ABSTRACT
The State is, as we have found, a legal order. Its “elements,” territory and people, are the territorial and personal spheres of validity of that legal order. The “power” of the State is the validity and efficacy of the legal order, while the three “powers” or functions are different stages in the creation thereof. The two basic forms of government, democracy and autocracy, are different modes of creating the legal order. In view of these results to which our previous considerations have led, it is evident that centralization and decentralization, generally considered as forms of State organization with reference to territorial division, must be understood as two types of legal orders. The difference between a centralized and a decentralized State must be a difference in their legal orders. All the problems of centralization and decentralization are in fact, as we shall see, problems concerning the spheres of validity of legal norms and the organs creating and applying them. Only a juristic theory can provide the answer to the question as to the nature of centralization and decentralization. *
