Amazon.com description: Product Description: Of the over 180 politically sovereign states now in existence, 50 are either federations or include within them forms of self-determination and self-government which represent extensions of the federal principle or applications of the idea of political autonomy. The previous edition of this handbook (1991) represented the first major effort to inventory and describe all known examples of federal and autonomous arrangements, compare their basic features, and classify them by form. This fully updated edition documents the extensive changes in the state system in recent years, including the dramatic events in the former USSR, Germany, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and the European Community/Union.