These are the types of federal political arrangements: The Concept of Federation It is a compounded polity consisting of strong regional governments and a general or central government, each possessing considerable amount of autonomy in the exercise of competences allotted to them by the constitution. Federation is formed on the basis of sharing of state’s sovereignty. The examples include well known federations like India, Canada, U.S.A. etc. Decentralised Union

Next to it is the decentralized unions which, though primarily a unitary state, include historic sub-national units enjoying considerable amount of local/ regional functional autonomy to manage their exclusive identity. Thus, in the U.K. Scotland enjoys considerable amount of autonomy to manage its own legal system, education, health, local administration, banking etc.

The other examples of decentralized unions include Japan, Italy, Ukraine, Indonesia, Netherlands etc. Unions, unlike the above two forms of polities, are compounded polities in which constituent units retain their respective integrities not through the system of self-government, but through the general government. New Zealand and Lebanon are important examples of Unions. Condominium

When a territorial political unit with internal self-rule is governed jointly by two or more external states, it is termed as a ‘Condominium.’ An example of this is the Andorra, which till the other day (1278-1993) functioned under the joint rule of France and Spain.

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Other Arrangements:

While these forms of political arrangements are operative at the national level, confederations, (e.g. European Union, Common Wealth of Independent States, etc.); Leagues (for example, the various regional arrangements like the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), Arab League, Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), North Atlantic Treaty Organisation(NATO) etc.); and joint Functional Authorites like International Labour Organisation (ILO) etc, are arrangement working at the international and trans-regional levels. All these arrangements, work through a joint-decision making process and are formed through a collective desire of individual countries to address jointly the common economic and political interests and motives.