Mikheil Muskhelishvili’s Federalist Vision and the British European Dilemma: From the Idea of a Federal Europe to Brexit

Abstract

Introduction: This article examines the federalist thought of the Georgian scholar and international law specialist Mikheil Muskhelishvili (Michel Mouskhely; 1903–1964) within the broader history of European integration and the United Kingdom’s evolving relationship with the European project. Particular attention is given to Muskhelishvili’s concept of non-dogmatic federalism and to the enduring tension between European political integration, national sovereignty, and political autonomy. Methods: The study employs historical-comparative and intellectual-historical approaches. It analyses Muskhelishvili’s theoretical writings on federalism, the 1948 Project for a European Constitution prepared jointly with Gaston Stefani, relevant historical documents, and scholarly literature on European integration and British European policy. The analysis compares Muskhelishvili’s conception of the distribution of competences between common institutions and constituent states with the historical development of the United Kingdom’s position toward European integration. Results: The analysis shows that Muskhelishvili understood federalism as a legal and institutional system for distributing political authority among different levels of governance rather than as a mechanism for abolishing constituent states. The 1948 constitutional project translated this principle into a concrete framework designed to reconcile European political unity with national political autonomy. The British experience followed a different trajectory, in which parliamentary sovereignty and national political control remained persistent concerns despite participation in European integration. Brexit brought this long-standing tension between supranational integration and national sovereignty into particularly clear focus. Conclusion: Muskhelishvili’s federalist thought provides a valuable analytical framework for understanding one of the central problems of European integration: how common political authority can be strengthened while preserving the political autonomy of constituent states. From this perspective, Brexit can be interpreted as part of a longer historical tension between European integration and national sovereignty rather than solely as the consequence of contemporary political circumstances.