POLI 101 Study Guide - Final Guide: Canadian Federalism, Economic Collapse, Fiscal Federalism
Document Summary
A unitary system of government is a system in which all sovereign authority of that nation-state resides in one governing body - the national government. They decide how much power it will delegate and how much power they can take away from i. e. governments of counties, towns, cities. If there is another government beside the national government, they will be the servants of the national government. A federal system of government is a system in which authority is constitutionally divided between two levels of government. Neither level of government can be understood to have sovereign authority. Each receives its own authority from the constitution and is thus sovereign authority: possesses legal jurisdiction. Fundamental importance is that the provincial or state governments are not beholden to the national government in the way that local governments are beholden in a unitary system. In canada, we have three levels of government: national, provincial, and municipal.
