ABSTRACT
The separation between the sphere of the political state and the depoliticised sphere of civil society is the defining feature of the type of polity that the French Revolution gave birth to the modern nation state. The defining feature of all federations is 'combination within a single political system of shared-rule and self-rule through the constitutional distribution of powers between the federal and regional governments'. In the US federation, alterations of the balance between self-rule and shared-rule do not result from a steady process of limited and gradual changes. The German model of cooperative federalism was designed to enable uniform living conditions across the whole country. The highest governing and executive authority in the Swiss political system is linked to the Federal Council. Active political participation of citizens as members of diverse functional and territorial communities of interests obviously makes the Swiss central decision-making process much more gradual and cumbersome than in today's US and German federations.
