I agree that there is significant tensions between local, federal, and central governments. Of course, it is not so much the name that is important but the distribution of power and activities. Unitarism is out-of-favour at the moment, and for good reasons; localism protects against the diseconomies of scale, and ensures accountable competition between local governments. Contrawise, there has been a source of frustration in Australia for many decades over the existence of our state governments ("solves no problem, confers no benefit". Many Germans I have spoken to feel the same. They're happy with local government, but state governments seems to be more of a burden than a help.