McGill Journal of Political Studies 2014 April, 2014 | Page 22

Efficacy of Federalism in Addresssing
Regional Needs
A federal system is defined as one in which
governmental powers and responsibilities
are divided between a federal legislature and
a number of provincial legislatures, wherein
this division of power is constitutionally
entrenched12. In contrast, a unitary system
is governed as a single unit in which the
central government is supreme and any
subnational units exercise only powers
that their central government chooses to
delegate to them13. Even when some factors
seem intractable, federalism is presumed
to have greater capacity than unitarism
to resolve collective-action problems and
to address regional