A federation (also called a federal state) is a union of partially self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a federal government (federalism). In a federation, the self-governing status of the component units and the division of power between them and the central government are constitutionally entrenched and may not be altered unilaterally by either the central or constituent-unit authorities without following the constitutional amendment process.
Sovereign power is formally divided between a central authority and a number of constituent regions so that each region retains some degree of control over its internal affairs.
Some federal constitutions give the central authority exceptional powers that depart from the ordinary division of powers. In India, the Constitution requires the Union to protect states against internal disturbance and permits President's Rule when a state government cannot be carried on in accordance with the Constitution; it also authorizes Parliament to legislate for implementing treaties notwithstanding the ordinary federal allocation of legislative power. In Canada, section 91 of the Constitution Act, 1867 gives Parliament authority to make laws for the "Peace, Order, and good Government of Canada" in matters not assigned exclusively to the provinces. The Supreme Court of Canada has described the national-concern branch of this power as a rarely applied and strictly limited doctrine whose use must maintain provincial autonomy and the federal balance.
The governmental or constitutional structure found in a federation is described as federalist, or as an example of federalism, and is commonly contrasted with the unitary state. France and Japan, for example, are unitary states. The Austrian Empire was a unitary state with crown lands; after the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, the Republic of Austria became a federation of Länder under the 1920 constitution. Germany, with its 16 states, or Länder, and Nigeria, with its 36 states and federal capital territory, are examples of federations. Federations are often multi-ethnic and cover a large area of territory (such as Russia, the United States, Canada, India, Brazil, Pakistan or Australia), but neither is necessarily the case (such as Saint Kitts and Nevis or the Federated States of Micronesia). Roughly 40 per cent of the world's population lives in countries described as federal.
History Several ancient chiefdoms and kingdoms, such as the 4th-century-BCE League of Corinth, Noricum in Central Europe, and the Iroquois Confederacy in pre-Columbian North America, could be described as federations or confederations. The Old Swiss Confederacy is often regarded as a historical example of a confederation composed of largely autonomous cantons.
Several colonies and dominions in the New World consisted of autonomous provinces, transformed into federal states upon independence such as the United States, and various countries in Latin America (see Spanish American wars of independence). Some of the New World federations failed; the Federal Republic of Central America broke up into independent states less than 20 years after its founding. Others, such as Argentina, have shifted between federal, confederal, and unitary systems, before settling into federalism. Brazil became a federation only after the fall of the monarchy, and Venezuela became a federation after the Federal War.
Australia and Canada are also federations. They became federations while still part of the British Empire, and gradually evolved towards full independence.
Germany is another nation-state that has switched between confederal, federal and highly centralized forms. The North German Confederation, the succeeding German Empire and the Weimar Republic were federations.
Founded in 1922, the Soviet Union was formally a federation of Soviet republics, autonomous republics and other federal subjects, though in practice highly centralized under the government of the Soviet Union. The Russian Federation has inherited a similar system.
India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Malaysia (then Federation of Malaya) became federations on or shortly before becoming independent from the British Empire.
In some recent cases, federations have been instituted as a measure to handle ethnic conflict within a state, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Iraq since 2005 as well as Somalia since 2012.
With the United States Constitution having become effective on 4 March 1789, the United States is the oldest surviving federation, while the newest federation is Nepal, after its constitution went into effect on 20 September 2015.
Federations and other forms of state
Federations The component states are in some sense sovereign, insofar as certain powers are reserved to them that may not be exercised by the central government. However, a federation is more than a mere loose alliance of independent states. The component states of a federation usually possess no powers in relation to foreign policy and so enjoy no independent status under international law. However, German Länder have that power, which is beginning to be exercised on a European level.
Some federations are called asymmetric because some states have more autonomy than others. An example of such a federation is Malaysia, in which Sarawak and Sabah agreed to form the federation on different terms and conditions from the states of Peninsular Malaysia.
A federation often emerges from an initial agreement between several separate states. The purpose can be the will to solve mutual problems and to provide for mutual defense or to create a nation-state for an ethnicity spread over several states. The former was the case with the United States and Switzerland. However, as the histories of countries and nations vary, the federalist system of a state can be quite different from these models. Australia, for instance, is unique in that it came into existence as a nation by the democratic vote of the citizens of each state, who voted "yes" in referendums to adopt the Australian Constitution. Brazil, on the other hand, has experienced both the federal and the unitary state during its history. Some present-day states of the Brazilian federation retain borders set during the Portuguese colonization (before the very existence of the Brazilian state), whereas the latest state, Tocantins, was created by the 1988 Constitution.
Federalism is especially common among very large democracies, but federations vary greatly in area and population; territorial size alone does not determine constitutional form.
Unitary states A unitary state may include self-governing regions, but their powers are legally delegated by the central constitutional order and can in principle be altered or withdrawn unilaterally. In a federation, by contrast, the existence and powers of the constituent units are constitutionally entrenched. Political constraints may nevertheless make withdrawal of devolved autonomy difficult even where it remains legally possible.
Confederation
A confederation, in modern political terms, is usually limited to a permanent union of sovereign states for common action in relation to other states. The closest entity in the world to a confederation at this time is the European Union. While the word confederation was officially used when the Canadian federal system was established in 1867, the term refers only to the process and not the resulting state since Canadian provinces are not sovereign and do not claim to be. Switzerland retains the official name Swiss Confederation but has been a federal state since 1848.
Belgium evolved from a unitary state into a federal state through constitutional reforms beginning in 1970; Article 1 now defines it as a federal state composed of communities and regions. Proposals described as confederalism remain part of Belgian political and scholarly debate.
Compared with a federation, confederal institutions are subordinate to the member states, tend to exercise fewer powers directly over individuals, and commonly depend on member-state implementation or heightened consent for major decisions.
Over time these terms acquired distinct connotations leading to the present difference in definition. An example of this is the United States under the Articles of Confederation. The Articles established a national government under what today would be defined as a federal system (albeit with a comparatively weaker federal government). However, Canadians, whose government was designed with a stronger central government than the US in the wake of the US Civil War, use the term "Confederation" to refer to the formation or joining, not the structure, of Canada. Legal reforms, court rulings, and political compromises have decentralized Canada in practice since its formation in 1867.
Empire An empire traditionally denotes a territorial realm governed under an imperial sovereign, but empires have varied greatly in the degree to which authority was centralized. Imperial and federal categories are not mutually exclusive: the Constitution of the German Empire (1871–1918), for example, established an enduring federation of member states and combined federal, monarchical and representative institutions.
Comparison with other systems of autonomy Federacy A federacySome dictionaries, such as the Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language (1989 ed.), state that federacy is synonymous with confederacy ("by aphesis"). In French, the English words federacy, confederacy, and confederation are all translated by "confédération". is a unitary state that incorporates one or more self-governing autonomous areas. It is distinguished from a federation in that the constitutional structure of the state is still unitary, but incorporates federalist principles. Åland's autonomy was established by Finnish legislation in 1920 and reinforced by a 1921 League of Nations settlement. Other examples sometimes classified as federacies include South Tyrol (the Autonomous Province of Bolzano/Bozen) in Italy, whose extensive and constitutionally protected autonomy has been compared with that of Åland.
Devolution A federation differs from a devolved state, such as Indonesia and the United Kingdom, because, in a devolved state, the central government can alter the powers and autonomy of the subunits without changing the constitution. In the United Kingdom, these include the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly. Although the UK Parliament retains parliamentary sovereignty and therefore ultimate legislative authority, the status of the devolved institutions is subject to important constitutional and political constraints. For example, the Scotland Act 2016 declares the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government permanent parts of the United Kingdom's constitutional arrangements and provides that they are not to be abolished except following a referendum in Scotland. In some cases, such as the autonomous communities of Spain, devolution has led to federation in all but name, or "federation without federalism".The Federal Option and Constitutional Management of Diversity in Spain Xavier Arbós Marín, page 375; included in 'The Ways of Federalism in Western Countries and the Horizons of Territorial Autonomy in Spain' (volume 2), edited by Alberto López-Eguren and Leire Escajedo San Epifanio; edited by Springer , (eBook)
Crown dependencies