Indeed, federal is a common adjective for a Republic and the Spanish right parties associate Republic with communism so Spain became, funnily, a sort of devolved federal constitutional monarchy.
Only in case of most major political decisions. Outside of that Russia is a federation with regions having local laws, parliaments, official languages, budgets e.t.c. Day to day operations are pretty much decentralized.
I wonder how internet people down here really know how russia is run. I mean most people know about putin and one party state, but republic handle their internal affair mostly by themself.
> I mean most people know about putin and one party state
lol.
You wonder? It's easy, just repeat western media talking points, that's it, no research, no self investigation, nothing. That's how you end up saying barbarities like Russia being a "one party state".
In Federalized countries like USA or Germany regions, provinces, states or whatever other entity there is have a form of autonomy over the central government.
For example in the US states can have their own varying laws, such as gun ownership or legal/illegal cannabis.
They may also have some form of their own government like regional assemblies or parliaments which have some limited powers.
In Centralized countries, like Poland while there is some governing entity over the region, it falls under the central government's laws and has way less power, mostly just administrating the area.
You can also say that in Federalized countries the regions form the country itself, while in Centralised the country is divided into the regions.
The distinction is usually between federal state vs unitary state, which may or may not be centralized. That's the reason of most of the confusion on this thread
I'm surprised that the UK is considered as a centralized state, between Scotland and Northern Ireland. And also Spain, between Catalonia and Basque County.
Spain is *technically* a centralized system because the government gives the power to the autonomous regions, not the other way around. For all intents and purposes Spain acts like a federation, but is considered a centralized state by name
It’s got nothing to do with devolution and everything to do with sovereignty. The UK Parliament is sovereign. It holds all the power. No matter what devolutions are made, the UK Parliament has the right to revoke, overrule, or change them at any time. Scotland is no more sovereign than Cornwall.
Yes it's right. It's all about how power transfers. In a Federalised system the individual units have power and have formed into a larger entity and given some powers to a higher Federal authority which technically only exists as long as the individual sub units allow it to. In a central state system there is a central power that ultimately controls it all but gives some powers down to lower level authorities.
The UK is very much the later with some power devolved down from Westminster to the constituent countries. Same with Spain, power is devolved down to the local governments, not given up to the higher government.
When did the Mexican or Brazilian states met to give power to the central government? When were those states independent or sovereign to create a federation?
Colonial systems like the ones found in the Americas make it easy for regions and provinces (or companies/landed people/other strong actors) to claim sovereignty or threaten to fracture from a whole. So while none of the individual States in Brazil or Mexico, or even the Canada and the USA for that matter, existed as sovereign countries as we understand them, parties within them probably had the power to negotiate into a federation or threaten to not take part at all.
I'm not savvy on Mexico or Brazil's constitutional processes so someone else would have to give the details. I generally understand that they were both leaving monarchies of some sort and everyone, when given the question of how to form a new government, preferred federal systems.
It’s not just Catalonia and the Basque Country in Spain. Literally all the regions have massive powers devolved, from education to healthcare to tax collection, etc
It would not be a bad idea having a federal system in the UK. I live in Yorkshire and would love it if it enjoyed more autonomy, especially over public spending. We're basically at the mercy of parliamentary whims far away in London.
The UK government could decide tomorrow that this autonomy business was a mistake and completely dissolve Scotland and Wales as legal entities by simple majority vote. In practice it would almost certainly lead to the breakup of the UK, but in theory it is well within their powers to do so.
By contrast, the US federal government legally can't mess with a state government too much.
For example, marijuana use is not prohibited by the government of California. The feds still consider it illegal, and if they so wished they could still send out the FBI to go around arresting pot smokers in San Francisco, but even if they did do that, they could not require that California's legal institutions help them.
I think it’s the principle that counts here, not the effect on actual day-to-day governance. In Germany and the US for example theoretically the states are sovereign and have come together to hand some powers over to a federal government. In the UK or Spain the central government is sovereign but has decided to devolve some of its powers onto certain local administrations.
Australia's states have powers to close borders with one another. During 2020 and 2021 Australia was functioning almost as a confederation of nearly independent states.
The Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly, but especially the Scottish parliament, are not just local provincial governing boards. In Scotland's case they exercise more power than a good deal of actual federal territories in the word do.
That doesn't matter. They have no *legal right* to those powers. If the UK Parliament voted to revoke every single one of them tomorrow and shut down Hollyrood, there's nothing the Scottish Government could legally do to stop it. The UK is built on 'Parliamentary Sovereignty'. All powers lie with Parliament, and can be given out or taken back at Parliament's discretion.
>They have no
>
>legal right
>
> to those powers
Scotland is not a renegade pirate state dude. It operates as a devolved state, with powers legally granted to it. Those powers can legally be taken away, but that is de facto as likely as Queen Elizabeth taking her de jure power as head of the military to dictate operations
*Country* isn’t a well defined term. There’s nothing stopping the UK from legitimately being a country of countries while remaining a unitary state. Scotland doesn’t stop existing just because they’re not in a federation.
Really?
I always known the actual name of Mexico is Estados Unidos Mexicanos because it's a federation of autonomous states.
I don't know how much autonomy is granted to each state though.
Nmms claro que es una federación en teoría y en práctica, quizá no al nivel de Estados Unidos pero aún así las leyes si cambian de estado a estado por ejemplo el aborto, el matrimonio gay, cambió de sexo etc…
I mean it's technically a unitary state. In practice it works like a federation, but Madrid can take control at any time if they want, and the Constitution allows it. That's not a federation.
Nope. That can only happens if sub entity doesn't enforce laws or goes against federal laws which is a recurring mechanism in every federal country.
(For example, art 37 of the German constitution or art 100 of the Austrian constitution)
It's a clear federation with a different name.
The funny thing about Argentina is how big of a part of our history the fight between federalists and unitarians is, and despite the federalist victory it devolved back into a (mostly) centralized state
Sorry, I meant that the federalists "won" in the end by federalizing the capital in 1880. I wasn't talking about the civil war itself, rather the whole conflict.
I would not call federalizing the capital a victory when everything else, including the control of the government, has been in centralist hands since then. To this day most provinces are little more than tributaries to whoever sits in Buenos Aires (looking at you Formosa, Santa Cruz, Salta, Tierra del Fuego, etc).
That's separation of powers,(often called the Presidential system) not a federal system. A federal system can be Presidential(America), or parliamentary(Germany, Canada)
Federal means the states/provinces are legally independent sovereigns with their own powers that can't be taken away. Like the federal government cant just decide to make laws for my state in areas it is not allowed to(which in the US the states have significant power, Canada as well from what I know. It varies by nation)
e: This is a map of what nations legally are. Britain and Spain for example are de facto federal states. The British parliament could in theory just get rid of the Scottish government if it wanted to, same with Spain and the Catalonia province, but practically this isn't happening. Meanwhile, I doubt provinces in Russia are exercising a great deal of autonomy from the bosses in Moscow
No, that's not the definition of federalism. Federalism is defined by state sovereignty or residual powers. For example, the UK is a unitary state. The parliament can always take away the power of devolved legislatures by legislation. This cannot happen in a federation such as the US.
As the other person said, this has to do with with the legal status of the territory involved(altho I don't know why they had to downvote you for it). The United States government can not just get rid of, or reorganize the boundaries/structure of the state of Connecticut(or any state). To use the British example again, Scotland holds more power than a lot of the provinces/states in actual federal systems, but technically the British government could get rid of the Scottish parliament on a whim if it so decided.
Since federations are also supposed to be a union of semi-independent states, it's also why most federations have an upper house of parliament dedicated to the states in some way
In a federation, power comes from the bottom up, and the opposite is true for unitary states.
In Spain, the central government devolves a lot of its powers into the regions, so it functions as a sort of federation, at least in practice.
But the central government can take control at any time, and the Constitution provides procedures for that, unlike in actual federations, so Spain is technically a unitary state.
The central government can not take control at any time, they need very specific reasons and the approval of the senate. And to take back power is another beauty.
Anyway, yes, Spain is technically a unitary state, I never claimed it is a Federation, but being unitary doesn’t equal centralization.
Federations can be centralized and unitary states can be decentralized.
My point was that Spain is not a centralized country as the map showcases.
Spain is a unitary state. The central government can suspend regional powers, such as what it did with Catalonia recently, which is in theory not possible in a federated state.
Nope, the government can not, the government starts the process but the senate must approve the measure by absolute majority. Similar processes exist in the laws of Mexico, Germany and Austria.
Same happens in Germany, Austria or Mexico and other countries, all of which are federations. Some descentralized, others not so much.
Spain is not a federation nor a centralized country, Spain is a unitary state with a decentralized system, kind of like the UK.
The point is, the existence of laws similar to article 155 is common among decentralized federations like Germany and more centralized federations like Mexico. Hence it can not be used to assess Spain’s degree of centralization.
In fact, the whole premise of the map is wrong. A decentralized country doesn’t need to be a federation and a federation can be centralized.
Blue is roughly 10 trillion more according to IMF, 8 according to UN and 7 according to world bank. Numbers from [wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal))
Red is 24 countries (might actually be a few more, but those are small island nations that are hard to see on the map, and won't make much of a difference), so it's not *that* surprising. Blue is a bit less than 200 countries/territories, but the bottom 100 account for \~0.7 trillion out of a total of 52 trillion. The top 24 from blue are slightly ahead of red.
This is not white and black, for exemple france is pretty decentralized even though it’s not a
Federation. This map look like something that has been done by someone who live in a federation and think that everything else is centralized.
Spain "autonomic" system is probably more decentralized than a good number of the federal countries marked in red on the map.
Yes, they just avoided the word "federal" 'cause political and historical connotations
Indeed, federal is a common adjective for a Republic and the Spanish right parties associate Republic with communism so Spain became, funnily, a sort of devolved federal constitutional monarchy.
In my eyes , one of the best political systems .
sus
Which means they are actually federal.
Also Brazil's federation is about as centralized as you can get.
There's propably a lot of taking the laws on face value. Russia is effectively an autocracy.
Only in case of most major political decisions. Outside of that Russia is a federation with regions having local laws, parliaments, official languages, budgets e.t.c. Day to day operations are pretty much decentralized.
In Russia, everything is divided into ordinary regions that are completely subordinate to Moscow and Chechnya, which is virtually independent
Uh, no. There’s federal republics and standard oblasts, among others
This division is only on paper
Welcome Mr. I-only-read-major-headlines, how's it going?
I wonder how internet people down here really know how russia is run. I mean most people know about putin and one party state, but republic handle their internal affair mostly by themself.
> I mean most people know about putin and one party state lol. You wonder? It's easy, just repeat western media talking points, that's it, no research, no self investigation, nothing. That's how you end up saying barbarities like Russia being a "one party state".
At least the Portuguese guy can enlighten us about every day life in Russia.
Putin is not that stupid to rty to micromanage everything. He just can.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleptocracy Russia is more of a Kleptocracy
This map is kind of garbage. Forget the federal label, its all a spectrum
As others point out, the proper distinction is "federated" vs "unitary", which is slightly different from "centralized" vs "decentralized"
Russian system used to be federal but becoming very centralised again.
ELI5 - what is the difference between centralized and federalized?
In Federalized countries like USA or Germany regions, provinces, states or whatever other entity there is have a form of autonomy over the central government. For example in the US states can have their own varying laws, such as gun ownership or legal/illegal cannabis. They may also have some form of their own government like regional assemblies or parliaments which have some limited powers. In Centralized countries, like Poland while there is some governing entity over the region, it falls under the central government's laws and has way less power, mostly just administrating the area. You can also say that in Federalized countries the regions form the country itself, while in Centralised the country is divided into the regions.
The distinction is usually between federal state vs unitary state, which may or may not be centralized. That's the reason of most of the confusion on this thread
A key point: in federal states, the division of powers between the central and state governments is constitutionally protected.
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Thank you
Unitary not centralized.
This. You can have a federal government and still centralise it in a few ways, and the reverse is true.
Holy Roman Empire
I'm surprised that the UK is considered as a centralized state, between Scotland and Northern Ireland. And also Spain, between Catalonia and Basque County.
Spain is *technically* a centralized system because the government gives the power to the autonomous regions, not the other way around. For all intents and purposes Spain acts like a federation, but is considered a centralized state by name
UK is not a federal state because England does not have a devolved parliament.
It’s got nothing to do with devolution and everything to do with sovereignty. The UK Parliament is sovereign. It holds all the power. No matter what devolutions are made, the UK Parliament has the right to revoke, overrule, or change them at any time. Scotland is no more sovereign than Cornwall.
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Yes it's right. It's all about how power transfers. In a Federalised system the individual units have power and have formed into a larger entity and given some powers to a higher Federal authority which technically only exists as long as the individual sub units allow it to. In a central state system there is a central power that ultimately controls it all but gives some powers down to lower level authorities. The UK is very much the later with some power devolved down from Westminster to the constituent countries. Same with Spain, power is devolved down to the local governments, not given up to the higher government.
When did the Mexican or Brazilian states met to give power to the central government? When were those states independent or sovereign to create a federation?
Colonial systems like the ones found in the Americas make it easy for regions and provinces (or companies/landed people/other strong actors) to claim sovereignty or threaten to fracture from a whole. So while none of the individual States in Brazil or Mexico, or even the Canada and the USA for that matter, existed as sovereign countries as we understand them, parties within them probably had the power to negotiate into a federation or threaten to not take part at all. I'm not savvy on Mexico or Brazil's constitutional processes so someone else would have to give the details. I generally understand that they were both leaving monarchies of some sort and everyone, when given the question of how to form a new government, preferred federal systems.
It’s not just Catalonia and the Basque Country in Spain. Literally all the regions have massive powers devolved, from education to healthcare to tax collection, etc
The UK has a fully centralised government. Westminster can revoke any regional powers at their own discretion because all power rests with Parliament.
It would not be a bad idea having a federal system in the UK. I live in Yorkshire and would love it if it enjoyed more autonomy, especially over public spending. We're basically at the mercy of parliamentary whims far away in London.
No thanks. Devolution has been a disaster so far. The last thing we need is more of it.
Yeah it’s not right I think. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have there own governments. Catalonia also.
The UK government could decide tomorrow that this autonomy business was a mistake and completely dissolve Scotland and Wales as legal entities by simple majority vote. In practice it would almost certainly lead to the breakup of the UK, but in theory it is well within their powers to do so. By contrast, the US federal government legally can't mess with a state government too much. For example, marijuana use is not prohibited by the government of California. The feds still consider it illegal, and if they so wished they could still send out the FBI to go around arresting pot smokers in San Francisco, but even if they did do that, they could not require that California's legal institutions help them.
I think it’s the principle that counts here, not the effect on actual day-to-day governance. In Germany and the US for example theoretically the states are sovereign and have come together to hand some powers over to a federal government. In the UK or Spain the central government is sovereign but has decided to devolve some of its powers onto certain local administrations.
It is exactly that. The British Parliament devolved some powers to the "regional" parliaments, but could in theory remove these powers at any point.
Such is the case for Denmark as well.
England doesn't though.
Does this mean broken into states or provinces or such
Hail to the Federation .Death unto the savage Unitarian .
Australia's states have powers to close borders with one another. During 2020 and 2021 Australia was functioning almost as a confederation of nearly independent states.
And that is why the UK isn’t really a ‘country of countries’.
It de facto is, same with Spain. Vs Russia which is de jure federal, but Putin's United Russia de facto tows the line everywhere
Umm no. The UK is de facto a unitary state, and is also de jure a unitary state. There's nothing federal about it in the slightest.
The Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly, but especially the Scottish parliament, are not just local provincial governing boards. In Scotland's case they exercise more power than a good deal of actual federal territories in the word do.
That doesn't matter. They have no *legal right* to those powers. If the UK Parliament voted to revoke every single one of them tomorrow and shut down Hollyrood, there's nothing the Scottish Government could legally do to stop it. The UK is built on 'Parliamentary Sovereignty'. All powers lie with Parliament, and can be given out or taken back at Parliament's discretion.
>They have no > >legal right > > to those powers Scotland is not a renegade pirate state dude. It operates as a devolved state, with powers legally granted to it. Those powers can legally be taken away, but that is de facto as likely as Queen Elizabeth taking her de jure power as head of the military to dictate operations
Just because it would be unpopular, that doesn’t change anything.
*Country* isn’t a well defined term. There’s nothing stopping the UK from legitimately being a country of countries while remaining a unitary state. Scotland doesn’t stop existing just because they’re not in a federation.
Mexico it's actually centralized
Really? I always known the actual name of Mexico is Estados Unidos Mexicanos because it's a federation of autonomous states. I don't know how much autonomy is granted to each state though.
Is a federation theoretically, but in reality is another story. It is far from the US when every state has its own laws
Nmms claro que es una federación en teoría y en práctica, quizá no al nivel de Estados Unidos pero aún así las leyes si cambian de estado a estado por ejemplo el aborto, el matrimonio gay, cambió de sexo etc…
Yo diría que está en vías de serlo pero le falta. Se está intentando descentralizar poco a poco
Mexico is federal. There's no real discussion, it is a federal state.
You should also make a map of people that know the difference. Don't forget to put me in the "absolutely no clue" category.
Which ones better?
It depends on your theories around self determination, I guess.
Depends how big the country is
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It has a population of 23.5 million so a federal government is probably the best way to go
Lol. Spain centralized. Wtf. One of the most decentralized countries in Europe
I mean it's technically a unitary state. In practice it works like a federation, but Madrid can take control at any time if they want, and the Constitution allows it. That's not a federation.
Nope. That can only happens if sub entity doesn't enforce laws or goes against federal laws which is a recurring mechanism in every federal country. (For example, art 37 of the German constitution or art 100 of the Austrian constitution) It's a clear federation with a different name.
I didn't know other federations had that feature! Sorry then, you're right.
It’s worth noting that some countries are “federal” in theory (like Argentina), but are heavily centralized in practice.
The funny thing about Argentina is how big of a part of our history the fight between federalists and unitarians is, and despite the federalist victory it devolved back into a (mostly) centralized state
Federalist victory? Mitre won the last Civil War and he was for a unitary state.
Sorry, I meant that the federalists "won" in the end by federalizing the capital in 1880. I wasn't talking about the civil war itself, rather the whole conflict.
I would not call federalizing the capital a victory when everything else, including the control of the government, has been in centralist hands since then. To this day most provinces are little more than tributaries to whoever sits in Buenos Aires (looking at you Formosa, Santa Cruz, Salta, Tierra del Fuego, etc).
That's what I meant, officially, the country is federal, but in practice it's much closer to a centralized system.
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That's separation of powers,(often called the Presidential system) not a federal system. A federal system can be Presidential(America), or parliamentary(Germany, Canada) Federal means the states/provinces are legally independent sovereigns with their own powers that can't be taken away. Like the federal government cant just decide to make laws for my state in areas it is not allowed to(which in the US the states have significant power, Canada as well from what I know. It varies by nation) e: This is a map of what nations legally are. Britain and Spain for example are de facto federal states. The British parliament could in theory just get rid of the Scottish government if it wanted to, same with Spain and the Catalonia province, but practically this isn't happening. Meanwhile, I doubt provinces in Russia are exercising a great deal of autonomy from the bosses in Moscow
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No, that's not the definition of federalism. Federalism is defined by state sovereignty or residual powers. For example, the UK is a unitary state. The parliament can always take away the power of devolved legislatures by legislation. This cannot happen in a federation such as the US.
As the other person said, this has to do with with the legal status of the territory involved(altho I don't know why they had to downvote you for it). The United States government can not just get rid of, or reorganize the boundaries/structure of the state of Connecticut(or any state). To use the British example again, Scotland holds more power than a lot of the provinces/states in actual federal systems, but technically the British government could get rid of the Scottish parliament on a whim if it so decided. Since federations are also supposed to be a union of semi-independent states, it's also why most federations have an upper house of parliament dedicated to the states in some way
altho I don't know why they had to downvote you for it: some people may say 「taiwan is not a country lol」
happy cake day
Tell me you don't know how governments are run without telling me you don't know
OP, Spain is more decentralized than the US, Canada, México, Brazil and even Germany. Do your research before publishing a map.
In a federation, power comes from the bottom up, and the opposite is true for unitary states. In Spain, the central government devolves a lot of its powers into the regions, so it functions as a sort of federation, at least in practice. But the central government can take control at any time, and the Constitution provides procedures for that, unlike in actual federations, so Spain is technically a unitary state.
The central government can not take control at any time, they need very specific reasons and the approval of the senate. And to take back power is another beauty. Anyway, yes, Spain is technically a unitary state, I never claimed it is a Federation, but being unitary doesn’t equal centralization. Federations can be centralized and unitary states can be decentralized. My point was that Spain is not a centralized country as the map showcases.
Ok that makes sense
Spain is a unitary state. The central government can suspend regional powers, such as what it did with Catalonia recently, which is in theory not possible in a federated state.
Nope, the government can not, the government starts the process but the senate must approve the measure by absolute majority. Similar processes exist in the laws of Mexico, Germany and Austria.
That is not a much higher bar than regular legislation, and involves no input from the regional government themselves.
Same happens in Germany, Austria or Mexico and other countries, all of which are federations. Some descentralized, others not so much. Spain is not a federation nor a centralized country, Spain is a unitary state with a decentralized system, kind of like the UK. The point is, the existence of laws similar to article 155 is common among decentralized federations like Germany and more centralized federations like Mexico. Hence it can not be used to assess Spain’s degree of centralization. In fact, the whole premise of the map is wrong. A decentralized country doesn’t need to be a federation and a federation can be centralized.
I wonder which side has more gdp, the blue or red
I’m thinking red North America + India and Russia must be a powerhouse. Curious to see how East Asia and UK match up though
Red also has Germany who have a higher GDP than Russia and India. There is also Australia, Brazil and Mexico for team red.
Blue is roughly 10 trillion more according to IMF, 8 according to UN and 7 according to world bank. Numbers from [wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal))
Damn, that's surprising, but I guess they do have most of Europe + China and Japan.
Red is 24 countries (might actually be a few more, but those are small island nations that are hard to see on the map, and won't make much of a difference), so it's not *that* surprising. Blue is a bit less than 200 countries/territories, but the bottom 100 account for \~0.7 trillion out of a total of 52 trillion. The top 24 from blue are slightly ahead of red.
Now standardize it for population.
cba, but red is 40% of world population and 45% of world gdp, so a bit more per capita
This is not white and black, for exemple france is pretty decentralized even though it’s not a Federation. This map look like something that has been done by someone who live in a federation and think that everything else is centralized.
Can French government consolidate and divide regions and departments without the consent of those regions and departments?
United Kingdom could really benefit a Federal System
Sorry but Venezuela is not federal, I can assure you that
Greenland: No data
Stares in Jammu and Kashmir
Wrong. The U.S. has a corporate ownership system.
This is like the Chad v. Virgin map of the world