Ibrahim Tadros 6.871: Knowledge Based Application Systems Final Project 1 6.871 Knowledge-Based Application Systems Final Project Constitution Builder What is Federalism? Federalism as defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is the distribution of power in an organization (as a government) between a central authority and the constituent units. Unlike a unitary state, sovereignty in a federal state is split between at least two territorial levels such that the units at each level have final authority and can act independently of the other in some area. This means that the citizens of such a country have an obligation to two or more authorities. The division of such responsibilities usually involves the central government controls crucial matters such as defense and foreign policies, while the sub-units might also have international roles. The advantages of setting up a federal state include is it allows more opportunities for political participation by allowing each sector of the population to participate equally in decision making. It also increases the access to the government, by setting up sub-governments in the different sectors of a country. It also allows a greater diversity of opinion in public policies, and decreases the number of decisions and compromises at the national level. Although federalism seems like an ideal political structure, it does have its limitations. Disadvantages of federalism include:  It can lead to duplication of government and inefficient, overlapping or contradictory policies in different parts of the countryIbrahim Tadros 6.871: Knowledge Based Application Systems Final Project 2  It can lead to inequality between the States and lead to unhealthy competition and rivalry  It can lead to neglect in important areas of public policy  It can lead to over-government Currently, there are around 21 countries that can be categorized as federal states, and they are: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Canada, Comoros, Ethiopia, Germany, India, Malaysia, Mexico, FS Micronesia, Nigeria, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United States, Venezuela. Project Aim: Having discussed what federalism is, the purpose of this project was to design a system which enables a political body to determine whether federalism would be a good option to adopt for a certain country. The system incorporates several factors that help determine whether or not such a political system is applicable given a set scenario. The different criteria used are:  Population  Land Area  Racial Diversity  Religious Diversity  Ethnic Diversity  Linguistic Diversity Population: In general, it is pretty difficult to implement a federal structures where you have a small population. Since you need to have several sub-governments, if a country is initially small, the sub-governments will be much small to be able to be effective. Nevertheless, small federal states such as the Federal State ofIbrahim Tadros 6.871: Knowledge Based Application Systems Final Project 3 Micronesia (with a population of 108,1051) do exist, but are not the norm. Land Area: Similar to the rational behind population, dividing up a small country in terms of physical area will be harder to do compared to a larger country. If a country is small in size, the population is able to access the government quite easily compared to a country that is large. Racial, Religious, Cultural and Ethnic Diversity: Divisions that will be done in a country will be based on a set of criteria. Each sub-government must encompass a certain group of the population with similar backgrounds. They can either share the same race (e.g. Kurds in Iraq), same religion (e.g. Hindus in India), same cultural background or have the same ethnic origin. This is the most important factor as each government needs to be united, and federal states work best when each sub-government is composed of a predominantly homogenous population. Moreover, even if you have a country with great diversity, it will be much harder to establish a federal state if the population itself is segmented geographically. This is a very important aspect that needs to be taken into account in whether a country can adopt federalism. Furthermore, even if a country fits the criteria mentioned above, whereby it has a decent population count with a decent area and a diverse population, the diversity ratios of the different groups need to be in such a way that no one group has a much higher prevalence over 1 CIA Factbook, estimated figures for July 2005.Ibrahim Tadros 6.871: Knowledge Based Application Systems Final Project 4 another. For example, lets say we have two countries with 3 distinct racial groups. Racial Group Country A Country B Group 1 40% 70% Group 2 35% 20% Group 3 35% 10% A federal system would work better in country A because the percentages are pretty equal. This means that if a federal state were to be implemented in country A, then the three different sectors will have equal say in the central government. Contrastingly, in country B, group A will have a much larger sub-government than the other two groups meaning that more people are needed to represent them, and they will control more of the internal and external politics in the central government which might lead to racism against one race, or not providing equal rights to the whole population. Initial Thoughts: When we started thinking about this project, we were hoping to achieve several aspects a country should take when writing its constitution. This turned out to be a project of a larger scale and scope of our class, and we therefore decided to scale down, and look at one particular aspect of building a constitution, that is to help countries decide whether to adopt a federal ideology or not.Ibrahim Tadros 6.871: Knowledge Based Application Systems Final Project 5 Problem Solving Paradigm: After studying several designs of expert-based systems in class, and through the readings provided, we decided