A centralized (US, Oxford English) or centralised (UK) government is one in which power or legal authority is exerted or coordinated by a de facto political executive to which federal states, local authorities, and smaller units are considered subject. In a national context, centralization occurs in the transfer of power to a typically sovereign nation state.
All constituted governments are, to some degree, necessarily centralized, in the sense that a theoretically federal state exerts an authority or prerogative beyond that of its constituent parts. To the extent that a base unit of society — usually conceived as an individual citizen — vests authority in a larger unit, such as the state or the local community, authority is centralized. The extent to which this ought to occur, and the ways in which centralized government evolves, forms part of social contract theory.
e.g. what is available to consumers and manufacturing organisations is determined through centralization
Famous quotes containing the word government:
“Any man knows when he is justified, and all the wits in the world cannot enlighten him on that point. The murderer always knows that he is justly punished; but when a government takes the life of a man without the consent of his conscience, it is an audacious government, and is taking a step towards its own dissolution.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)