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This contrasts with a state organized on principles of federalism (either a federal republic such as the United States, Brazil, or India or a federal monarchy such as Belgium or Malaysia) where the powers of the regions are enshrined in constitutional law. In many cases, the regions are based on long standing cultural or regional divisions.
A unitary state is a state governed as a single entity in which the central government is the supreme authority. The central government may create or abolish administrative divisions (sub-national or sub-state units). Such units exercise only the powers that the central government chooses to delegate.
The "Type" column indicates a federation (which includes lower-level units that exercise some sovereignty), unitary state (where the highest-level entity is the only sovereign), or regional state (unitary with substantial delegation of power)
A state may be a unitary state or some type of federal union; in the latter type, the term "state" is sometimes used to refer to the federated polities that make up the federation, and they may have some of the attributes of a sovereign state, except being under their federation and without the same capacity to act internationally.
Brazil, on the other hand, has experienced both the federal and the unitary state during its history. Some present-day states of the Brazilian federation retain borders set during the Portuguese colonization (before the very existence of the Brazilian state), whereas the latest state, Tocantins , was created by the 1988 Constitution for chiefly ...
Proponents of federal systems have historically argued that the structures of checks-and-balances and power-sharing that are inherent in a federal system reduces threats—both foreign and domestic. And federalism enables a state to be both large and diverse, by mitigating the risk of a central government turning tyrannical. [18] [19]
A central government is the government that is a controlling power over a unitary state.Another distinct but sovereign political entity is a federal government, which may have distinct powers at various levels of government, authorized or delegated to it by the federation and mutually agreed upon by each of the federated states.
A federated state may be referred to as a province, region, canton, land, governorate, oblast, emirate, or country. [ 8 ] [ 9 ] [ 10 ] Administrative units that are not federated or confederated but enjoy a greater degree of autonomy or self-government than other territories within the same country can be considered autonomous regions or de ...