Systems of Government

Confederation

Also Known As Confederacy

Citation Formats

General Reference

Political Atlas. "Confederation." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://political.interactiveatlas.org/systems-of-government/confederation.

APA Style

Political Atlas. (n.d.). Confederation. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://political.interactiveatlas.org/systems-of-government/confederation

BibTeX

@misc{politicalatlas-confederation,
  author = {Political Atlas},
  title = {Confederation},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://political.interactiveatlas.org/systems-of-government/confederation},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

A system of government in which sovereign states join together for limited common purposes, typically defence and foreign affairs, while each member state retains its own sovereignty and can generally withdraw from the arrangement, in contrast to a federation, where the member states surrender part of their sovereignty permanently to a common government they cannot unilaterally leave. The line between the two is not always sharp in practice, and some historical unions have moved from one to the other: the United States itself operated as a confederation under the Articles of Confederation from 1781 until the Constitution of 1787 replaced it with a federal union, precisely because the earlier confederation's central government proved too weak to govern effectively.

Facts

Disputed

Origin Year

1291 2

No single origin date is defensible: the reference literature discusses confederations across a very wide span, from ancient leagues of city-states to the 1291 Swiss Confederacy, often cited as the longest continuously named confederation, to the United States' own 1781 to 1789 confederal period. 1291 is recorded here as a widely cited early and enduring example, not as a claim that confederation as a governmental form began there.

Founding Context

Member states retain sovereignty and generally hold an implicit right of secession; historical examples include the Old Swiss Confederacy (1291-1848) and the United States under the Articles of Confederation (1781-1789). 1

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Federal System

Confederation and federation sit at either end of the same question, how much sovereignty member states retain against a common government, and the reference literature defines each chiefly by contrast with the other.

Germany

The Germanic Confederation (1815-1866), a loose association of German states after the Congress of Vienna, is a documented historical confederation.

Source Encyclopedia.com: Confederations

United States

Source Confederation (Britannica)

Sources

1. Confederation (Wikipedia)

Wikipediaopening definition

Quote, opening definition