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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.
Robert Longley. Updated on February 02, 2022. A unitary state, or unitary government, is a governing system in which a single central government has total power over all of its other political subdivisions. A unitary state is the opposite of a federation, where governmental powers and responsibilities are divided.
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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 a unitary state, the central government commonly delegates authority to subnational units and channels policy decisions down to them for implementation.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
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]
In countries with three levels of government, the distribution of powers between the central and the intermediate governments varies. States formed through the union of formerly independent states usually maintain an intermediate level with considerable legislative, executive , and judicial powers (as in the United States , Argentina, and ...
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.
China is the largest unitary state in the world by both population and land area. Although China has had long periods of central rule for centuries, it is often argued that the unitary structure of the Chinese government is far too unwieldy to effectively and equitably manage the country's affairs.
