The short answer is: NOT YOUR NODE, NOT YOUR RULES
"federated" has been used lately to mindfuck ppl into believing they are free and decentralized. A federated government is not a democracy and a federated protocol doesn't set u free. It's the old server-client paradigm.
The longer answer is: there might be times when users want to DELEGATE some functionality TEMPORARILY to confidents and software should ENABLE this feature. In a digital voting system you may not want to vote on every little issue. The critical design choice is here to deliver the full software package to endusers, so they can take back responsibility whenever they choose to. Next the software needs to be enduser friendly and not discourage the user in any way to exercise his or her full power.
Whenever you hear "client" to describe your app, chances are you don't get the full package.