The Social Science Encyclopedia

Authors: Kuper & Kuper
Summary: This 1,000-word entry defines federalism, discusses scholarly debate surrounding the concept, describes its characteristic features, and explains the principle of "separation of powers."
Federalism is defined as "a form of territorial political organization in which unity and regional diversity are accommodated within a single political system by distributing power among general and regional governments in a manner constitutionally safeguarding the existence and authority of each."
The bulk of scholarly debate about federalism centers on whether the term should be defined broadly or restrictively. A broadly defined federalism would include all those states which possess some element of internal autonomy regardless of their level of centralization or decentralization. A restrictive definition, however, distinguishes a federal state from both the centralized/unitary state and the decentralized/confederate state. Characteristic features of federal states restrictively defined include two systems of government, a formal distribution of legislative and executive authority, a written constitution, a supreme body--usually a court--and central government institutions.
The entry concludes by discussing separation of powers between the executive and legislative bodies at the sub-central level. Different approaches to the principle of separation of powers produces very different looking government processes--i.e., "marble-cake federalism," in which powers are separated, and "layer-cake federalism," in parliamentary federations.