What is federalism? I am confused. What do we call the Indian government? Is it Union, Federal or Central?
Though only of the world’s countries have federal political systems, their citizens make up per cent of the world’s population. Most of the large countries of the world are federations. Can you notice an exception to this rule in this map? Source: Montreal and Kingston, Handbook of Federal Countries: , McGill-Queen’s University Press, .
Federal political systems Canada United States of America Mexico Pacific Ocean Micronesia Argentina Venezuela Atlantic Ocean Brazil St. Kitts and Nevis Belgium Switzerland Spain Nigeria Ethiopia Comoros Bosnia and Herzegovina Austria Pakistan Russia India Malaysia Australia Indian Ocean South Africa Pacific Ocean United Arab Emirates Germany Let us get back to the contrast between Belgium and Sri Lanka that we saw in the last chapter. You would recall that one of the key changes made in the Constitution of Belgium was to reduce the power of the Central Government and to give these powers to the regional governments. Regional governments existed in Belgium even earlier.
They had their roles and powers. But all these powers were given to these governments and could be withdrawn by the Central Government. The change that took place in was that the regional governments were given constitutional powers that were no longer dependent on the central government. Thus, Belgium shifted from a unitary to a federal form of government.
Sri Lanka continues to be, for all practical purposes, a unitary system where the national government has all the powers. Tamil leaders want Sri Lanka to become a federal system. Federalism is a system of government in which the power is divided between a central authority and various constituent units of the country. Usually, a federation has two levels of government.
One is the government for the entire country that is usually responsible for a few subjects of common national interest. The others are governments at the level of provinces or states that look after much of the day- to-day administering of their state. Both these levels of