Copernican federalism is an analogy for

federalism Federalism is a combined or compound mode of government that combines a general government (the central or "federal" government) with regional governments (provincial, state, cantonal, territorial, or other sub-unit governments) in a single po ...

. It is named for

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass id ...

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either o ...

Nicolaus Copernicus Nicolaus Copernicus (; pl, Mikołaj Kopernik; gml, Niklas Koppernigk, german: Nikolaus Kopernikus; 19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance polymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic canon, who formulat ...

Analogy

Various authors and theorists have evoked Copernican

heliocentrism Heliocentrism (also known as the Heliocentric model) is the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun at the center of the universe. Historically, heliocentrism was opposed to geocentrism, which placed the Earth ...

to describe tiers of

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government ...

. Here an analogy is made between the

hierarchical A hierarchy (from Greek: , from , 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy is an important ...

organization of the

Solar System The Solar System Capitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar ...

and governments within a

nation A nation is a community of people formed on the basis of a combination of shared features such as language, history, ethnicity, culture and/or society. A nation is thus the collective identity of a group of people understood as defined by those ...

. There are various approaches. The most common approach describes the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared rad ...

as analogous to a

federal government A federation (also known as a federal state) is a political entity characterized by a union of partially self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a central federal government (federalism). In a federation, the self-govern ...

and the

states State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * '' State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our ...

and other

administrative division Administrative division, administrative unit,Article 3(1). country subdivision, administrative region, subnational entity, constituent state, as well as many similar terms, are generic names for geographical areas into which a particular, ind ...

s as

planet A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is neither a star nor its remnant. The best available theory of planet formation is the nebular hypothesis, which posits that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a ...

Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was previously the nati ...

wrote that the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...

s were "like the planets revolving round their common sun, acting and acted upon according to their respective weights and distances,

Alexander Hamilton invoked a similar analogy in Federalist No. 9, using the word "orbit." Jefferson used the analogy to emphasize the systematic, self-balancing nature of the new United States Constitution. The analogy is also employed in an attempt to borrow Copernican simplicity as compared to Ptolemaic complexity. The implication here is that federal structures are more practicable than having many-to-many relationships. Some theorists have used the analogy in the context of improving international relations, for example

Emery Reves Emery Reves ( hu, Révész Imre) (6 September 1904 – 5 September 1981) was a writer, publisher, and successful press and literary agent most notably for Winston Churchill and other prominent European statesmen who were predominantly anti-Fascist ...

in ''

The Anatomy of Peace ''The Anatomy of Peace'' () was a book by Emery Reves, first published in 1945. It expressed the world federalist sentiments shared by Albert Einstein and many others in the late 1940s, in the period immediately following World War II. The book ...

:'' "Our political and social conceptions are Ptolemaic. The world in which we live is Copernican

Civil service reform

In 2000, the Belgium, Belgian federal government commenced a program of

civil service The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...

reform, called the “Copernicus Plan.” The object of the plan is for citizens to no longer revolve around the civil service, but for the civil service to revolve around the citizen

Analogy

Civil service reform

See also