Copernican federalism is an analogy

Analogy

Analogy is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject to another particular subject , and a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process...

 for federalism

Federalism

Federalism is a political concept in which a group of members are bound together by covenant with a governing representative head. The term "federalism" is also used to describe a system of the government in which sovereignty is constitutionally divided between a central governing authority and...

. It is named for Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 astronomer

Astronomer

An astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...

 Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance astronomer and the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe....

.

Analogy

Various authors and theorists have evoked Copernican heliocentrism

Heliocentrism

Heliocentrism, or heliocentricism, is the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around a stationary Sun at the center of the universe. The word comes from the Greek . Historically, heliocentrism was opposed to geocentrism, which placed the Earth at the center...

 to describe tiers of government

Government

Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...

. Here an analogy is made between the hierarchical

Hierarchy

A hierarchy is an arrangement of items in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another...

 organization of the solar system

Solar System

The Solar System consists of the Sun and the astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun...

 and governments within a nation. There are various approaches.

The most common approach describes the Sun

Sun

The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...

 as analogous to a federal government

Federal government

The federal government is the common government of a federation. The structure of federal governments varies from institution to institution. Based on a broad definition of a basic federal political system, there are two or more levels of government that exist within an established territory and...

 and the states and other administrative division

Administrative division

An administrative division, subnational entity, or country subdivision is a portion of a country or other political division, established for the purpose of government. Administrative divisions are each granted a certain degree of autonomy, and are required to manage themselves through their own...

s as planet

Planet

A planet is a celestial body orbiting a star or stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, is not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals.The term planet is ancient, with ties to history, science,...

s. Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...

 wrote that the U.S. state

U.S. state

A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...

s were "like the planets revolving round their common sun, acting and acted upon according to their respective weights and distances," http://www.constitution.org/tj/jeff10.txt Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of America's first constitutional lawyers and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury...

 invoked a similar analogy in Federalist No. 9

Federalist No. 9

Federalist No. 9 is an essay by Alexander Hamilton and the ninth of the Federalist Papers. It was published on November 21, 1787 under the pseudonym Publius, the name under which all the Federalist Papers were published. Federalist No...

, using the word "orbit." Jefferson used the analogy to emphasize the systematic, self-balancing nature of the new United States Constitution

United States Constitution

The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...

. The analogy is also employed in an attempt to borrow Copernican simplicity as compared to Ptolemaic complexity. The implication here is that federal structures are more practicable than having many-to-many relationships.

Some theorists have used the analogy in the context of improving international relations, for example Emery Reves

Emery Reves

Emery Reves was a writer, publisher, literary agent and advocate of world federalism.-Youth:Reves was born in Bácsföldvár, Hungary, and educated in Berlin, Zurich and Paris.-Publishing career and Winston Churchill:...

 in The Anatomy of Peace

The Anatomy of Peace

The Anatomy of Peace was a book by Emery Reves, first published in 1946, which expressed the world federalist sentiments shared by Albert Einstein and many others in the late 1940s, in the period immediately following World War II...

: "Our political and social conceptions are Ptolemaic. The world in which we live is Copernican."http://www.federalunion.org.uk/archives/copernicanworld2.shtml

Civil service reform

In 2000, the Belgian

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 federal government commenced a program of civil service

Civil service

The term civil service has two distinct meanings:* A branch of governmental service in which individuals are employed on the basis of professional merit as proven by competitive examinations....

reform, called the “Copernicus Plan.” The object of the plan is for citizens to no longer revolve around the civil service, but for the civil service to revolve around the citizens.http://www.eiro.eurofound.eu.int/2000/06/feature/be0006317f.html