Systems of Government
Federal System
Also Known As Federalism
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A federal system divides governing authority between a national government and constituent regional governments, such as states, provinces or republics, each holding its own constitutionally guaranteed sphere of authority rather than power delegated at the centre's discretion, in contrast to a unitary state. Seven of the world's eight largest countries by area, including the United States, Brazil, India, Russia and Canada, are organised on a federal basis.
Facts
Origin Year1789 marks the United States Constitution taking effect, replacing the Articles of Confederation's loose league of sovereign states with a two-tier system dividing authority between a national government and the states, widely treated as the first federal system in the modern sense. Older leagues such as the Swiss Confederacy, dating to 1291, and the Achaean League were confederations of largely sovereign members rather than a single federal state with its own directly governing national tier. Founding ContextThe United States Constitution of 1787 supplied the first modern federal system built around a written division of sovereignty between a national government and constituent states, a model later adapted by Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Australia and India among others. 2 Learn More
Federalism: Dividing Sovereignty Between Levels of Government
A federal system splits governing authority between a national government and constituent states, provinces or republics, each holding powers the other cannot simply overrule. That division is usually written into a constitution rather than left to ordinary law, precisely so that neither level can dissolve the other's authority through routine legislation.
Federalism as a deliberate design begins with the United States Constitution of 1789, which built a national government strong enough to act as one country in war and commerce while leaving the states with their own governments, courts and considerable domestic authority. The compromise answered a real fear among the former colonies: that a single centralized government would recreate the distant, unaccountable rule they had just fought a revolution to escape.
The design proved exportable. Federal constitutions followed in countries as different as Germany, India, Nigeria, Brazil and Switzerland, each adapting the same basic principle, two or more levels of government with independent constitutional standing, to bind together regions with their own languages, religions or histories inside one state without erasing their separate identities.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Confederation and federation sit at either end of the same question, how much sovereignty member states retain against a common government, and the reference literature defines each chiefly by contrast with the other.
Germany, Countries Germany is discussed as an "integrated" federal structure, contrasted with the US "dualistic" model.
India, Countries India is noted for recognizing local government as a third constitutional order alongside the union and the states.
A federal system is one specific, constitutionally fixed instance of multi-level authority; the Ostrom, Tiebout and Warren 1961 study that coined polycentricity was analyzing local governments and special districts WITHIN a single American state, a scale and an informality federalism as a system of government does not itself describe.
Russia, Countries Russia has a federal constitution but is described as not democratic in practice.
The United States is the primary and earliest still-operating example, federated in 1789.
Held Differently
Influenced By
Federalism, Ideologies Federalism names the political theory of divided sovereignty between central and constituent governments; the federal system is its institutional expression in a constitution.
Practiced By
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