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Archive 1 |
Is a kingdom. Does anyone outside of this article's authorship refer to it as a federation? Ojw 13:29, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)
"Furthermore, member-states are separate, sovereign entities under international law and, currently at least, possess a de facto if not explicit de jure right of secession."
The right to leave the EU is an explicit, de jure if you like, privilege. Equally, the EU institutions have the ability to remove, or suspend the membership of a country. This happened in recent times when Austria was suspended due to comments made by a popular politician in Austria.
In fact, these two routes out of the EU are an important part of how EU legislation works. EU directives are designed, and member countries are under no obligation to implement European legislation, except that if they refuse for too long they may be invited to leave the club. It is not unlike being an employee of a company.
"Most of these non-federal characteristics will be abandoned if the proposed constitution is ratified."
This is false. There is, in fact, very little new material in the proposed EU constitution that is not simply a reorganised version of numerous existing treaties. The new material in the consitution doesn't erode member country sovereignty. Most of it pertains to Europe-wide power sharing in the new 25, soon 27 member EU. The jump from 15 to 25 required new power sharing, in particular reducing the influence of Britain, France and Germany.
The reasons for failure to ratify in France and the Netherlands were not a fear of loss of sovereignty and the immediate creation of a federal "superstate", but a number of concrete local problems which made the electorate want to embarrass and frustrate their governments, and, probably in many cases, a feeling that the EU isn't democratic enough. And probably many other reasons. But the constitution doesn't entail the creation of anything resembling a federation -- even if many of its writers would like to create one.
I will make edits based on my comments above after leaving some time for reaction here on the discussion page. Robertbyrne 05:15, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
An example of an asymmetric federation is Canada, where Quebec, and other provinces, are granted enhanced powers in certain matters related to language and culture.
The last time I looked Ottawa was taking extreme care not to give Quebec any powers different from the other provinces. Any suggestions as to what powers are being referred to here? GreatWhiteNortherner 00:23, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
The Tobago House of Assembly is created by an Act of the National Parliament and may be abolished at will. Previously Tobago was a mere county . 201.238.89.45 19:19, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
Since Tanganyika and Zanzibar united to form Tanzania, only Zanzibar has been the only autonomous region - are the new regions really comparable to federal states? - Quiensabe
I've removed the text above. It's informative but was in a section on "Federations and other forms of state". Russia is only mentioned there as a discussion of whether or not it's a true federation. It's not appropriate to give general information about the Russian federal system (or about any other specific federation because there are too many). This information would be better added to Subdivisions of Russia. Iota 16:02, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Some time ago I removed a few passages from the text and tried to give an explanation in the edit history. They've now been restored so, before I take them out again, I think I better give a full explanation of my reasoning here. If my reasoning is faulty then lets discuss the matter further. First of all is this:
This was added to a section called "Federations and other forms of state". The purpose of the section is to explain the difference between federal countries and other kinds of countries. So unitary states, confederations and empires are discussed. However there are also some examples that are difficult to categorise, including modern Russia, the USSR and the EU. For this reason these cases are each given a special section. "Federations and other forms of state" is not the place to include general information on various federations. In fact there are so many federations that I don't think it's appropriate to include general information about any individual federation unless to illustrate special point. But anyway there is no dispute (as far as I'm aware) as to whether or not the Netherlands is a federation so the place for this information is definitely not "Federations and other forms of state".
The passage above was added to "List of unitary states with devolution". The article already has a section on "unitary states" which is the right place for this kind of information. This section is just a list. Otherwise there'll be duplication. It seemed to me when I removed this passage that everything in it either duplicated information already in the "unitary states" section or gave general information about the structures found in individual states. The problem with this general information is that there are many, many unitary states with devolution so it is better just only to give specific examples when illustrating a specific point. After all this is an article about federalism, not devolution. However it's possible this large passage contains some information that might usefully be merged into the "unitary states" section.
These were just added to the list of federations but I'm temporarily removing them. Can anyone confirm that these are actually federations, according to the definition used in the introduction to this article? It's just I can't find any mention of federalism in either of the two country articles. Iota 21:10, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Why is the first occurrence of federalism in the 1st para in bold and unlinked, as though this is the article on federalism, rather than being an unbolded link to federalism? Nurg 00:24, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm always skeptical when an article tries to list important countries. The trouble being, such ideas are clearly highly POV and trying to develop an NPOV list is IMHO impossible. In any case, I have update the list to include Malaysia as I regard it to be important (but then I am partly Malaysian) but notice there are still a few missing which seem rather bizarre.
For example Mexico and Russia have larger populations and GDPs then Australia and I think most people even Australians would agree Russia has a bigger influence on world affairs. Okay whether Russia is a federation is disputed but should we exclude it or list as an important federation but mention it is disputed? Pakistan and a few others (including Malaysia that I added) have larger populations then Australia but smaller GDPs.
One way to solve this problem would be to just list all contempary federations in the introduction rather then important ones. I count 22 so this might be a bit unwieldy. A second would be to abitarily define a criteria to be listed as important.E.g. GDP of over US$300 billion and/or population of over 40 million. Alternative e.g. top 30 of either population or GDP. Of course such criteria, as said, are abitary and will be disputed. A third would be to just leave the list as is and let people add or remove as they wish until and unless an edit war comes up about the inclusion/exclusion of some country. Nil Einne 14:33, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
I'd recommend changing the title of this to "Notable Defunct Federations" as you haven't listed all of them, I'd guess. If French West Africa is included, where is French Equatorial Africa, also a federation? -- Eddylyons 20:02, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Iraq, Sudan, and Saint Kitts and Nevis are constitutionally defined as federal states. — Sesel 22:24, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
I have removed the table of states with devolution to the apropriate page, namely devolution. It seems more logical to list them there than here. C mon 13:10, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Isn't the UK of Great Britain a federation (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland)? -- HolyRomanEmperor 09:04, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
I thought the DRC was a federation since February 2006, am I wrong??
There is currently an article titled Federacy which uses a rather specific definition of the word - it's an asymmetric federation, where the more autonomous parts have constitutionally-guaranteed autonomy. The term appears to have been defined that way by one particular political scientist, and is only used in the literature by people who cite his articles. The edit history of the article is full of discussions over whether some particular state meets the definition or not.
All in all, it appears that the concept of federacy is nothing more than a shorthand for a specific kind of federation, and that it would be better to merge the article into this one, so that comparisons between different sorts of federal arrangements may be more completely examined. I posted a merge tag over at Federacy, and only me and the original author of the article have made any comment in the talk page.
Could some of you take a look over there and tell me if it seems that a merge is worthwhile? Argyriou (talk) 02:07, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
I'd keep them separate. One should not force similar terms to be synonyms. For example in another domain, Episcopalian is a form of Anglican faith, but they are different. Federacy is where there is an autonomy, making an inequality between the member states. Federation is, ideally, equal or fairly representative status. That's not the same. -- Petercorless 11:41, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Keep separate - they are significantly distinct. I agree 100% with Petercorless' definition. Fanx 00:20, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Is venezuela a Federation in the year 2007?
Could I list federations that are not independent countries on the list? -- PaxEquilibrium 00:32, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Saint Kitts and Nevis is on both the federation list and the unitary states list. / Lokal _ Profil 01:52, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
I noticed that " Imperial Federation" was on the list as a defunct federation. It never actually got as far as becoming and actual federation, there was just an associated movement which attempted to create it. I would like to see a section on hypothetical/suggested federations, to include such a thing. The problem is that it would then be difficult to separate "serious" attempts from homourous ones, or even entirely fictitious ones, such as the Federation from Star Trek. Thoughts? samwaltz 14:16, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
One would expect for The Federation (Star Trek) to be mentioned here. Mátyás 13:24, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
I have removed the Malayan Union from the list of defunct federations; the Malayan Union was a unitary state and, indeed, its lack of federalism was one of the main causes of the Malay backlash against it that ultimately led to the formation of the Malayan Federation. I have also clarified the dates of the Malaysian federation in the same list. Monsopiad ( talk) 15:35, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
For me the Regions. For the table: the Communities. Is it not a difficult question? For Flanders, it is evident that the Community is more important but not for Wallonia and Brussels. The whole wallonian and french-speaking press is stressing on the importance of the Regions and about a negociation with Brussels, Wallonia and Flanders. Which solution for the table? José Fontaine ( talk) 22:39, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
What about brazilian municipalities? The Constitution of 1988 includes municipalities as members of federation. There are 5.561 municipalities over all the country today. It's a unique three levelled model and I think the article must to mention about.
Certainly the original Union of South Africa was a federation, wasn't it? It was a union of four separate British colonies in the same way as Australia and Canada were, wasn't it? I'm not sure when it would have stopped being one. 1961? 1994? john k ( talk) 03:24, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
Belgium is a monarchy, and a monarchy can't be a federation by definition (with some exceptions such as UAE, Malaysia and other similar states with sub-national monarchies) since sovereignity is ultimately vested into the monarch. Its regions have a high degree of autonomy, and the country could be descrived as a de-facto federation. Nevertheless it is constitutionally a unitary state.
The introduction claims that "Austria and its Bundesländer was a unitary state with administrative divisions that became federated". This seems to be wrong. It appears that only time when Austria was unitary was during the Third Reich. In fact, the Landtage of the Kronländer of Cisleithania had certain legislative competences, as stated at [4], although they needed approval by the Kaiser. Austria-Hungary is listed as a former federation on this page, but I assume this is meant to refer to Austro-Hungarian dualism. In fact, the comparison between German and Austrian federalism reverses the historical pedigree of the respective structure: While most of the German states where created in their current form after World War II, the Austrian ones (and the borders between them) typically go back many centuries, even before the time when they were acquired by the Habsburgs. Martg76 ( talk) 22:07, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
Which shows not the least proof for your view and ignores the proven fact that the Austrian federal government officially uses the term federal provinces.
So you really think you know better what Austria's authorities define, and how, than they themselves ( here and there, aso.)?
--
212.17.89.244 (
talk)
12:19, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
So you put the quote from the homepage of Austria's mostly just representative head of state (with some competences for the extremely improbable case of a national political crisis) above that from the homepage of the head of the country's leading authoritative body, the federal chancellor - the latter source in your words being just some homepage, like I'd been quoting Bild, The Sun, or the New York Post. And you put the letter of some unknown and not necessarily term-codifying constitution text passages above generally understandable and confusion-avoiding everyday word usage. Were this a British discussion, then you'd probably put the Queen's word (quoting some medieval papers) above the British parliament's or government's or prime minister's terminology, just because it suits your Monk-ish approach of solely formal order better. Practical, general comprehensibility is not your concern - in this respect, you even ignore Wikipedia's fundamental mission.
You merely can tell the purpuseful term federal provinces is not the only one, but you still fail to prove the term wrong or at least its lesser importance. And you leave inconvenient objections like the Herbert Frahm example unanswered. In your world, the burden of proof is on everyone else, not on you.
--
212.17.89.244 (
talk)
15:36, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
Answer: see Talk:States_of_Austria, containing official usage proof of the term federal provinces
Someone keeps editing the Defunct list to call the two large communist federations "nominal federations". What is the point of this? Nominal federation would imply that the name of the state would indicate it was a federation. Whilst this would be true for Yugoslavia, The USSR's title simply states "Union", which implies it was a federation as much as the "United" in the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", the "United Republic of Tanzania" and the "United Arab Republic" would imply that these states were federations with a federal (rather than devolved) structure. Bias against the USSR and Yugoslavia or any other state isn't supposed to be allowed in these articles, so pronouncing these states as "nominal" federations, when by their constitutions and governmental structure they did display some federal features, will only confuse the issue of what is or is not a federation. Just as there are different types of monarchies, so are there are different types of republics, unitary states, theocracies, federations and confederations (which brings up the point that if the USSR and Yugoslavia are nominal federations, then the CSA isn't a federation at all by it's very name). Nobody says the UK is a "nominal monarchy", but everyone knows it is a constitutional monarchy. So, since the article itself acknowledges the blurriness of what exactly constitutes a federation, can we please not categorize certain states with vague, pointless labels.
—Preceding
unsigned comment added by
64.39.133.133 (
talk)
14:25, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
You are correct thatthe definition of a federation is not vague, sorry. However the article does note the wide variation that one can have in federal states. The components of the USSR had their own local governments modelled along lines similar to that of the national government with Supreme Soviets of "place republic here" being the main legislative body of the republic. Also each republic (and each autonomous republic) sent a given number of deputies (and this was written into the constitution) to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Whilst for much of the USSR's existence it would be hard to see the republics as self-governing at all, the fact that the Communist Party controlled everything from the national government right down through the local government and below, makes it more difficult to separate the structure of the state/USSR (which was federal) from the structure and tendencies of the Communist Party (which was towards being authoritarian and thus centralized). If either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party was the only legal party in the USA, then it would be a state with self-governing components, only that all of the components were governed by the same party with mostly the same ideals and tendencies. Also, all the Soviet republics showed just how self-governing they were by the late 1980s and 1990s when the various republic governments began declaring that their laws superceded those of the Union. Had it been truly centralized, then the Communist "Union" government in theory could have abolished the republics (although probably risking massive unrest if it did so) or the CPSU could have done away with republics at any one of the numerous times that it radically changed or amended or at times rewrote the Soviet Constitution, but it did not do so. It is certain that the USSR and SFR Yugoslavia were unusual federations, but federations can range from being loose (such as those defunct African ones like Mali) to strong (such as the USA).
SFR Yugoslavia was also unusual, however, I have read in Time magazine and other sources about the variance between the republics of SFR Yugoslavia (for example, apparently Serbia and Belgrade in particular, was at times more liberal than Slovenia). Also communist Yugoslavia had modelled it's constitution on that of the Soviet Union's and each constituent socialist republic had its own constitution, supreme court, parliament, president or premier and prime minister and president of the communist party. So in essence, I would say that, yes, communist Yugoslavia was much the same as the Soviet Union.
I'm interested in the history of federations, especially that of the development of federations in the Americas prior to European conquest. Is that not relevant to "federation"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.64.176.75 ( talk) 06:30, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Hey. I contributed for the article with a section explaining the few diferences of federations and other autonomous system (devolution, federacy, free association), but they were reverted because they are "better covered eslewhere". I agree, but I just think that being better covered elsewhere doesn't mean the information is not relevant for that article. It was a good explanation of why systems that can be seen as federations are not quite so. What do you think? Gvogas ( talk) 14:49, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Why doesn't the list include Nepal. Is the country not federal anymore? Night w ( talk) 09:39, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
"The purpose can be the will to solve mutual problems or 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, the latter with Germany" (in the section "Federations and other forms of state"). The political system of Germany has been determined by the Allies after WWII. The Allies founded the (federal) states in Germany. These states were part of the administrative division of the allied occupation zones, they haven't been created to form the base of a nation state for an ethnicity (depending on definition, the term "Ethnic German" also includes other German-speaking countries, especially concerning the German Empire: [ [7]]. The foundation of a federation in Germany is based on an allied proposal, only the details have been determined by local politicans; the German constitution had to be approved by the allies. The only state based on the goal of creating a nation state was the German Empire (1871-1918), but many German-speaking states finally remained outside the empire, developed their own national consciousness and do not consider themselves "German" anymore. (Luxembourg, the German-speaking part of Belgium, Lichtenstein and large parts of Austria had been members of the Holy Roman Empire and the German Confederation for many centuries. After WWI and WWII , people living there disassociated themselves from neighbouring Germany as much as possible, because the global reputation of Germany - including the language - had reached an extremely low level.)-- Johnny2323 ( talk) 09:10, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
The powers the Spanish Autonomous Communities are listed in the country's Constitution, which unlike the British constitution, is entrenched and cannot be easily modified. Furthermore, the Constitution states that the process that must be followed in order to change a 'Statute of Autonomy', shall be set up in the Autonomous Community's Statute of Autonomy.
All the Statutes of Autonomy state that the approval of the regional parliament (in addition the the national parliament) is required in order to modify the Statute. So in practice, it is as hard to take away power from the communities than in all federations but the US (which probably has the most difficult to modify constitution), so the Autonomous Communities' powers cannot be unilaterally revoked by the central government/parliament and the communities don't exist at the central government's pleasure. And the fact that regional power is asymmetric does not determine whether if Spain is a federation or not, as there are many asymmetrical federations/federacies, such as Canada or Russian.
What make Spain a unitary state and not a federation is that an Autonomous community cannot unilaterally change its Statute of Autonomy, it always requires the natinal parliament's final approval. This is not the case in federations where subunits can freely change their constitutions (with few exceptions such as federal territories) as long as they are consistent with the Federal constitution.
I'm not saying Spain is a federation, I am just saying the reasons why it is not are quite different from the ones stated in the article. --Adrián D. V. M. 11:03, 8 April 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Adrián V.M. ( talk • contribs)
Somalia has never been a functioning federation; since its unitary state government collapsed in 1992, no government (and in particular no federation) has controlled a significant fraction of the country. The TFG in particular has never even controlled enough territory to subdivide into sovereign entities as required by the definition of a federation. So I'm not sure why it's listed in the section on failed/former federations at the end. Miraculouschaos ( talk) 20:37, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
By the definition given in the first paragraph of the article, how do we call the U.S. a federation? The 'federal' government of the U.S. is largely its own animal, and it is that government that is sovereign. Each state is not sovereign. Am I wrong? -- D. F. Schmidt (talk) 06:09, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
I am confused. I thought the United States was a Republic, but this article does not help me get less confused. The Republic doesn't help, either. Should this article address this confusion, or am I the only one? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alohahi ( talk • contribs) 08:03, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
The image is outdated, as South Sudan is independent from Sudan. -- 46.226.188.197 ( talk) 08:26, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
In the section 1.3.1 regarding Confederation, there is this quote:
"By definition, the difference between a confederation and a federation is that the membership of the member states in a confederation is voluntary, while the membership in a federation is not."
Yet, in the section 1.6 on the Soviet Union, there is this quote:
"Nonetheless, with the introduction of free, competitive elections in the final years of the Soviet Union, the Union's theoretically federal structure became a reality in practice; this occurred only for a brief interim period, as the elected governments of many republics demanded their right to secede and became independent states. Thus the Soviet Union's de jure federal structure played a key role in its dissolution."
This is inconsistent.
Besides, the voluntary/involuntary nature varies with admission and secession. For instance, in the US (which is a federation), states are admitted voluntarily into the Union; both the state wishes to join the Union and the Union must also be willing to admit the state. However, once a state has joined the Union, it may not leave it even if it wants to. This is what the US Civil War was about.
Is the distinction between federation and confederation significant enough to be stated in the Introduction? Regards, PeterEasthope ( talk) 03:31, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
This clause makes no sense: "...if the province government does not want do it rules additionally the national constitution." Can someone please clarify it? Caeruleancentaur ( talk) 18:32, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Most of the list is in alphabetic order by its geographical designation (e.g. C for Federal Republic of Cameroon, D for Federated Dutch Republic). Confederate States of America, however, is sorted as starting with 'Con' instead of 'Ame', its first geographical designation. I don't really expect this to be controversial but as it is about politics I still wanted to mention it here while correcting it. PinkShinyRose ( talk) 23:42, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
In the introduction, there is a rather unnecessary and dumb try of illustrating and giving an example for the content of this article ("Germany was and is, neighbour Austria was not but became, other neighbour France never was and is not a federation, etc."). That is a bit like stating in an article about bananas that "they belong to the fruits and are yellow, while other fruits are not yellow, like strawberrys (which are red) and blueberrys (which are blue)". Another, more important thing is, that in case the Germany-Austria-France-example will be kept here, there still is in error within it: it is referred to Austria's first level subdivisions as "bundesländer", and to Germany ones as "länder" - well that's just nothing but wrong, because in both Germany and Austria they are both the same called "bundesländer", it's the very same term. I could imagine that the author of the named example got in trouble because of the want to compare Germany and Austria but discovering that the subdisvisions of both countries are called the same so that that would be irritating for readers, so maybe due to this the German "bundesländer" were shortened to "länder", while the Austrian's just was not - what is just for random and not encyclopedic, because as a reader who would not have not known, I would have thought that the subdivisions in Germany and Austria are called different - what is not the case, as said. Of course in Germany sometimes, in talks about inner-German-topics and when referring to the "bundesländer", they sometimes are shortened to "länder" (as it is in Austria, too), but this is clearly a " 'länder' ", not a real term, also because of the fact, that "länder" in German in 99% of all cases are meaning and referring to other states, countries in the world, because that's what the term stands for very mainly - as it is in Austria, too. So in the example the Germany's and Austria's subdivisions must both be called "bundesländer" ("...Germany's bundesländer and Austria's bundesländer...") - I could try to clearify this in the artcle... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.142.23.59 ( talk) 12:12, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
Then why on Earth does the German Basic law only ever use Länder, never Bundesländer? In fact the Wikipedia article on länder says that bundesländer is the official term in austria and länder is in Germany. 78.147.45.170 ( talk) 20:23, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
It appears to me that the German länder have some prominent characteristics of states within a federation, such as independence in financial management and economic policy — certainly the most independence of sub-national states in western Europe and yet they barely rate a mention. Grant65 (Talk) 04:53, July 24, 2005 (UTC)
What I'd like to note is to remove 3 states from the list and instead list them as "autonomous cities" in "minor federative units" (Hamburg, Bremen, Berlin). —Preceding unsigned comment added by NsMn ( talk • contribs) 12:49, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
Switzerland is shown in the uppermost map as a federation and later as an example of a confederation. To my knowledge,it is a federation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.252.213.17 ( talk) 21:06, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Russia is not a merely "de-facto federations" (this statement meant to imply that officially it is unitary?), but it is a full federation (per art. 1, art. 5 of the Constitution). Yes, it is slightly more centralized, than, for example, United States, but Russia is still a federation. Also, since 2012 heads of federal subjects again became directly-elected. Seryo93 ( talk) 10:36, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
Just because it is in the Russian Constitution, doesn't make it so, one must look at how it is being implemented in the real world; that reality is Russia is currently a nationalistic authoritarian Dictatorship, ruled by Vladimir Putin with an iron fist. Freedom House has listed Russia as being "not free" since 2005(1), while the Economist Intelligence Unit has rated Russia as "authoritarian" since 2011(2). You say, "since 2012 heads of federal subjects again became directly-elected", ya, as long as they are approved by Vladimir Putin, if not they are arrested or die by "accident", forget a de-facto federation, it is a de-facto Democracy, Russia merely pretends to be a free market democracy, while in reality is a full fledged Dictatorship; even political scientist, Larry Diamond stated in 2015 that "no serious scholar would consider Russia today a democracy"(3).
1)"Russia | Country report | Freedom in the World" 2005, freedomhouse.org. 2)"Index of democracy by Economist Intelligence Unit". 2011, The Economist. 3)"Facing Up to the Democratic Recession". Diamond, Larry (January 1, 2015), Journal of Democracy.
The map in the lead is outdated. It doesn't display South Sudan. -- Mika1h ( talk) 22:35, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
a minor issue, but as it stands a confederate state is listed as a subsection of unitary state. I don't know enough politics to know if this is correct, but it seems they should be separate Pjbeierle ( talk) 16:38, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
I can't believe federal states are seperately listed here under Federal Republics and Federal Monarchies.
Whether a country is a "republic" or a "monarchy" has absolutely nothing to do with its status as a federation. India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia and other states switched from being monarchies to republics and this had no bearing on their status as federations. Any modification to their federal status was dealt with in separate legislation.
Can you imagine the membership of the European Union or the United Nations or the OAS or ASEAN being listed under two separate republic and monarchy lists!
So why this meaningless separate isting here?
I propose that the two lists be fused into one list under the heading Federal States.-- Lubiesque ( talk) 19:13, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
<!-- -->
) to the respective tables of those articles, saying
PLEASE MAKE SURE ANY CHANGES HERE ARE REFLECTED IN THE TABLE IN Federation § Contemporary
I understand that the United States is federated by "50 states", but while we do have a Federal District and territories, those, I think, are not federating units, major or otherwise. Are those not equivalent to subdivisions of the central government (acting as a unitary state)? Yes, each territory and the federal district has home rule, but I believe they exist at the suffrance of the federal government, and they have no voice in the federal government. So my proposal is to remove those from the list, or perhaps (if appropriate) rename that column as "organized subdivisions" or some such. D. F. Schmidt ( talk) 21:42, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
Hello. I argue with one user in russian wikipedia about Bosnia and Herzegovina. He say it is federal state, because the most of sources confirm this ( Great Russian Encyclopedia, for example). I use primary source ( Dayton Agreement) as argument for unitary bosnian state. You know there are not "federal", "federation", "federate" and other terms in this agreement for total Bosnia and Herzagovina. Term of "federation" used for Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina only. There are not such terms in Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina too. Also I would like to pay attention that there are not institutes of the power in Bosnia in which name to contain the term "federal". There are not any "Federal agency", "Federal service", "Federal court" and other.
And besides, Bosnia doesn't even correspond to an elementary sign of a federal state - existence of the Upper House of parliament consisting of representatives of territorial subjects of the federation. Instead, three peoples in the Upper House are equally presented, they are Serbians, Muslims ("Bosniaks") and Croats. Their deputies aren't even representatives of Entities (then it would be possible to speak about asymmetric federation), they are representatives of different ethnic groups. There is no real upper house of parliament as it has to be in a federal state.
Nevertheless some sources contain information that Bosnia is the unitary state. I would like to pay attention to opinion of Richard Holbrooke who is one of authors of the Dayton agreement. In particular, this book (p. 18) contains the reference to Holbrooke's book. -- Nicolay Sidorov ( talk) 14:58, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
The list of long-form titles seems slightly misconceived to me, though I may be making a bigger deal out of it than it's worth. In order for the presence of this list in this article to make sense, it ought to relate to the article's topic. So I would expect its point to be that "here are the different ways in which these federations indicate in their full titles that they are compositions of smaller entities". Otherwise, it's as gratuitous having this section as it would be to have a list grouping the countries by their official national birds.
That being the case:
I propose:
The title of the section could be changed to "Federal status reflected in long form titles".
I suppose we could also discuss the distinction between the countries that are wikilinked in this listing and those that aren't. Largoplazo ( talk) 15:31, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
"It is often argued that federal states where the central government has the constitutional authority to suspend a constituent state's government by invoking gross mismanagement or civil unrest, or to adopt national legislation that overrides or infringe on the constituent states' powers by invoking the central government's constitutional authority to ensure "peace and good government" or to implement obligations contracted under an international treaty, are not truly federal states."
Hi, new to editing and not really familiar with this topic. But even I can tell that this sentence is hard to read due to how long it takes to make its main point. I suggest rewording it as such:
"It is often argued that federal states are not truly federal states when their central government has the constitutional authority to do the following: 1)suspend a constituent state's government by invoking gross mismanagement or civil unrest, 2) adopt national legislation that overrides or infringes on the constituent states' powers."
I don't see a way to edit the beginning of an article myself, and I don't want to step on anyone's toes, so I thought I'd at least mention it here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DaveMusica76 ( talk • contribs) 15:02, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I propose merging
Federated state into
Federation. A federated state is just a unit forming part of a federation. The content can easily be explained in the context of
Federation, and a merger would not cause any article-size or
weighting problems. --
Alvdal (
talk)
20:34, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 |
Is a kingdom. Does anyone outside of this article's authorship refer to it as a federation? Ojw 13:29, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)
"Furthermore, member-states are separate, sovereign entities under international law and, currently at least, possess a de facto if not explicit de jure right of secession."
The right to leave the EU is an explicit, de jure if you like, privilege. Equally, the EU institutions have the ability to remove, or suspend the membership of a country. This happened in recent times when Austria was suspended due to comments made by a popular politician in Austria.
In fact, these two routes out of the EU are an important part of how EU legislation works. EU directives are designed, and member countries are under no obligation to implement European legislation, except that if they refuse for too long they may be invited to leave the club. It is not unlike being an employee of a company.
"Most of these non-federal characteristics will be abandoned if the proposed constitution is ratified."
This is false. There is, in fact, very little new material in the proposed EU constitution that is not simply a reorganised version of numerous existing treaties. The new material in the consitution doesn't erode member country sovereignty. Most of it pertains to Europe-wide power sharing in the new 25, soon 27 member EU. The jump from 15 to 25 required new power sharing, in particular reducing the influence of Britain, France and Germany.
The reasons for failure to ratify in France and the Netherlands were not a fear of loss of sovereignty and the immediate creation of a federal "superstate", but a number of concrete local problems which made the electorate want to embarrass and frustrate their governments, and, probably in many cases, a feeling that the EU isn't democratic enough. And probably many other reasons. But the constitution doesn't entail the creation of anything resembling a federation -- even if many of its writers would like to create one.
I will make edits based on my comments above after leaving some time for reaction here on the discussion page. Robertbyrne 05:15, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
An example of an asymmetric federation is Canada, where Quebec, and other provinces, are granted enhanced powers in certain matters related to language and culture.
The last time I looked Ottawa was taking extreme care not to give Quebec any powers different from the other provinces. Any suggestions as to what powers are being referred to here? GreatWhiteNortherner 00:23, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
The Tobago House of Assembly is created by an Act of the National Parliament and may be abolished at will. Previously Tobago was a mere county . 201.238.89.45 19:19, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
Since Tanganyika and Zanzibar united to form Tanzania, only Zanzibar has been the only autonomous region - are the new regions really comparable to federal states? - Quiensabe
I've removed the text above. It's informative but was in a section on "Federations and other forms of state". Russia is only mentioned there as a discussion of whether or not it's a true federation. It's not appropriate to give general information about the Russian federal system (or about any other specific federation because there are too many). This information would be better added to Subdivisions of Russia. Iota 16:02, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Some time ago I removed a few passages from the text and tried to give an explanation in the edit history. They've now been restored so, before I take them out again, I think I better give a full explanation of my reasoning here. If my reasoning is faulty then lets discuss the matter further. First of all is this:
This was added to a section called "Federations and other forms of state". The purpose of the section is to explain the difference between federal countries and other kinds of countries. So unitary states, confederations and empires are discussed. However there are also some examples that are difficult to categorise, including modern Russia, the USSR and the EU. For this reason these cases are each given a special section. "Federations and other forms of state" is not the place to include general information on various federations. In fact there are so many federations that I don't think it's appropriate to include general information about any individual federation unless to illustrate special point. But anyway there is no dispute (as far as I'm aware) as to whether or not the Netherlands is a federation so the place for this information is definitely not "Federations and other forms of state".
The passage above was added to "List of unitary states with devolution". The article already has a section on "unitary states" which is the right place for this kind of information. This section is just a list. Otherwise there'll be duplication. It seemed to me when I removed this passage that everything in it either duplicated information already in the "unitary states" section or gave general information about the structures found in individual states. The problem with this general information is that there are many, many unitary states with devolution so it is better just only to give specific examples when illustrating a specific point. After all this is an article about federalism, not devolution. However it's possible this large passage contains some information that might usefully be merged into the "unitary states" section.
These were just added to the list of federations but I'm temporarily removing them. Can anyone confirm that these are actually federations, according to the definition used in the introduction to this article? It's just I can't find any mention of federalism in either of the two country articles. Iota 21:10, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Why is the first occurrence of federalism in the 1st para in bold and unlinked, as though this is the article on federalism, rather than being an unbolded link to federalism? Nurg 00:24, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm always skeptical when an article tries to list important countries. The trouble being, such ideas are clearly highly POV and trying to develop an NPOV list is IMHO impossible. In any case, I have update the list to include Malaysia as I regard it to be important (but then I am partly Malaysian) but notice there are still a few missing which seem rather bizarre.
For example Mexico and Russia have larger populations and GDPs then Australia and I think most people even Australians would agree Russia has a bigger influence on world affairs. Okay whether Russia is a federation is disputed but should we exclude it or list as an important federation but mention it is disputed? Pakistan and a few others (including Malaysia that I added) have larger populations then Australia but smaller GDPs.
One way to solve this problem would be to just list all contempary federations in the introduction rather then important ones. I count 22 so this might be a bit unwieldy. A second would be to abitarily define a criteria to be listed as important.E.g. GDP of over US$300 billion and/or population of over 40 million. Alternative e.g. top 30 of either population or GDP. Of course such criteria, as said, are abitary and will be disputed. A third would be to just leave the list as is and let people add or remove as they wish until and unless an edit war comes up about the inclusion/exclusion of some country. Nil Einne 14:33, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
I'd recommend changing the title of this to "Notable Defunct Federations" as you haven't listed all of them, I'd guess. If French West Africa is included, where is French Equatorial Africa, also a federation? -- Eddylyons 20:02, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Iraq, Sudan, and Saint Kitts and Nevis are constitutionally defined as federal states. — Sesel 22:24, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
I have removed the table of states with devolution to the apropriate page, namely devolution. It seems more logical to list them there than here. C mon 13:10, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Isn't the UK of Great Britain a federation (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland)? -- HolyRomanEmperor 09:04, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
I thought the DRC was a federation since February 2006, am I wrong??
There is currently an article titled Federacy which uses a rather specific definition of the word - it's an asymmetric federation, where the more autonomous parts have constitutionally-guaranteed autonomy. The term appears to have been defined that way by one particular political scientist, and is only used in the literature by people who cite his articles. The edit history of the article is full of discussions over whether some particular state meets the definition or not.
All in all, it appears that the concept of federacy is nothing more than a shorthand for a specific kind of federation, and that it would be better to merge the article into this one, so that comparisons between different sorts of federal arrangements may be more completely examined. I posted a merge tag over at Federacy, and only me and the original author of the article have made any comment in the talk page.
Could some of you take a look over there and tell me if it seems that a merge is worthwhile? Argyriou (talk) 02:07, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
I'd keep them separate. One should not force similar terms to be synonyms. For example in another domain, Episcopalian is a form of Anglican faith, but they are different. Federacy is where there is an autonomy, making an inequality between the member states. Federation is, ideally, equal or fairly representative status. That's not the same. -- Petercorless 11:41, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Keep separate - they are significantly distinct. I agree 100% with Petercorless' definition. Fanx 00:20, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Is venezuela a Federation in the year 2007?
Could I list federations that are not independent countries on the list? -- PaxEquilibrium 00:32, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Saint Kitts and Nevis is on both the federation list and the unitary states list. / Lokal _ Profil 01:52, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
I noticed that " Imperial Federation" was on the list as a defunct federation. It never actually got as far as becoming and actual federation, there was just an associated movement which attempted to create it. I would like to see a section on hypothetical/suggested federations, to include such a thing. The problem is that it would then be difficult to separate "serious" attempts from homourous ones, or even entirely fictitious ones, such as the Federation from Star Trek. Thoughts? samwaltz 14:16, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
One would expect for The Federation (Star Trek) to be mentioned here. Mátyás 13:24, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
I have removed the Malayan Union from the list of defunct federations; the Malayan Union was a unitary state and, indeed, its lack of federalism was one of the main causes of the Malay backlash against it that ultimately led to the formation of the Malayan Federation. I have also clarified the dates of the Malaysian federation in the same list. Monsopiad ( talk) 15:35, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
For me the Regions. For the table: the Communities. Is it not a difficult question? For Flanders, it is evident that the Community is more important but not for Wallonia and Brussels. The whole wallonian and french-speaking press is stressing on the importance of the Regions and about a negociation with Brussels, Wallonia and Flanders. Which solution for the table? José Fontaine ( talk) 22:39, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
What about brazilian municipalities? The Constitution of 1988 includes municipalities as members of federation. There are 5.561 municipalities over all the country today. It's a unique three levelled model and I think the article must to mention about.
Certainly the original Union of South Africa was a federation, wasn't it? It was a union of four separate British colonies in the same way as Australia and Canada were, wasn't it? I'm not sure when it would have stopped being one. 1961? 1994? john k ( talk) 03:24, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
Belgium is a monarchy, and a monarchy can't be a federation by definition (with some exceptions such as UAE, Malaysia and other similar states with sub-national monarchies) since sovereignity is ultimately vested into the monarch. Its regions have a high degree of autonomy, and the country could be descrived as a de-facto federation. Nevertheless it is constitutionally a unitary state.
The introduction claims that "Austria and its Bundesländer was a unitary state with administrative divisions that became federated". This seems to be wrong. It appears that only time when Austria was unitary was during the Third Reich. In fact, the Landtage of the Kronländer of Cisleithania had certain legislative competences, as stated at [4], although they needed approval by the Kaiser. Austria-Hungary is listed as a former federation on this page, but I assume this is meant to refer to Austro-Hungarian dualism. In fact, the comparison between German and Austrian federalism reverses the historical pedigree of the respective structure: While most of the German states where created in their current form after World War II, the Austrian ones (and the borders between them) typically go back many centuries, even before the time when they were acquired by the Habsburgs. Martg76 ( talk) 22:07, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
Which shows not the least proof for your view and ignores the proven fact that the Austrian federal government officially uses the term federal provinces.
So you really think you know better what Austria's authorities define, and how, than they themselves ( here and there, aso.)?
--
212.17.89.244 (
talk)
12:19, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
So you put the quote from the homepage of Austria's mostly just representative head of state (with some competences for the extremely improbable case of a national political crisis) above that from the homepage of the head of the country's leading authoritative body, the federal chancellor - the latter source in your words being just some homepage, like I'd been quoting Bild, The Sun, or the New York Post. And you put the letter of some unknown and not necessarily term-codifying constitution text passages above generally understandable and confusion-avoiding everyday word usage. Were this a British discussion, then you'd probably put the Queen's word (quoting some medieval papers) above the British parliament's or government's or prime minister's terminology, just because it suits your Monk-ish approach of solely formal order better. Practical, general comprehensibility is not your concern - in this respect, you even ignore Wikipedia's fundamental mission.
You merely can tell the purpuseful term federal provinces is not the only one, but you still fail to prove the term wrong or at least its lesser importance. And you leave inconvenient objections like the Herbert Frahm example unanswered. In your world, the burden of proof is on everyone else, not on you.
--
212.17.89.244 (
talk)
15:36, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
Answer: see Talk:States_of_Austria, containing official usage proof of the term federal provinces
Someone keeps editing the Defunct list to call the two large communist federations "nominal federations". What is the point of this? Nominal federation would imply that the name of the state would indicate it was a federation. Whilst this would be true for Yugoslavia, The USSR's title simply states "Union", which implies it was a federation as much as the "United" in the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", the "United Republic of Tanzania" and the "United Arab Republic" would imply that these states were federations with a federal (rather than devolved) structure. Bias against the USSR and Yugoslavia or any other state isn't supposed to be allowed in these articles, so pronouncing these states as "nominal" federations, when by their constitutions and governmental structure they did display some federal features, will only confuse the issue of what is or is not a federation. Just as there are different types of monarchies, so are there are different types of republics, unitary states, theocracies, federations and confederations (which brings up the point that if the USSR and Yugoslavia are nominal federations, then the CSA isn't a federation at all by it's very name). Nobody says the UK is a "nominal monarchy", but everyone knows it is a constitutional monarchy. So, since the article itself acknowledges the blurriness of what exactly constitutes a federation, can we please not categorize certain states with vague, pointless labels.
—Preceding
unsigned comment added by
64.39.133.133 (
talk)
14:25, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
You are correct thatthe definition of a federation is not vague, sorry. However the article does note the wide variation that one can have in federal states. The components of the USSR had their own local governments modelled along lines similar to that of the national government with Supreme Soviets of "place republic here" being the main legislative body of the republic. Also each republic (and each autonomous republic) sent a given number of deputies (and this was written into the constitution) to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Whilst for much of the USSR's existence it would be hard to see the republics as self-governing at all, the fact that the Communist Party controlled everything from the national government right down through the local government and below, makes it more difficult to separate the structure of the state/USSR (which was federal) from the structure and tendencies of the Communist Party (which was towards being authoritarian and thus centralized). If either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party was the only legal party in the USA, then it would be a state with self-governing components, only that all of the components were governed by the same party with mostly the same ideals and tendencies. Also, all the Soviet republics showed just how self-governing they were by the late 1980s and 1990s when the various republic governments began declaring that their laws superceded those of the Union. Had it been truly centralized, then the Communist "Union" government in theory could have abolished the republics (although probably risking massive unrest if it did so) or the CPSU could have done away with republics at any one of the numerous times that it radically changed or amended or at times rewrote the Soviet Constitution, but it did not do so. It is certain that the USSR and SFR Yugoslavia were unusual federations, but federations can range from being loose (such as those defunct African ones like Mali) to strong (such as the USA).
SFR Yugoslavia was also unusual, however, I have read in Time magazine and other sources about the variance between the republics of SFR Yugoslavia (for example, apparently Serbia and Belgrade in particular, was at times more liberal than Slovenia). Also communist Yugoslavia had modelled it's constitution on that of the Soviet Union's and each constituent socialist republic had its own constitution, supreme court, parliament, president or premier and prime minister and president of the communist party. So in essence, I would say that, yes, communist Yugoslavia was much the same as the Soviet Union.
I'm interested in the history of federations, especially that of the development of federations in the Americas prior to European conquest. Is that not relevant to "federation"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.64.176.75 ( talk) 06:30, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Hey. I contributed for the article with a section explaining the few diferences of federations and other autonomous system (devolution, federacy, free association), but they were reverted because they are "better covered eslewhere". I agree, but I just think that being better covered elsewhere doesn't mean the information is not relevant for that article. It was a good explanation of why systems that can be seen as federations are not quite so. What do you think? Gvogas ( talk) 14:49, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Why doesn't the list include Nepal. Is the country not federal anymore? Night w ( talk) 09:39, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
"The purpose can be the will to solve mutual problems or 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, the latter with Germany" (in the section "Federations and other forms of state"). The political system of Germany has been determined by the Allies after WWII. The Allies founded the (federal) states in Germany. These states were part of the administrative division of the allied occupation zones, they haven't been created to form the base of a nation state for an ethnicity (depending on definition, the term "Ethnic German" also includes other German-speaking countries, especially concerning the German Empire: [ [7]]. The foundation of a federation in Germany is based on an allied proposal, only the details have been determined by local politicans; the German constitution had to be approved by the allies. The only state based on the goal of creating a nation state was the German Empire (1871-1918), but many German-speaking states finally remained outside the empire, developed their own national consciousness and do not consider themselves "German" anymore. (Luxembourg, the German-speaking part of Belgium, Lichtenstein and large parts of Austria had been members of the Holy Roman Empire and the German Confederation for many centuries. After WWI and WWII , people living there disassociated themselves from neighbouring Germany as much as possible, because the global reputation of Germany - including the language - had reached an extremely low level.)-- Johnny2323 ( talk) 09:10, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
The powers the Spanish Autonomous Communities are listed in the country's Constitution, which unlike the British constitution, is entrenched and cannot be easily modified. Furthermore, the Constitution states that the process that must be followed in order to change a 'Statute of Autonomy', shall be set up in the Autonomous Community's Statute of Autonomy.
All the Statutes of Autonomy state that the approval of the regional parliament (in addition the the national parliament) is required in order to modify the Statute. So in practice, it is as hard to take away power from the communities than in all federations but the US (which probably has the most difficult to modify constitution), so the Autonomous Communities' powers cannot be unilaterally revoked by the central government/parliament and the communities don't exist at the central government's pleasure. And the fact that regional power is asymmetric does not determine whether if Spain is a federation or not, as there are many asymmetrical federations/federacies, such as Canada or Russian.
What make Spain a unitary state and not a federation is that an Autonomous community cannot unilaterally change its Statute of Autonomy, it always requires the natinal parliament's final approval. This is not the case in federations where subunits can freely change their constitutions (with few exceptions such as federal territories) as long as they are consistent with the Federal constitution.
I'm not saying Spain is a federation, I am just saying the reasons why it is not are quite different from the ones stated in the article. --Adrián D. V. M. 11:03, 8 April 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Adrián V.M. ( talk • contribs)
Somalia has never been a functioning federation; since its unitary state government collapsed in 1992, no government (and in particular no federation) has controlled a significant fraction of the country. The TFG in particular has never even controlled enough territory to subdivide into sovereign entities as required by the definition of a federation. So I'm not sure why it's listed in the section on failed/former federations at the end. Miraculouschaos ( talk) 20:37, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
By the definition given in the first paragraph of the article, how do we call the U.S. a federation? The 'federal' government of the U.S. is largely its own animal, and it is that government that is sovereign. Each state is not sovereign. Am I wrong? -- D. F. Schmidt (talk) 06:09, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
I am confused. I thought the United States was a Republic, but this article does not help me get less confused. The Republic doesn't help, either. Should this article address this confusion, or am I the only one? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alohahi ( talk • contribs) 08:03, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
The image is outdated, as South Sudan is independent from Sudan. -- 46.226.188.197 ( talk) 08:26, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
In the section 1.3.1 regarding Confederation, there is this quote:
"By definition, the difference between a confederation and a federation is that the membership of the member states in a confederation is voluntary, while the membership in a federation is not."
Yet, in the section 1.6 on the Soviet Union, there is this quote:
"Nonetheless, with the introduction of free, competitive elections in the final years of the Soviet Union, the Union's theoretically federal structure became a reality in practice; this occurred only for a brief interim period, as the elected governments of many republics demanded their right to secede and became independent states. Thus the Soviet Union's de jure federal structure played a key role in its dissolution."
This is inconsistent.
Besides, the voluntary/involuntary nature varies with admission and secession. For instance, in the US (which is a federation), states are admitted voluntarily into the Union; both the state wishes to join the Union and the Union must also be willing to admit the state. However, once a state has joined the Union, it may not leave it even if it wants to. This is what the US Civil War was about.
Is the distinction between federation and confederation significant enough to be stated in the Introduction? Regards, PeterEasthope ( talk) 03:31, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
This clause makes no sense: "...if the province government does not want do it rules additionally the national constitution." Can someone please clarify it? Caeruleancentaur ( talk) 18:32, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Most of the list is in alphabetic order by its geographical designation (e.g. C for Federal Republic of Cameroon, D for Federated Dutch Republic). Confederate States of America, however, is sorted as starting with 'Con' instead of 'Ame', its first geographical designation. I don't really expect this to be controversial but as it is about politics I still wanted to mention it here while correcting it. PinkShinyRose ( talk) 23:42, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
In the introduction, there is a rather unnecessary and dumb try of illustrating and giving an example for the content of this article ("Germany was and is, neighbour Austria was not but became, other neighbour France never was and is not a federation, etc."). That is a bit like stating in an article about bananas that "they belong to the fruits and are yellow, while other fruits are not yellow, like strawberrys (which are red) and blueberrys (which are blue)". Another, more important thing is, that in case the Germany-Austria-France-example will be kept here, there still is in error within it: it is referred to Austria's first level subdivisions as "bundesländer", and to Germany ones as "länder" - well that's just nothing but wrong, because in both Germany and Austria they are both the same called "bundesländer", it's the very same term. I could imagine that the author of the named example got in trouble because of the want to compare Germany and Austria but discovering that the subdisvisions of both countries are called the same so that that would be irritating for readers, so maybe due to this the German "bundesländer" were shortened to "länder", while the Austrian's just was not - what is just for random and not encyclopedic, because as a reader who would not have not known, I would have thought that the subdivisions in Germany and Austria are called different - what is not the case, as said. Of course in Germany sometimes, in talks about inner-German-topics and when referring to the "bundesländer", they sometimes are shortened to "länder" (as it is in Austria, too), but this is clearly a " 'länder' ", not a real term, also because of the fact, that "länder" in German in 99% of all cases are meaning and referring to other states, countries in the world, because that's what the term stands for very mainly - as it is in Austria, too. So in the example the Germany's and Austria's subdivisions must both be called "bundesländer" ("...Germany's bundesländer and Austria's bundesländer...") - I could try to clearify this in the artcle... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.142.23.59 ( talk) 12:12, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
Then why on Earth does the German Basic law only ever use Länder, never Bundesländer? In fact the Wikipedia article on länder says that bundesländer is the official term in austria and länder is in Germany. 78.147.45.170 ( talk) 20:23, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
It appears to me that the German länder have some prominent characteristics of states within a federation, such as independence in financial management and economic policy — certainly the most independence of sub-national states in western Europe and yet they barely rate a mention. Grant65 (Talk) 04:53, July 24, 2005 (UTC)
What I'd like to note is to remove 3 states from the list and instead list them as "autonomous cities" in "minor federative units" (Hamburg, Bremen, Berlin). —Preceding unsigned comment added by NsMn ( talk • contribs) 12:49, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
Switzerland is shown in the uppermost map as a federation and later as an example of a confederation. To my knowledge,it is a federation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.252.213.17 ( talk) 21:06, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Russia is not a merely "de-facto federations" (this statement meant to imply that officially it is unitary?), but it is a full federation (per art. 1, art. 5 of the Constitution). Yes, it is slightly more centralized, than, for example, United States, but Russia is still a federation. Also, since 2012 heads of federal subjects again became directly-elected. Seryo93 ( talk) 10:36, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
Just because it is in the Russian Constitution, doesn't make it so, one must look at how it is being implemented in the real world; that reality is Russia is currently a nationalistic authoritarian Dictatorship, ruled by Vladimir Putin with an iron fist. Freedom House has listed Russia as being "not free" since 2005(1), while the Economist Intelligence Unit has rated Russia as "authoritarian" since 2011(2). You say, "since 2012 heads of federal subjects again became directly-elected", ya, as long as they are approved by Vladimir Putin, if not they are arrested or die by "accident", forget a de-facto federation, it is a de-facto Democracy, Russia merely pretends to be a free market democracy, while in reality is a full fledged Dictatorship; even political scientist, Larry Diamond stated in 2015 that "no serious scholar would consider Russia today a democracy"(3).
1)"Russia | Country report | Freedom in the World" 2005, freedomhouse.org. 2)"Index of democracy by Economist Intelligence Unit". 2011, The Economist. 3)"Facing Up to the Democratic Recession". Diamond, Larry (January 1, 2015), Journal of Democracy.
The map in the lead is outdated. It doesn't display South Sudan. -- Mika1h ( talk) 22:35, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
a minor issue, but as it stands a confederate state is listed as a subsection of unitary state. I don't know enough politics to know if this is correct, but it seems they should be separate Pjbeierle ( talk) 16:38, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
I can't believe federal states are seperately listed here under Federal Republics and Federal Monarchies.
Whether a country is a "republic" or a "monarchy" has absolutely nothing to do with its status as a federation. India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia and other states switched from being monarchies to republics and this had no bearing on their status as federations. Any modification to their federal status was dealt with in separate legislation.
Can you imagine the membership of the European Union or the United Nations or the OAS or ASEAN being listed under two separate republic and monarchy lists!
So why this meaningless separate isting here?
I propose that the two lists be fused into one list under the heading Federal States.-- Lubiesque ( talk) 19:13, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
<!-- -->
) to the respective tables of those articles, saying
PLEASE MAKE SURE ANY CHANGES HERE ARE REFLECTED IN THE TABLE IN Federation § Contemporary
I understand that the United States is federated by "50 states", but while we do have a Federal District and territories, those, I think, are not federating units, major or otherwise. Are those not equivalent to subdivisions of the central government (acting as a unitary state)? Yes, each territory and the federal district has home rule, but I believe they exist at the suffrance of the federal government, and they have no voice in the federal government. So my proposal is to remove those from the list, or perhaps (if appropriate) rename that column as "organized subdivisions" or some such. D. F. Schmidt ( talk) 21:42, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
Hello. I argue with one user in russian wikipedia about Bosnia and Herzegovina. He say it is federal state, because the most of sources confirm this ( Great Russian Encyclopedia, for example). I use primary source ( Dayton Agreement) as argument for unitary bosnian state. You know there are not "federal", "federation", "federate" and other terms in this agreement for total Bosnia and Herzagovina. Term of "federation" used for Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina only. There are not such terms in Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina too. Also I would like to pay attention that there are not institutes of the power in Bosnia in which name to contain the term "federal". There are not any "Federal agency", "Federal service", "Federal court" and other.
And besides, Bosnia doesn't even correspond to an elementary sign of a federal state - existence of the Upper House of parliament consisting of representatives of territorial subjects of the federation. Instead, three peoples in the Upper House are equally presented, they are Serbians, Muslims ("Bosniaks") and Croats. Their deputies aren't even representatives of Entities (then it would be possible to speak about asymmetric federation), they are representatives of different ethnic groups. There is no real upper house of parliament as it has to be in a federal state.
Nevertheless some sources contain information that Bosnia is the unitary state. I would like to pay attention to opinion of Richard Holbrooke who is one of authors of the Dayton agreement. In particular, this book (p. 18) contains the reference to Holbrooke's book. -- Nicolay Sidorov ( talk) 14:58, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
The list of long-form titles seems slightly misconceived to me, though I may be making a bigger deal out of it than it's worth. In order for the presence of this list in this article to make sense, it ought to relate to the article's topic. So I would expect its point to be that "here are the different ways in which these federations indicate in their full titles that they are compositions of smaller entities". Otherwise, it's as gratuitous having this section as it would be to have a list grouping the countries by their official national birds.
That being the case:
I propose:
The title of the section could be changed to "Federal status reflected in long form titles".
I suppose we could also discuss the distinction between the countries that are wikilinked in this listing and those that aren't. Largoplazo ( talk) 15:31, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
"It is often argued that federal states where the central government has the constitutional authority to suspend a constituent state's government by invoking gross mismanagement or civil unrest, or to adopt national legislation that overrides or infringe on the constituent states' powers by invoking the central government's constitutional authority to ensure "peace and good government" or to implement obligations contracted under an international treaty, are not truly federal states."
Hi, new to editing and not really familiar with this topic. But even I can tell that this sentence is hard to read due to how long it takes to make its main point. I suggest rewording it as such:
"It is often argued that federal states are not truly federal states when their central government has the constitutional authority to do the following: 1)suspend a constituent state's government by invoking gross mismanagement or civil unrest, 2) adopt national legislation that overrides or infringes on the constituent states' powers."
I don't see a way to edit the beginning of an article myself, and I don't want to step on anyone's toes, so I thought I'd at least mention it here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DaveMusica76 ( talk • contribs) 15:02, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I propose merging
Federated state into
Federation. A federated state is just a unit forming part of a federation. The content can easily be explained in the context of
Federation, and a merger would not cause any article-size or
weighting problems. --
Alvdal (
talk)
20:34, 23 March 2022 (UTC)