System of Government
FedCom gets its name from its style of government — Federated identifies the nation as a federation, and Commonweath means it is founded in law, for the common good of all.
As a federation, political power is split between the Federal Government and those of the constituent Member-States. What makes FedCom special in this regard is the enormous degree of autonomy enjoyed by the individual States — far more than is typical for a federation.
In FedCom, sovereign power rests squarely with the individual citizens. The government is only empowered to perform those duties the people deliberately entrust to it, and cannot overstep these boundaries. This means governments in FedCom, from the national level down, are very small and have very little raw power — the bare minimum, wherever possible. This may seem unusual to foreigners, especially those that hail from large countries with massive bureaucracies and thick legal codes, but it makes perfect sense when one considers the context of our culture.
 Federal Government:
FedCom's national government unites all Member-States in their common interests, serves as the vox populi (voice of the people), sets nation-wide law, and handles all foreign affairs. If States bring a dispute before the Federal government, they are bound to respect the answer.
There is no written constitution. Instead, a specific set of high-level laws, unwritten norms and tradition all combine to curb government power and define delegated powers. Government power is built strictly upon the consent of the governed.
Member-States:
Each State has the power to create and manage its government however it sees fit — there are no restrictions on the type of government chosen, so long as it's what the majority of the resident population desires. States may have democracies, monarchies, dictatorships, or anything in-between, and can follow any political ideology. For obvious reasons, most States organize themselves in a manner most conductive to integrating with the rest of the country, so governments and ideologies that diverge wildly from the norm are uncommon. The people's freedom of self-determination is left intact, whether it is exercised or not.
State governments have the power to conduct diplomacy with other Member-States — they can negotiate trade deals, forge alliances, and so on — just like a miniature version of the international community. However, their powers of diplomacy end at the national borders (foreign affairs is an exclusive Federal power).
States also have the power (and are encouraged to use it) to create and maintain their own military/militia forces. This establishes a distributed in-depth self-defense network that can react to threats very quickly. In the event of an invasion, the State militias contain and slow down the attacker, while the more professional national-level military moves in to drop the hammer.
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