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 Home » Constitution Design » Questions for constitution makers in Nepal » Federalism

Introducing Federalism


The first amendment to the Interim Constitution committed the country to becoming a federal system. But this leaves many questions to be decided. How to distribute the powers between different levels of government? How many levels of government should there be? How should resources be distributed? Many people in Nepal have little experience of federalism. In this section you will find some material that explains what federalism is and how a federal system might be designed.

What is federalism?

Federalism is a system of Government in which certain powers are exercised by levels of government below the national, and those powers are constitutionally guaranteed and do not depend on the national government.

In practice federal systems around the world are extremely varied and no one model would be appropriate in all circumstances, but there are some key features of federalism. These are:
  • Two, or more, levels of government (centre + defined regions, and perhaps lower levels, also); the units immediately below the centre may be called regions, states, provinces or something else
  • A written constitution which gives powers to both levels: to make law, to carry out policies, to spend money, and to raise money through taxes and other means
  • Some constitutional arrangement for representation of the units within the central law making institutions
  • Mechanisms and institutions for conducting relations between governments
  • Procedure for dealing with disputes between levels of government - through the courts or through specially created institutions
Much of the discussion in Nepal has been about the boundaries of the areas that would make up the federal state. There is not a great deal of material on this topic as yet on this webpage. But later on we shall have some more material. But this is a topic that has been much discussed in the country. Below there are some links to material on federalism, including on Nepal, where you may find discussion of this aspect.

Here you can find:

Frequently asked question - federalism: a short document prepared by CASU

An Introduction to Federalism - prepared by George Anderson for the Canada based Forum of Federations. Mr Anderson was kind enough to allow us to translate this into Nepali.

Yash Ghai, Background Paper on Restructuring and Federalism" prepared for the CASU conference on Federalism held at Godavari in March 2007 (In English)

Yash Ghai, Background Paper on Restructuring and Federalism" prepared for the CASU conference on Federalism held at Godavari in March 2007 (In Nepali)

A PowerPoint Presentation on "Issues in Designing a Federal System." prepared by Jill Cottrell of CASU, in English

A PowerPoint Presentation on "Issues in Designing a Federal System." prepared by Jill Cottrell of CASU, in Nepali
    Different versions of this have been presented at various conferences and meetings.

A PowerPoint Presentation on "Federalism: An Overview" by Professor Sujit Choudhry of the University of Toronto (given at the CASU conference):

A PowerPoint Presentation "Swiss Federalism" by Dr Nicole Töpperwien from Berne in Switzerland (a consultant for the Swiss Foreign Minister) (given at the CASU conference on)

In order to illustrate how federal constitutions may divide powers to make law among different levels of government:
Links to Federalism material

The best site is almost certainly the Forum of Federations
There is an Institute of Federalism at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland
And the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations at Queen's University in Canada has a special interest in federalism
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