POLI 2053 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: May 1958 Crisis In France, Vichy France
Document Summary
There are usually 3 layers to government in any country: (1) national. What we in the usa sometimes call federal, as in federal government (2) regional. Called states in the usa, provinces in canada, lander in germany, etc. (3) local. Regional and local are sometimes referred to as sub-national levels. The concepts unitary, federalism, and confederacy all refer to the way real political power is distributed among these three levels. Unitary: regardless of whether or not there are regional or local governments in existence, how many there are, what they"re called, etc. , in unitary states all the political power resides ultimately in the national government. That is, the sub-national units are created and empowered not by the constitution, per se, but by the national government (which has the power to create them, alter them and/or abolish them). Examples: france, uk, ireland, japan, new zealand, sweden.
