We are delighted that Edward Elgar Publishing invited us to develop this book on teaching federalism as part of its series on teaching subjects of contemporary importance. The prospect of assembling such a book was challenging because, while we, like other scholars, often write about federalism for academic and lay audiences, we do not, perhaps, give much systematic thought to how to teach federalism beyond what we do in our classrooms. Elgar's invitation also prompted us to wonder how our friends and colleagues around the world approach the subject.After all, approximately 28 countries in the world might be regarded as having a constitutional or operational form of federal governance (depending on one's definition of a federal system). As of 2022, these federal countries accounted for 44.4 percent of the world's landmass, 48.5 percent of the world's GDP, and 41.5 percent of the world's population. If one also counts the European Union (EU) as a supranational confederation or quasi-federation, then adding the people who live in the EU's non-federal countries brings the proportion of people living under a federal arrangement to 45.3 percent of the world's population. If one includes the United Nations as at least a loose confederal arrangement, then nearly every person on the planet resides under a federal arrangement. Federalism, therefore, is a principle of governance and of government organization with wide applications.Yet, most people know little, if anything, about federalism. When asked questions about federalism or their own federal system in surveys, most people express opinions but few can define federalism or describe its structures or operation. We also know very little about where, by whom, and how often federalism is taught in primary and secondary schools and in universities and colleges worldwide. Some survey information is available for North America (Kincaid and Cole 2014, 2016, 2018 but apparently not for elsewhere. Further, teachers, professors, and students in developing countries, as well as many students in developed countries, often lack funds and adequate libraries to acquire books and other resources for teaching federalism. Furthermore, many educators who teach about federalism do so from the perspective of
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