Federalism

1. Duhaime's Law Dictionary defines federalism as a system of government which has created, by written agreement, a central and national government to which it has distributed specified legislative (law-making) powers, called the federal government, and regional or local governments (or sometimes called provinces or states) to which is distributed other, specified legislative powers.

2. There are currently about 196 Nation-states in the world today.

3. There are about 25 countries in the world today that use the federal system of government. These countries include Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ethiopia, Germany, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Argentina, Austria, Belgium , Comoros, Malaysia, Micronesia, Nepal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, United States of America, etc...

4. The countries tend to have in common that they are all large countries in terms of size.

5. Unitary, by definition, is a sovereign state governed as a single entity.

6. More than 150 countries use a unitary system of government. The 5 largest unitary countries are China, Khazakstan, Algeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Saudi Arabia.

7. The difference between a unitary and federal system of government is that federal systems have states and large national governments that work together. Unitary systems consist of one large government that controls everything.

8.The Picture of the two guys presents the idea that federalism isn't a good thing, or that it is basically just a way for state government's to receive handouts without having to answer to any real authority.

9. This picture presents a sort of ironic view of the federal government because the federal government is preventing someone from getting something that they need for their illness because it is illegal.

10. This picture shows a Republican (the elephant) claiming that he doesn't believe in government obstruction within business and citizen's lives, but the minute a citizen wants to change something he steps in and says they are wrong.

11. The video compares federalism to a three layered cake. The local government is on top, the state government in the middle, and national government on the bottom.

12.  This cake creates a totally different metaphor for federalism. It creates a sense that all the governments are blended together instead of separated.