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What is a federal state?
Federalism is a type of government systems of in which authorities constitutionally divided
between a central government (or federal government) and smaller government units (let's call them provinces)
so that the formation of the central government and the provinces support each other sharing sovereignty of the state.
And these provinces are constitutional units, and each has its system that defines its legislative, executive and judicial authorities
and where autonomy of each province is stipulated in the constitution of the state
and cannot be changed unilaterally by the central government.
Some federal states are:
Iraq, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Pakistan, Switzerland and Australia.
Distinguish between a federal state and the unilateral one is not a simple thing.
The state may resemble a unilateral federal administrative structure
but the extent of the independence of the provinces is stronger in a federal state.
Federalism generally forms a strong constitutional system that democratic pluralism can be based on
and which, in turn, emphasis the parliamentary democracy through the provision of dual citizenship in the Republican compound.
And this limits the ability of the state to violate rights.
And usually legal processes of decision-making in federal systems slow down the government to act.
Federalism can also help in many scenarios to secure democracy and human rights
due to the fact that being in small provinces help individuals participate directly in the central and mini government.
The ability of the federal system to protect the civil liberties is still the subject of controversy
as there is often confusion between the rights of the individual and the rights of the state.
In Australia, for example, the cause of many disputes within the government of the country during the recent decades
was because of the center authorities to intervention to protect the rights of minorities
which necessitated placing restrictions on the local governments power
It is necessary to avoid confusion between the restrictions imposed by the judiciary and federalism itself.
Some States of America has a bad history in blocking civil liberties from ethnic groups
and women and other groups on one hand,
where on the other hand they provided the laws and constitutions of some other states
protect such groups with some laws that surpassed the U.S. Constitution or the Rights of America subsidiary list.
The basic features of federalism is authorities distribution and the main outcome of dividing them
and that shows in any of the governments' (central and provincial) inability to exercise the same amount of power
that have been exercised in the light of a unified nonfederal state.
Constitution in a federal system is the higher authority from which the powers of state are derived
its most important aspect is the need for an independent judiciary to revoke any law that is not in line with the constitution.
Legitimacy hinders federalism, where constitution must be "strict" and not "loose"
and a higher authority or legislative bodies cannot change except laws mentioned in the Constitution.
Usually federalism is a convenient option for large countries that are rich with variation of local resources
such as Australia, Russia and the United States.
But on the other hand, some countries where they also became federations under the de facto like Spain and China.
As a result, the federalism foundation is always the constitution and the independence of the judiciary and citizenship
because they are the key to a successful state, regardless of whether federal or non-federal.