Federalism is mainly understood to be an organizational principle in which the individual members (member states) have a limited independence and statehood, but are united to a sovereign overarching federal state.
A federal state consists of sub-states that exercise certain (limited) competences under constitutional law that are not derived from the federal government as a whole. In addition to the state as a whole, the member states of a federal state therefore have their own, original autonomy over the population in their territory in terms of constitutional law.
