I’m wondering what government would be like if there were a large country (let’s say the size of the U.S.) with the federal and municipal/county levels of government, but no state-level governments.
Are there any such countries?
What would be some of the important adjustments governments at the local and national levels would have to make for the absence of an intermediate level of government?
This is really a Great Debate. However, I would argue with your classification as states as an intermediate level of government. They were set to be largely autonomous units that were loosly bound by a weak federal government. While the federal government has gained power over time, state governments still have much more direct influence over their their citizens than the federal government does.
Well - it’s not a large country, but New Zealand is an example of a western democracy that has the first tier (national government) and the third tier (local government), without the second tier (having abolished its system of provincial governments in 1876).
Well, look at the U.K., where, aside from the national assemblies for Scotland and Wales (with strictly limited powers), the largest unit of government smaller than the nation as a whole is the county. And the U.K.'s size is somewhere around 30% of the U.S. France, about the same, is even more centralized, with departements the size of a very small county or a couple of townships, which are not even locally chosen governments, but administrative conveniences for the Republic to handle local administration, with the prefet appointed by Paris, not locally elected.
Our government was established as a Federal Representative Democracy, which means that it was a group of states under a mutual flag and a mutual Constitution that described a strictly limited Federal government that would be controlled most directly by the several states. This was the basic idea when the method of electing Presidents was decided: The states would each appoint a slate of electors to vote on who would hold the office. There was no theoretical need for the people to ever actually vote for the President, and those votes need not matter in the final analysis. It was presumed that the people who selected the electors were elected by the people, and that would be close enough to an actual popular vote. The Federal government had the power to levy taxes, instead of being forced to ask for money from the states, but it generally was presumed, prior to the Civil War, that the Federal government would let the several states manage their own internal affairs to a very large degree.
Over time, this form of government mutated into what we have now: The people control the state and the Federal government to roughly the same extent, and state governments are no longer the intermediary between the highest levels and the lowest. The states have become less and less relevant over time, especially since the Federal government has progressively forgotten about the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. I’m not saying that the states are actually irrelevant, since they do indeed wield plenty of power, but the perception of the state has certainly changed over time. Back in the early 1800s, nobody would really have thought people would be as active at the Federal level as they are now, and nobody would have thought the Federal government would have been as interested in state- and local-level affairs as it is now. The current debate over whether to modify or abolish the Electoral College is a perfect example of this, as is the War on Drugs.
On a smaller level, most states have county government. Massachusetts got rid of country government completely, eliminating what had become a fairly useless level of govt. Doesn’t seem to have hurt us much.
And Hawaii has counties, but no city governments outside of Honolulu. And it’s still the City and County of Honolulu.
The opposite of a federal system is a unitary system. Several large countries have federal systems – Canada, Australia, India, Germany, Brazil, etc…
There are also large countries with unitary systems – China, Congo (Zaire), Finland, France, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Libya, Madagascar, Mongolia, Morocco, Namibia, Nepal, New Zealand, Niger, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Africa, North and South Korea, Sudan, Sweden, Turkey, United Kingdom, etc… Indeed, the unitary states far outnumber the federal states.
I’d quibble with your inclusion of the UK in that list these days because of the devolved parliaments in Wales and Scotland, limited though they may be (after all, the main feature of a federal system is that the national government and/or the state/provincial governments are each limited in their powers w/r/t the other level).
It’s a neat list, though. I’m surprised by Italy. Given Italy’s history and the obvious differences (cultural, linguistic, economic, yadda yadda) between different areas, it seems like a federal system could be a lot more stable.
–Cliffy
I’m sorry, Shagnasty and Derleth, I should have prefaced this a little better. I’m not really talking about the United States, in which the existence of the states predates the union and is a prerequisite for the constitution to operate.
I’m really more curious as to how a large (say, 300 million person and 10 million square kilometer area… similar in size to the United States) fictitious nation might operate if there were just municipal/county level governments and national-level government, with no unit of government intermediate in size. (I didn’t mean to imply that the states of the United States were intermediates, rather than sovereign in their own way.)
Are there functions of government best suited for the state-level size that would be a problem?
This might still be a Great Debate: I initially thought I would find a more useful answer here.
Many thanks to all for your responses! 
I also tried looking up Indonesia and China (thanks, acsenray for the list) in the CIA Factbook to see how they were different, but they both seem to have 20-something provinces, so perhaps if intermediate governments in size don’t exist, they have to be created?
Cool facts, BobT, Telemark, and Cunctator, I didn’t know about the elimination of intermediate levels of government in NZ, Hawaii, and Massachusetts!
Australia is a similar area to the US, but with a much smaller population. Many people have proposed abolishing the states in favour of smaller regional governments, and I think it could work quite well.
There would however be the practical problem that you would have to change the Constitution. It would be a very complex change, including the problem of how you would change the composition of the Senate. Because it would affect the representation of states in the Senate, it would probably have to be passed by a majority of voters in every state, and I can’t see that happening ever. In particular, I doubt if it could ever pass in Queensland, Tasmania or Western Australia, and that’s enough to kill it as an ordinary constitutonal change.
But if the founding fathers hadn’t entrenched their states in the Constitution, it could wok in Australia pretty well.
Hardly.
US size: 9,100,000 sq. km
UK size: 242, 000 sq. km
Closer to 3%.
Actually, the head of the “departement” is the president of the elected council. The “prefet” represent the state, and has independant powers, in particular control powers.
France is an oddity because at the same time it’s more centralized than other european countries, and it has more levels of local administration than any other country. IOW, only a little power is delegated by the state, and this little power is shared between many different subdivisions.
FTR, the subdivisions are :
-The state itself
)