I had a thought the other day in relation to how impossible it is for a large country to make everyone happy with broad policies. There are big differences in opinions, values, economics, and cultures across a population. What one city, county, province, etc prefers for policy seems to be universally be overridden by “higher level” governance levels going to the top if they so choose. Are there any countries where lower level, more specific jurisdictions get to set policy overrides instead of vice versa? Like, a place where nationwide laws are defaults, but smaller hierarchies can pass laws to supercede the higher defaults?
In practice, the states have ceded a huge amount of authority to the federal government over the last 100 years or so. The federal government strong arms them all the time.
Which states and which federal government?
USA, the person you replied to was talking about the US
I’m gonna guess from the scratched and replaced line that this was an edit. The original response was about federal systems in general, the guy generalized from the US, I noted this was not the case in general. I guess I wouldn’t have been confused if you had responded to him, but I was specifically not talking about the US. Muddled online chats with strangers are muddled, I suppose.
Yes, but there are still powers that are set aside to states where the federal government has no legal power. The only reason the federal government has any pull is due to wealth transfers.