FEDERALISM: RISK ASSESSMENT

COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 16 Jul 2009

Bishnu Pathak, PhD

Today, 40 percent of the world population lives under the rule of a federal state, but 60 percent under unitary.  30 (16% out of 192 UN members) matured, emergent, and micro-federations practice federalism.  

They are comprised not only of powerful and developed nations, but developing countries as well; namely, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Iraq, Malaysia, Pakistan, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, the USA, etc. Similarly, most of the 162 (84% out of 192 UN-member) nations such as China, France, Denmark, Finland, Indonesia, Israel, Iran, Italy, Japan, Jordon, South and North Korea, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Ukraine, United Kingdom, etc. are unitary states.  

Federations are found both in advanced industrial nations (European American, or otherwise) to multi-cultural states (Asian nations such as India, Malaysia, and United Arab), to post communist European nations such as Czechoslovakia and former Yugoslavia to Asian Muslim countries like Pakistan. However, former communist countries such as Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia and Pakistan are said to be failed federations due to balkanization or ongoing deep-rooted identity based conflict.

Despite the considerable national importance and political exertion over this very issue, research in Nepal comparing federal and unitary state systems has been thus-far severely lacking. Comparison of information advantageous and disadvantageous toward federalism stem taking into account unitary state alternatives has been given below:

CONTINUE READING IN THE ORIGINAL – CONFLICT STUDY CENTER, NEPAL

 

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 16 Jul 2009.

Anticopyright: Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgement and link to the source, TMS: FEDERALISM: RISK ASSESSMENT, is included. Thank you.

If you enjoyed this article, please donate to TMS to join the growing list of TMS Supporters.

Share this article:

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 License.


Comments are closed.