All three systems—unitary, federal, and confederate—are forms of organized government that share some basic core features despite big differences in how they divide power.

Core Things They Share

  • All are systems that link a central/national level with smaller political units (states, provinces, regions, or local governments).
  • All exist to make and enforce laws, collect some form of taxes, and provide public services such as defense, policing, or infrastructure.
  • All recognize some kind of “national” government, even if that government is very weak in a confederation.
  • All must manage relationships between different levels of government and decide who does what (even if the answer is “almost everything is done by the states” in a confederation, or “almost everything is done by the center” in a unitary state).

How They Differ (In Brief)

  • Unitary:
    • Central government holds most legal power; local units mainly carry out central decisions.
  • Federal:
    • Power is constitutionally divided between national and state/provincial governments, each with some independent authority.
  • Confederate:
    • Loose union of mostly independent states; central body is weak and depends on the states’ consent.

So, what they have in common is that they are all structured ways of organizing a state, they all link a national level with territorial units, and they all handle lawmaking, governance, and cooperation across different levels of government—just with very different balances of power.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.