The difference between a federation and a confederation
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They’re broadly the same kind of governmental system, in that there’s a central authority running the group of con/federated entities, as well as authorities in those entities that exert a degree of local control and governance.
The only real substantive difference is in the strength of those entities relative to each other. In federations, the central government has a lot more power to override the local governments, whereas in confederacies the central government is much weaker and has a much more explicitly defined role.
The US would be a textbook example of a federation. (True) confederacies broadly don’t exist all that long (as a weak central government tends to cause problems), but the best modern example would actually be the European Union, which is a confederacy in all but name.
If you want a historical example of a confederation, look for Articles of Confederation in US history. In short, the first government after the American Revolution was extremely weak and almost all power was retained by the states. After a series of crises that the weak central government barely handled (usually by having George Washington show up), the Constitutional Convention was gathered to create a blueprint for a stronger central government (a federation, to go back to the original question).
A federation has a federal government and a confederation does not. Anything that resembles a government at the national level of a confederation is not a true government body but instead a diplomatic and bureaucratic body that manages interstate relationships and agreements. It has no direct power over the states themselves.
They are literally opposites. The prefix “con-” means opposite, “contradict” “contrary” “pros and cons.”
A federation has a strong central authority, a federal government, whereas a confederation has little or no federal government. The individual bodies that make up the confederacy have more power than the central body.
The US’s first constitution was the Articles of Confederation, and had a very weak central government which couldn’t levy taxes or raise an army on its own. It relied on the states to choose how much to supply. It was deeply flawed, which is why it was replaced with the constitution we have now, which made a far stronger federal government.
The South during the US civil war argued that the federal government shouldn’t be able to control whether or not they should be allowed to own slaves, so they formed a Confederacy so they wouldn’t need to worry about that, the state’s laws could override the federal ones. They still had a federal government, but a much weaker one.
The Iriquois tribes of New York were a Confederacy. It was several small tribes that more or less simply agreed to not go to war with each other.
The UN is a Confederacy, because member states can essentially ignore whatever decisions they make. It’s up to other member states to take action against the non compliant states (like sanctions against Russia over their actions in Ukraine)
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