There is an additional system, or better, there is a larger setting of systems involving inversion.

I am a structural philosopher, and I often use real-life examples to show what is going on.

When I use the democratic system, then there are many varieties, but also an inversion.

If we take the Netherlands or Switzerland, then we see cities and land at the bottom of the empowered people. Above them, they organized themselves into provinces or cantons. Then, above this, they agreed on a cooperation of provinces or cantons. This third level is the federated level (or confederated level).

This fits the three levels you discuss.

Yet when we look at the United States, the system is not bottom-up, but top-down.

The Founding Fathers started with the Federal level in which they discuss the specifics of the Federal level plus the correlation of the Federal level with the States.

They step over the bottom section of what was shown for the Netherlands and Switzerland and let these two governmental levels hang by themselves.

Plus, because they have to link it to the bottom in the end, they skip the cities and surrounding lands and connect the US Constitution to We The People.

As such, we have a four-layered system in which one layer got skipped.

I'd like to hear how you address a skipped layer (replaced with something else or not).