Federation

aka Federated, Federal, Federalism, Federalist. A federation is a large, often multi-ethnic, state originally based on mutual agreement between the participants. Compare with Empire, a term describing a large, multi-ethnic state, whose political structure was originally put together by Coercion... In Australian history, "federation" refers to the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia by six British colonies on 1 January 1901, and also to the political movement in the 1890s to bring this about. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation

The USA Is A Federation

Switzerland may be an even stronger model with its Canton system. Under the 1999 constitution, cantons hold all powers not specifically delegated to the federation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland

Also a technical term: A federation is a group of computing or network providers agreeing upon standards of operation in a collective fashion. The term may be used when describing the inter-operation of two distinct, formally disconnected, telecommunications networks that may have different internal structures.[1] The term federated cloud refers to facilitating the interconnection of two or more geographically separate computing clouds.[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_(information_technology)