Talk:Federation

Non-federations

Some countries exhibit characteristics of a federation, but are not. For example, Spain has a relationship resembling that of a federation with its autonomous communities; however, they are created by and exist at the suffrance of the central government, rather than being distinct entities that have chosen to join together.

In this case, you've have to add Belgium to this list too... -195.144.90.50, Dec 2003

UAE

Under "Long form titles", the UAE is listed under "None" when it is pretty clear that it is a long form title. It is similar to Mexico, listed under "Others" - United Mexican States as compared with United Arab Emirates - Mexico, like Arabia, is the geographical location, while States, like Emirates, is the political subentity. I've edited the page

In addition, according to the first clause of Article 1 of the Malaysian constitution, it states (roughly translated), "The Federation shall be known, in Malay and in English, by the name Malaysia." It doesn't state "Federation of Malaysia" or "Persekutuan Malaysia". But since the article Malaysia uses "Persekutuan Malaysia", I'll shall keep it that way. --Rajan R 06:58, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Belgium

Belgium is listed as a unitary state but it refers to itself as a federation. This should be corrected

Patrick Fafard Canada

As far as I can gather it seems to be a federation so I've moved it to that list. But if anyone knows better please shout. Iota 00:04, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

-Belgium used to be a unitary state, but they made a change-over to federacy in the last decades :)

Missing item in list of 27 federations.

Toward the end of the article, there is a list of federations. The heading says there are 27 federations, but the list names only 26 of them. I don't know which country is missing from the list, otherwise I would just add it. But since I don't know where to find out which country is missing, I'm just putting this note here, asking anyone who knows to add the name, please. (Or if indeed there are only 26 federations, then the heading needs to be changed.)M.J.E. (talk) 14:27, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Another user had removed Bosnia, so I reverted it. Hopefully they will discuss this here instead. BilCat (talk) 18:18, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing that.

I looked into it a bit further, and, based on a map I saw of the world's federations, I finally found what I thought was the missing federation, and it was Bosnia and Herzegovina. If you hadn't already fixed this, I wouldn't have known whether I should add that to the list, just based on my own deductions.M.J.E. (talk) 08:08, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Lead

The lead is much too long, and the latter part of it deteriorates into a listing of various federations that editors seem to have thought were significant. Germany is raised as an example twice and some cases are pretty obscure for the general reader (Austria-Hungary) or questionable as federations (the League of Corinth). I'd be keen to reduce paragraph 3 and following to: A federation is distinct from a unitary state, which is governed as a single entity in which the central government is the supreme authority, and from a confederation, which is set of sovereign states united for purposes of common action. Federations are often multi-ethnic and cover a large area of territory, but neither is necessarily the case. Several ancient and medieval chiefdoms and kingdoms could be described as federations or confederations. Several colonies and dominions consisting of autonomous provinces transformed into federal states upon independence. In some recent cases, federations have been instituted as a measure to handle ethnic conflict within a state. The oldest currently existing federation is the United States, whose constitution went into effect on 4 March 1789; the newest is Nepal, which became a federation on 20 September 2015 [I'd be open to removing the last sentence]. The lead ought also to say something regarding "confederations" and "empires" Furius (talk) 20:29, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

India

It is not a pure federation. It has several unitary features like dominance of the center over the state, single citizenship, etc. 2409:4060:100:6B3F:388D:BF74:422B:4283 (talk) 14:13, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

hello?

This need a clarification. 2409:4060:2D3E:FF6A:388D:BF74:422B:4283 (talk) 04:41, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

All the countries classified as federations have a single citizenship: Canadian, Mexican, Argentinian, German, etc. The balance of power between the central and second-level governments in those countries varies considerably, but they're still federations, as "federation" doesn't define that balance. Largoplazo (talk) 11:19, 1 June 2024 (UTC)