Government and the Constitution



Government and the Constitution

Federalism is a political system in which government functions are divided between a central authority and a group of associated states. A federal state is a state usually sovereign, and composed of several autonomous entities with their own government, named entities. The status of these entities is generally guaranteed by the Constitution and cannot be challenged by a unilateral decision of the central government (Welch et al, 2009). The form of government of the federal state, or its constitutional structure, is called federalism. It is a set of states that are united and have some autonomy while acknowledging a common superior authority. In a federation, each state may have its unique constitution, federal or unitary. It can exist inside a state federates regions, cities, villages which can be more or less autonomous units or separate.

Some example of the countries with federal systems include Germany, Argentina, United States, Switzerland (which despite being named Swiss Confederation serves as a federation), Belgium, Brazil, Mexico, India and Venezuela. However, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom are decentralized States. Their organization tends to resemble territorial federalism. The ongoing constitutional reform in Italy is intended to create a federal republic. Among the major states of the European Union, France is the only one that has a completely centralized management and is free from all decentralization. However, the constitutional amendment of March 28 of 2003 has included the decentralization process in the Constitution (Bardes et al, 2008).

In federalism, the central government retains the exclusive right to practice the skills of international order. One distinguishes federalism by aggregation or association which is a federal system formed by the meeting of states that submit to a higher authority and federalism segregation produced by the dissociation of a unitary state. In a federation, ...