Compromise is not necessarily a bad thing; it prevents federal units from selecting extreme policies which could harm minority groups.1Moreover, the devolved power structure of federal states means that the decisions which have to be collective are normally in areas of collective interest, for example defence, where there is a "whole" which should have preference over individual federal units. Whilst different levels of federal arrangements will have different interests, this reflects their different functions and prevents any one function from being overridden completely. Finally, this argument ignores the comparative which includes the benefits of federation to the constituent units 1 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2010, 'Federalism,'