Understanding the Core Features of Federalism

Federalism is one of the foundational ideas behind how large, diverse countries govern themselves. At its heart, it is a deal: a single nation agrees to split its sovereign authority between a central government and several regional governments, with neither able to simply abolish the other. This arrangement is not accidental or informal. It rests on a few essential features that give federalism its structure and stability. Understanding these features helps explain why states have their own legislatures, why some subjects are decided in New Delhi while others are decided in state capitals, and why courts so often end up settling who gets to do what.

What makes a system federal 🔗

A federal system exists when the same territory is governed by two levels of authority at once. One level handles broader, national matters across the whole country, while smaller regional units govern within their own boundaries. The key word is division. Power is not delegated downward by a generous centre that can take it back at will, as happens in a unitary state. Instead, both levels draw their authority directly from the constitution.

Scholars typically point to three essential features that every genuine federation shares: a clear division of powers between the two levels of government, a written constitution that enshrines this division, and an independent judiciary with the power of judicial review to enforce it. These three work together. Remove any one of them, and the federal balance begins to collapse into something else. The sections below examine each feature, with the Indian system as the running reference point.

The division of powers 🔗

The first and most visible feature of federalism is the formal division of subjects between the central and regional governments. Rather than leaving it vague, a federal constitution spells out who controls what. In India, this is done through the Seventh Schedule, which divides legislative subjects into three lists under Article 246.

Three lists and how they work 🔗

The Union List contains subjects on which only Parliament can legislate, such as defence, foreign affairs, currency, and atomic energy. The State List covers subjects reserved for state legislatures, including public order, police, public health, and agriculture. The Concurrent List holds subjects on which both Parliament and the states can make laws, like education, forests, and criminal law. The Concurrent List is the main instrument of cooperative federalism, allowing uniform national principles while still leaving room for regional variation.

This three-fold scheme was not invented in 1950. It was borrowed and adapted from the Government of India Act, 1935, which first introduced the idea of dividing legislative subjects into separate lists. The framers retained this structure because it offered a tested way to manage a vast and varied country.

Residuary powers and the question of balance 🔗

No list can anticipate every future subject. What happens when something entirely new arises, such as cyber law, space technology, or digital currency? These fall under what are called residuary powers. Here India made a deliberate choice. Anything not mentioned in the three lists falls to Parliament under Article 248, which is unusual because federations like the United States and Australia reserve residuary powers for the states instead. India followed the Canadian model of keeping residuary power with the centre.

This choice tells us something important. Where residuary power sits reveals whether a federation leans toward strong states or a strong centre. The Indian arrangement, combined with provisions that let the centre intervene in states during emergencies, is why scholars often describe the country as quasi-federal, meaning federal in form but with a clear unitary tilt. The list of subjects has also shifted over time. Education and forests, for example, moved from the State List to the Concurrent List through the 42nd Amendment in 1976, a change critics read as evidence of a slow centralising drift.

What division of powers actually achieves 🔗

Dividing subjects is not just administrative housekeeping. It allows different regions to pursue different priorities while staying within one national framework. States can act as testing grounds for policy, an idea sometimes called “laboratories of democracy.” A state can focus heavily on healthcare and literacy while another emphasises industrial growth, and both remain fully within the federal system. The division also acts as a safeguard. By preventing all authority from concentrating in one body, it guards against the concentration of power that federations are designed to avoid.

A written constitution as the supreme law 🔗

The second essential feature follows directly from the first. Once you divide power, you need a permanent, authoritative document that records exactly how it was divided. This is why federalism almost always requires a written constitution.

The reason is structural. In a federation, neither the central nor the regional governments are supreme. Both levels are bound by a written constitution that sets out the terms on which power is shared, and that constitution can be changed only through special procedures rather than ordinary legislation. If the central government could rewrite the rules on its own through a simple majority, the states would hold their powers only at the centre’s mercy, and the system would no longer be truly federal.

Why a flexible constitution will not do 🔗

Compare this with the United Kingdom, where Parliament is sovereign and can make or unmake any law. In Britain no body can override or set aside an Act of Parliament, whereas the essential characteristic of federalism is the distribution of authority among independent, coordinate bodies. A federation cannot run on an unwritten or fully flexible constitution, because there would be nothing fixed to protect state powers from a determined centre. The written document is the anchor.

India’s Constitution exemplifies this. It is the longest written constitution in the world, setting out in detail the relationship between the centre and the states across many articles and schedules. Amendments affecting the federal structure cannot be passed by Parliament alone. The most sensitive provisions require not just a special majority in Parliament but also ratification by half the state legislatures, giving states a real stake in any change to the federal bargain.

Judicial review and the role of the courts 🔗

The third essential feature is what makes the other two enforceable. A written constitution dividing powers is only as good as the mechanism that polices it. That mechanism is judicial review, usually exercised by a supreme or constitutional court.

Disputes are inevitable. The centre may pass a law touching a State List subject, or a state may resist a central measure it believes invades its sphere. Someone has to decide whether a given law respects the constitutional division of powers. In a federation this role falls to an independent judiciary that can strike down laws, central or state, that exceed constitutional limits.

The Supreme Court as federal arbiter 🔗

In India, the Constitution gives the Supreme Court a special tool for centre-state and inter-state conflicts. Article 131 grants the Supreme Court exclusive original jurisdiction to resolve disputes between the central government and states, or among states themselves. This means such cases go directly to the apex court rather than starting in a lower court. The logic is that conflicts threatening the federal balance deserve a single, neutral, and final arbiter at the highest level.

It is worth noting that this jurisdiction has limits. Article 131 covers genuine legal disputes about constitutional rights and duties, not political disagreements, financial allocations, or routine administrative matters. The court resolves questions of constitutional validity and the distribution of powers; it does not run the governments.

Federalism as part of the basic structure 🔗

Indian judicial review goes a step further than simply settling disputes. Through the basic structure doctrine, first laid down in the Kesavananda Bharati case in 1973, the Supreme Court held that Parliament cannot amend the Constitution in ways that destroy its essential identity. Federalism itself has been recognised as one of these protected features. In the 1994 case S.R. Bommai v. Union of India, the Supreme Court held that federalism is part of the basic structure of the Constitution.

The Bommai case is significant for a second reason too. It curbed the misuse of Article 356, the provision allowing the centre to dismiss a state government. The judgment affirmed that state governments are not subordinate appendages of the centre and advocated cooperative federalism. By insisting that President’s Rule be based on objective material and subject to judicial review, the court used its power to defend state autonomy against arbitrary central action. This shows the third feature in action: the judiciary not merely interpreting the federal bargain but actively protecting it.

How the three features reinforce one another 🔗

It helps to see these features as a connected chain rather than a list. The division of powers creates two levels of government with distinct spheres. The written constitution records that division and places it beyond the reach of ordinary politics, making both levels subordinate to the document rather than to each other. Judicial review then provides the enforcement, ensuring that when either level oversteps, an independent court can intervene.

Take away the division, and there is nothing distinctly federal to protect. Take away the written constitution, and the division has no permanent legal footing. Take away judicial review, and the written guarantees become unenforceable promises. This is why studying federalism means studying all three together. They are not separate boxes to memorise but parts of a single design meant to balance unity with diversity.

The Indian experience also reminds us that these features describe a framework, not a fixed outcome. The same constitutional design has produced periods of strong central dominance and periods of assertive state autonomy. How federalism actually works depends on political culture, the strength of institutions, and the willingness of both levels to cooperate. The essential features set the rules of the game; the players still decide how it is played.

What do you think? If India had placed residuary powers with the states instead of the centre, how different might the relationship between New Delhi and the state capitals look today? And given that the courts are the final referee in federal disputes, do you think judicial review strengthens federalism or simply shifts power toward unelected judges?

References

1. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/federalism
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_Schedule_to_the_Constitution_of_India
3. https://testbook.com/ias-preparation/seventh-schedule-of-indian-constitution
4. https://anantamias.com/7th-schedule-of-indian-constitution/
5. https://www.britannica.com/topic/federalism
6. https://www.scconline.com/blog/post/2021/04/02/indian-constitution/
7. https://testbook.com/constitutional-articles/article-131-of-indian-constitution
8. https://lawbhoomi.com/article-131-of-indian-constitution/
9. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5007458
10. https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/s-r-bommai-v-union-of-india-case-1994