  A filtered manifold is a smooth manifold $M$ together with a filtration of
the tangent bundle by smooth subbundles which is compatible with the Lie
bracket of vector fields in a certain sense. The Lie bracket of vector fields
then induces a bilinear operation on the associated graded of each tangent
space of $M$ making it into a nilpotent graded Lie algebra. Assuming that these
symbol algebras are the same for all points, one obtains a natural frame bundle
for the associated graded to the tangent bundle, and filtered G--structures are
defined as reductions of structure group of this bundle.
  Generalizing the case of parabolic geometries, this article is devoted to the
question of whether a filtered G-structure of given type determines a canonical
Cartan connection on an extended bundle. As for existence, the result are
roughly as general as Morimoto's theorem from 1993, but it has several specific
features. First, we allow for general candidates for a homogeneous model and a
general version of normalization conditions. Second, the construction is
entirely phrased in terms of Lie algebra valued forms and leads to an explicit
characterization of the canonical Cartan connection. To verify that the
procedure can be applied to a given type of filtered G-structures, only finite
dimensional algebraic verifications have to be carried out.
