What is the difference between a Confederation a federal system and a unitary system?

Answer 1

The distinction between the three systems is where ultimate sovereignty resides.

In a Unitary government, all sovereignty resides at the national level - thus, the national government is superior to, and controls all regional and local governments. In such a system, governments report in what looks like a military chain-of-command: local governments report to and are legally subservient to regional governments, which report to and are subservient to the national government. A unitary government has all power concentrated at the national government, which may delegate some of that power elsewhere, but which retains the ultimate say in which entity has that power.

In a Confederate government, the nation is made up of constituent states, each state having ultimate sovereignty. This form results in a national government which is more of an association - the central national government has no legal authority over its constituent state (regional) governments, other than the authority those states voluntarily give it (and can withdraw at any time). Confederations are really government-by-voluntary-consensus, with power being retained at the regional (state) level. At the state level in a confederation, most operate as a Unitary government themselves.

Federal governments are a blend of the above two opposites. Most federal systems divide up various responsibilities (sovereignty) into categories, then decide that ONE of: the federal (national), the state (regional), or local (town/city) government should be the ultimate sovereign in that area. Generally speaking, this division is based upon the impact of the topic in question: for responsibilities which impact the nation as a whole, the federal government is usually assigned supreme power, while for activities that are regional or local in nature, the regional (or local) government is assigned sovereignty. In all cases, government levels (federal, state, and local) are ultimate responsible solely to their constituent citizens, and do NOT legally report to another government. Thus, under a federal system, a town mayor has no legal responsibility to follow instructions from a state governor or a national president.

In terms of practical application, one obvious place that can be seen is the legal system in place: under a Unitary system, there is but one set of courts, and those courts have jurisdiction over all legal cases. In a Confederate system, there tend to be many court systems, with each region/state's court system applying only to cases within that region/state. In a federal system, there tend to be a myriad of court systems, each having different responsibilities based on the type of infraction or case, with different infractions being judged by different courts, and with multiple court systems having possible jurisdiction over a single geographic area.