On my drive home from work today, I suddenly realized that there were several years from the end of the Revolutionary War and the drafting and ratification of the Constitution, so I did a bit of research and ran into these "Articles of Confederation" I had never really heard about before. What was the federal government of the US like under the Articles? Who was "in charge" and how did they go about implementing or asserting federal governance or authority?
Nominally the "United States in Congress Assembled" was in charge. This Congress was made up of between two to seven delegates from each State, were chosen by the State, and had one vote collectively (i.e. one vote per State delegation, not per delegate).
The AoC government, such as it was, had little to no practical ability to enforce laws, collect taxes (the States collected and then were supposed to transfer the funds), maintain stable currency (each State could make its own currency as well), and could not even maintain a military (it relied solely on State militias that were primarily beholden to the individual States).
The Articles of Confederation were so bad at everything that the States williingly gave up their sovereignty to form the present United States under the Constitution.