A centralized government (also united government) is one in which both executive and legislative
power
Power most often refers to:
* Power (physics), meaning "rate of doing work"
** Engine power, the power put out by an engine
** Electric power
* Power (social and political), the ability to influence people or events
** Abusive power
Power may ...
is concentrated centrally at the higher level as opposed to it being more distributed at various lower level governments. In a national context, centralization occurs in the transfer of power to a typically unitary
sovereign nation state
A nation state is a political unit where the state and nation are congruent. It is a more precise concept than "country", since a country does not need to have a predominant ethnic group.
A nation, in the sense of a common ethnicity, may inc ...
. Executive and/or legislative power is then minimally delegated to unit subdivisions (state, county, municipal and other
local authorities
Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of public administration within a particular sovereign state. This particular usage of the word government refers specifically to a level of administration that is both geographically-loca ...
).
Menes, an
ancient Egyptian
pharaoh of the
early dynastic period, is credited by classical tradition with having united
Upper and Lower Egypt
In Egyptian history, the Upper and Lower Egypt period (also known as The Two Lands) was the final stage of prehistoric Egypt and directly preceded the unification of the realm. The conception of Egypt as the Two Lands was an example of the duali ...
, and as the founder of the
first dynasty (Dynasty I), became the first ruler to institute a centralized government.
[.]
All
constituted governments are, to some degree, necessarily centralized, in the sense that even a
federation exerts an authority or prerogative beyond that of its constituent parts. To the extent that a base unit of society – usually conceived as an individual
citizen
Citizenship is a "relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection".
Each state determines the conditions under which it will recognize persons as its citizens, and ...
– vests authority in a larger unit, such as the
state or the local
community, authority is centralized. The extent to which this ought to occur, and the ways in which centralized government evolves, forms part of
social contract theory
In moral and political philosophy, the social contract is a theory or model that originated during the Age of Enlightenment and usually, although not always, concerns the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual.
Social co ...
.
See also
*
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political ''status quo'', and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voti ...
*
Centralisation
Centralisation or centralization (see spelling differences) is the process by which the activities of an organisation, particularly those regarding planning and decision-making, framing strategy and policies become concentrated within a particu ...
*
Decentralised system
A decentralised system in systems theory is a system in which lower level components operate on local information to accomplish global goals. The global pattern of behaviour is an emergent property of dynamical mechanisms that act upon local co ...
*
Decentralization
*
Unicameralism
*
Unitary state
*
Democratic centralism
References
Federalism
{{poli-term-stub