James kombe

Currently, there is a lot of discussions in the country especially in the political arena asserting as to whether or not a federal system is better than a unitary system of administration with some political parties including these concerns in their party manifestos. To compound the problem, Zambia has been considered as a struggling country in terms of development with most people feeling neglected by those in positions of governance. Therefore, this essay will explain what aspects of federalism can straight forwardly and effectively be adopted or incorporated into the Zambian unitary system. It will further, show the extent to which a unitary system of administration affects tenets of democracy and decentralisation in Zambia. This will be done by means of justifications and practical examples. Elazar (1987:220) made the following observations. He defined unitary system of governance as a form of government where the powers of governance are concentrated in a single central government, with legal omnipotence over all territory within the state. Local governments may and usually do exist, but they are creatures of the central government and act as its agents. The term unitary stems from the word 'unit' which means one part of something that is whole or complete in itself but is also part of the bigger part. Since a government system does not only encompass the mechanism of government but also the structures and processes through which these interact with society, we can also define the unitary system as one in which the mechanisms, processes of governance, institutions of a country, and authority (or power, legitimate or not) are run as a unit. Under a unitary system, a country is administered as one component and one central authority over the whole country. It is characterised by a single appointing authority for all the major administrative and political positions, and a single cabinet for the whole country. Decisions are made centrally and applied universally. Such a system seems to promote the concentration of power and authority to the centre as opposed to de-concentration or delegation to periphery in governance. Any form of decentralization would be for administrative convenience and divisions or organs can be extended, multiplied, reduced or abolished by the centre. Unitarism promotes a two tier structure where there is; central and local governments and local authorities are a creature of central governments. The centre holds more power and any peripheral creations are subordinate and not coordinate to the central government. Unitary system differs from federal systems as the central government dictates the limit and conditions with delegation of authority to sub-national level and therefore more a hierarchical system (Vile, 2003:121).

A programming model is the primary genre of computer programming, and they vary in the way different elements of the program are represented and how steps for fixing obstacles are defined. There are several programming languages but two of the most important methods are Object Oriented Programming and Procedural Programming languages.