 Nahua (Aztek) culture illustrates multi-level federalism: Tlaxilacalli - badly translated and understood as “neighbourhoods” - would submit to the authority of the sovereign local polity, or altepetl, which then scaled up to autonomous mega-provinces (huei altepetl) and finally to the entire empire. At each level, submission was traded for autonomy, undercutting any attempt at direct centralising rule (Johnson 2017). In the 1428 triple alliance for military purposes among the three city-states (altepeme) of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Totoquihuatzin, each of these rules over their dependent altepetl without interference by the other two (Lockhart 1992).