmental relations and served from 1981-2005 as editor of Publius: The Journal of Federalism, a quarterly scholarly journal with a worldwide readership. He serves as senior editor of the Global Dialogue on Federalism series, which is published by McGill-Queen’s University Press. His books include Constitutional Origins, Structure, and Change in Federal Countries (2005), The Covenant Connection: From Federal Theology to Modern Federalism (2000), Competition among States and Local Governments: Efficiency and Equity in American Federalism (1991), and Political Culture, Public Policy and the American States (1981).