In modern parlance is the political system which a number of independent and sovereign States adopt when they join together for purposes of domestic and especially International policy; local government is freely left with the individual States, and only in the matter of chiefly foreign relations is the central government paramount, but the degree of freedom which each State enjoys is a matter of arrangement when the contract is formed, and the powers vested in the central authority may only be permitted to work through the local government, as in the German Confederation, or may bear directly upon the citizens throughput the federation, as in the U.S. of America, and since 1847 in Switzerland.