2.3 Federal and Unitary Constitution

Unitary: sovereignty and law-making authority reside in one central legislature; sub-national units (if any) are creatures of the centre — powers delegated by statute, revocable at will; local government is administration, not constitution. Exemplars: UK, France, Japan. Merits: uniform law, clear accountability, no inter-level conflict, economy of institutions; suits small or homogeneous states. Demerits: remoteness from local diversity; winner-take-all concentration; few policy laboratories. Federal: a written constitution divides law-making power between a general (federal) government and regional (state/provincial) governments, each supreme within its sphere, neither able unilaterally to alter the division; a supreme court typically polices the division. Exemplars: USA, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, India. (The classification test is the constitutional guarantee of regional autonomy; the full mechanics — lists, fiscal federalism, intergovernmental relations — are Unit 6's business.) Nepal — the classification's best Nepali story: Nepal was classically unitary from unification until 2015 — decentralisation under the Local Self-Governance Act 2055 (1999) delegated but never divided power. The 2015 Constitution transformed Nepal into a federal state: three levels — the Federation, seven Provinces and 753 local governments — with powers divided by Schedules 5–9 (Unit 6), provincial consent protecting provincial boundaries and powers at amendment, and inter-level disputes resolved by the Constitutional Bench. A unitary state became federal by constituent decision: classification changed, and with it the whole architecture of…