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The majority of states in the world have a unitary system of government. Of the 193 UN member states , 126 are governed as centralized unitary states, and an additional 40 are regionalized unitary states.
In a unitary state, the national government has total authority over all of the country’s other political subdivisions (e.g. states). Unitary states are the opposite of federations, in which governing power is shared by a national government and its subdivisions.
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unitary state, a system of political organization in which most or all of the governing power resides in a centralized government, in contrast to a federal state. A brief treatment of the unitary state follows. For additional discussion, see Political system: Unitary nation-states; federation; confederation.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
The second, federalism, apportions power between two levels of government: national and subnational. In the United States, the term federal government refers to the government at the national level, while the term states means governments at the subnational level. FEDERALISM DEFINED AND CONTRASTED
Unitary states stand in contrast to federations, also known as federal states. A large majority of the UN member countries , 166 out of 193, have a unitary system of government. [2]
A unitary state is one in which the authority to rule is assigned exclusively to the national government. This is a contrast to a federal state, in which the power to rule is split between the national government and the regional governments of the country's subdivisions (states, provinces, etc.), which thereby possess at least a certain degree of autonomy.
In a unitary system the only level of government besides the central is the local or municipal government. Although local governments may enjoy considerable autonomy, their powers are not accorded constitutional status; the central government determines which decisions to “devolve” to the local level and may abolish local governments if it ...
