Unitary State
A unitary state is a political system in which most of the power is held by the central government, with little autonomy given to regional or local governments. This centralized form of governance contrasts with federal systems, where power is shared between the central government and regional authorities. Unitary states are often characterized by uniform laws and policies across the entire country.
7 Key excerpts on "Unitary State"
- Peter Joyce(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Teach Yourself(Publisher)
...A key distinction concerns the autonomy that such units enjoy. In federal states such as Germany, Australia or America, power is divided between national (or federal) government and the constituent units of government. The division of responsibilities is provided for in a single source, usually a written constitution, which allocates specific functions to each sphere of government. Each enjoys autonomy in its own area of jurisdiction, which means that one may not intrude into the operations of the other. There may also be functions that are exercised jointly by both tiers of government. The alternative to a federal state is a unitary one. In Unitary States, political power is centralized in the hands of the national government. Countries including the United Kingdom, Sweden and France possess such forms of government. However, Unitary States often possess a unit of government that is intermediate between national and local government. These are usually regional bodies, which provide services for a relatively wide geographic area where the inhabitants share some form of common identity such as language, culture or race. Regional authorities vary according to the autonomy they possess: some exercise power that is devolved from national government, thus giving them a wide degree of control over such delegated responsibilities, while others merely function as administrative bodies whose role is to provide regional services according to guidelines laid down by national government. In both federal and Unitary States a range of services are provided by subordinate authorities, termed ‘local government’, whose activities will be discussed later in this chapter. Federalism Key idea (3) Federalism possesses advantages derived from localities being empowered to run their own affairs...
eBook - ePubTerritories
The Claiming of Space
- David Storey(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Central to this chapter is a concern, not so much with documenting the specifics of territorial arrangements, but rather emphasizing the manner in which space is used in order to administer and control. As with the examples in previous chapters, these internal territorial arrangements represent a spatial expression of power: a means through which the state or its agencies manage their affairs. Sub-State Territorializations Within most countries, there are internal sub-state political–territorial divisions. These are geographical sub-units which enjoy some limited powers over their own affairs. The extent to which states devolve power to local territorial formations is quite spatially variable. As already suggested, some states have highly devolved political systems while others are highly centralized. Moreover, within individual countries, the extent of autonomy accorded to sub-state territorial units alters over time. At a basic level, a differentiation can be made between centralized states and federal states. In the former, power resides almost exclusively with central government with only a minor role, if any, for regional or local bodies; in the latter, various powers may be devolved to regional or provincial governments. In a federal state, such as the United States or Germany, regional governments have a considerable degree of autonomy and can pass local laws. In contrast, highly centralized states have a system in which the degree of local devolution may be quite minimal. Obviously, many countries adopt political systems which exist on a spectrum between highly centralized and highly devolved. In the following sections, a brief discussion of federal states and local government is provided. While these spatial arrangements exist primarily for administrative purposes, it needs to be remembered that territorial divisions at this scale, just as with those referred to in previous chapters, may also inculcate a particular sense of place identity...
eBook - ePubMarx's Capital, Capitalism and Limits to the State
Theoretical Considerations
- Raju J Das(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...This is the mighty independent scale of the world-market. If economic development processes are geographical, so is the state geographical. It is geographical in many ways. One is that its rules, more or less, operate within a specific territory. It has always been the case: In contrast to the old gentile organization, the state is distinguished firstly by the grouping of its members on a territorial basis. The old gentile bodies, formed and held together by ties of blood, had … become inadequate largely because they presupposed that the gentile members were bound to one particular locality, whereas this had long ago ceased to be the case. The territory was still there, but the people had become mobile. The territorial division was therefore taken as the starting point and the system introduced by which citizens exercised their public rights and duties where they took up residence, without regard to gens or tribe. This organization of the citizens of the state according to domicile is common to all state s. (Engels, 1884) The state is also geographical or territorial in an ‘imperial sense’: a given state exists as one of many states, some more powerful than others. This means that individual states seek to improve their competitive position – competitive position of economic actors under their jurisdiction – vis-à-vis other states. To the extent that the state is a relation expressed as things, their presence is etched in the landscape (‘state-space’): police stations, prisons, army headquarters and barracks, court houses, government buildings, border fences, memorials celebrating wars, and so on, which are often built at great expenses even while the state says it has little money for the masses. 3 There are also state-funded universities and radio/TV stations as parts of the state-space. The state-space serves to intimidate, and gain consent from, the masses. An important geographical aspect of the state is its scalarity...
eBook - ePub- Craig L. Arceneaux(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...5–6). In a unitary regime, final authority in all policy areas rests in the national government. A unitary regime may allocate power to a regional government, but unlike in the federal regime, such authority can be legally retracted. The Division of Power in a Federal System Federalism entails a rather common division of labor in most countries. Foremost, only the national government holds international sovereignty and the unqualified right to enter into international agreements with other countries. Subnational units enjoy sovereignty, but only in respect to each other and the central government (Gibson, 2004, pp. 5–6). To support its role in the global arena, national governments usually retain primary competencies over matters of defense, and take charge of economic planning. Lower levels of government typically focus on social affairs such as health, education, welfare, and cultural programs, as well as the maintenance of law and order. Normally, the constitution will specify these exclusive competencies, but it may also recognize inevitable overlaps by detailing concurrent powers. Sometimes the constitution sets out concurrent powers such that the national government drafts general guidelines, and leaves it to the subnational governments to accommodate their own interests as they fill in the details. Article 24 of the Constitution of Brazil lists a number of concur-rent powers, such as the protection of historical and cultural monuments, court procedures, social security, and education, and then notes, “within the confines of concurrent legislation, the power of the federal government is limited to establishing general guidelines.” And to ensure an exhaustive allocation of powers, constitutions will normally refer to residual powers, or those powers not expressly mentioned. Most countries assign residual powers to the subnational governments...
eBook - ePub- Paul Balchin, Ludek Sykora, Gregory Bull(Authors)
- 2002(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...4 Unitary States with centralised planning powers With devolution occurring in the United Kingdom, it is evident that the most Unitary States in Western Europe are Luxembourg, Ireland and Greece. Luxembourg is a Unitary State almost by default since it is too small to have regions in the sense in which they are recognised within the EU. The whole country is deemed to be a single region for the purpose of Structural Fund allocations. Ireland is also a region for EU funding, but its basic political and administrative units are its central government and the counties (dominated by non-elected officials). Centralised power is a legacy of the ‘former colonial administration based in Dublin’ and the ‘centralising tendencies of Irish nationalism’ (Jeffrey, 1997: 152). In response to serious criticism, there has been some attempt to decentralise administration with the establishment of nine Regional Development Organisations (RDO) in 1994, but this has done little to reduce the dominance of the state/county system. The Greek system of government is modelled on the Napoleonic system of ‘a highly centralised state and prefectorial control of sub-national entities’ (Jeffrey, 1997: 152), which has survived despite recent attempts to decentralise power and to establish a regional level of administration. Luxembourg Due to its very small size (2,586 km 2), the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is inevitably a Unitary State and has little opportunity to develop a regional tier of administration. There are nevertheless three tiers of local government: three districts, twelve cantons and 118 communes...
eBook - ePubComparing Asian Politics
India, China, and Japan
- Sue Ellen M. Charlton(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In practice, the distinction is often murky, even messy. Constitutions typically list powers belonging to the central government and regional governments and may also enumerate shared jurisdictions. But dynamic socioeconomic conditions, along with shifting political values and judicial interpretations, influence the evolution of these jurisdictions in ways unforeseen by the drafters of the constitutions. This has happened in Canada and the United States as well as in India. Evolution in federal systems has been matched by changes in unitary systems, where contemporary history provides examples of national governments attempting to centralize control over their country during some periods but decentralizing at others, or they may centralize in some spheres of activity (such as economic policy) but decentralize in others (social policy). Political and economic conditions often breed as many stresses in unitary systems as they do in federal systems. Such stresses are evident in China, for example, where economic reform policies have included substantial decentralization of policy-making and the introduction by the 1990s of what some scholars have called “market-preserving federalism” or “de facto federalism.” 2 Level-of-government relationships in India are especially complex. The national government, also known as the Centre or Union, has constitutional powers superior to those of the regional units, called states. The emergency powers and President’s Rule examined in Chapter 9 are examples of the ultimate authority of the Union government. But states have become more important for a variety of reasons, creating tensions between the levels of government. It is to these dynamics that we turn next. (Dis)unity in the Indian Federation To better understand the countervailing tendencies in Indian federalism, we need to review how India’s Constitution designates the division of powers between the central government and the states...
eBook - ePubGlobal Politics
A New Introduction
- Jenny Edkins, Maja Zehfuss, Jenny Edkins, Maja Zehfuss(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The final settlement of some areas remains an issue today. Taking this kind of perspective shows us that the division of the world into separate territorial units, called states, is both artificial and arbitrary. Today it is generally accepted as the norm for political and geographical organisation. Yet this has not always been the case. Looking at older maps shows a very different perspective. Until relatively recently, large parts of the world were either unknown entirely (such as desert, mountain or polar regions), unknown to people in other parts, or known to them only in the vaguest of ways. Land masses and key rivers appeared on maps of the world drawn in Europe, but the inland areas of islands or continents were largely undiscovered by Europeans and unmapped by them. Although this division of the world into states is accepted as the norm, it does create problems in terms of tackling important issues, such as climate change: see Chapter 3. This division also means that not everyone is authorised to live where they choose, creating many serious difficulties: see Chapter 10. And it is arguably being challenged by the spread of the internet (Chapter 9) and a globalised economy and global financial institutions (Chapters 17 and 18). The division of the world into territorial units called states reflects a particular relation to space. Yet, just as not all human communities have been the same as modern states, so too with their relation to the land they inhabit. Hunter-gatherer communities have a very different relation to space than those societies that cultivate land and domesticate animals. They tend not to have fixed dwellings and may move with the seasons in search of water and food. Standard definitions of territory suggest that it is an area of space under the control or jurisdiction of a group of people, which might be a state, but which might potentially be other types of political organisation...
