Goals:
● Identify the competing values at stake in federalism
● Demonstrate understanding of the debate between state and federal powers
● Compare American government with other nations
● List the sources of political culture
Key information:
- States participate actively in
a. determining national policy
b. administering national programs
- States reserve to themselves or the localities within them powers over
c. Public services like
i. Schooling
ii. Law enforcement
d. Public decisions like
i. Land-use control
- In unitary systems, the national govt dominates these decisions.
- Debates about federalism
- After the Civil War, doctrine of dual federalism emerged.
a. The federal govt was supreme in its sphere
b. The states are equally supreme in their spheres
- In the 20th c., however, changes in public law and court decisions favored national over state power
- After the 1960s, states became more dependent on Washington to fund programs
- Today, there is a lively debate about Federal power
i. How closely the federal govt ought to regulate grants to states
ii. The wisdom of devolving ever more federal responsibilities onto state and local govts.
- Evaluating Federalism
a. This is difficult.
i. Sordid history of states’ rights tied to legalized racism
ii. Other hand: open opportunity for political partic. Afforded by today’s 50 states and 1000s of local govts
- Federalism permits laws/ policies on important matters to vary from state to state and town to town.
- Questions every generation of Americans must answer anew
a. How much they should vary on certain matters
b. and who should decide
Key Questions:
a. How does political sovereignty work in the American political system?
b. How is political power divided between the national government and the states under the Constitution?
c. What competing principles are involved with federalism?
d. Who should determine which issues should be overseen mainly by national laws?
a. it's nowhere. no government in America meets that definition. Federal and state government share soverignty in complicated and ever-changing ways.
ReplyDeleteb. At first, the state had most of the power. Then the national government gained power. In the last two decades, the state won back their power because of the supreme court. The distributiion of power between the national and the state government is never as simple or as settled as it may appear to be.
c. There are two: equality and participation.
d. The federal courts have often been the main or the final aribiters of federalism. In chapter 6, it was actually supreme court that decided to outlaw the national laws.