4- The answer is in the Nation- State

What does the idea of Federalism as a tool for ethnic conflict resolution applied to Ancient Greek tell us about us? 

At the beginning of the course of Greek History, Prof. Franchi stated that she wanted to explore whether the Koinon in Ancient Greece (specially in the Hellenistic period) contributed to a decrease the level of conflicts related to the polis (or other units) borders. By “conflicts” she meant violent (war) and non violent (arbitration).

I the asked myself: why the presence of a Koinon would reduce the amount of borders conflicts? Clear rules may be. Greek polis already had a sort of international customary law but may be a Koinon had more influence and can count on some form of enforcement. But these answers don't convince me: enforcement is the solution in those circumstances where power is the problem. Conflict has so many causes.

The initial question of Prof. Franchi remained a mystery until yesterday when I had to rename the files of the papers "Federalism and Conflict Management" from Butler et. al. (2017) and "Introduction: Federalism as a Tool of Conflict Resolution" Keil & Albert (2020). I read the title of the paper, remembered the content and I understood. The words Federalism - Ethnic- and Conflict where the key because they look very much alike to Koinon - Ethnos - War/arbitration. The papers just cited explore how to solve current political conflicts, mainly ethnic, using federalism as a tool. Therefore it is logical to think that ancient Greeks used koinon to decrease the high level of conflicts between the Greek political units in ethnic defined communities. 

It was so obvious but I couldn't see it because overlapping concepts with similar wording hide the reality of completely different meanings. To understand better the meanings we need to introduce the concept of Nation-State and check again the hypothesis. Nation-State is an unavoidable concept when we study the present.

Nation- State is the main instrument we moderns, use to legitimize power. It belongs to the realm of rights. It is the fusion of two different ideas (Nation and State) that have long lasting histories. State is a concept that can be trace to the peace of Westphalia back in 1648 and refers to the institution holding the monopoly of the legitimate use of violence over a population in a given territory. Nation refers to the political relevant identity of a population. The combination of both, Nation-State, has its heydays in the XX century and names something very easy to understand: 1 nation = 1 state.

Ancient Greeks didn't have nation-states because they did not have states. If we follow Thucydides in the dialogue with the Mede it seems that power legitimize by itself. When the powerful Athenians ambassadors meet the weak Medenians Oligarchs they clearly state:

“.. since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.’ Thucydides (1910)

Power as self legitimizing belongs to the realm of events. Ancient Greeks didn't really need a Nation-State to do what they must, they just used the power to do what they can.

Let's go back to the question at the beginning of the post: What does the idea of Federalism as a tool for ethnic conflict resolution applied to Ancient Greek tell us about us? It tell us that Nation-State is a founding institution of modern politics and that it is a historical institution that was born at one point in history, then developed and will probably die in the future. The answer is the Nation-State. 

Bibliography

Benedict Anderson (2005) "Communità Immaginate" Roma: Manifestolibri.

Hanns Bühler/Susanne Luther/Michael Siegner (eds.) (2017)” Federalism And Conflict Management”. International Munich Federalism Days.

Soeren Keil & Elisabeth Alber (2020) Introduction: Federalism as a Tool of Conflict Resolution, Ethnopolitics, 19:4, 329-341, DOI: 10.1080/17449057.2020.1795469

Thucydides (1910). The Peloponnesian War. London, J. M. Dent; New York, E. P. Dutton. 1910. Book 5, p. 89