American Government

Introduction

The United States has a federal political system. Federalism is a system in which political power is shared by national and sub national governments. A national government is the central governing authority in a country. Examples of sub national governments include states, provinces, and territories. Political scientists tend to distinguish federal systems from the two other major categories: confederal and unitary systems. A confederal system is one in which sub national units have nearly all the political power. A unitary system is one in which the national government has nearly all the political power. There are few countries in the world with an identifiable confederal system, with Switzerland being the prominent example. Accordingly, the two main types of political systems in practice throughout the world today are unitary and federal systems.

Discussion and Analysis

There are 21 nations that have a federal system of government. These nations account for nearly 40% of the world's population. In addition to the United States, other countries that have federal systems—to one extent or another—include Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Mexico, Nigeria, and Russia. Although the autonomy enjoyed by subnational units varies from nation to nation, federal systems have a few things in common (Abrams, pp. 136-49). Political scientist William Riker (1964) identified three characteristics that federal systems share: (1) National and subnational governments, simultaneously, share power over the same territory and population; (2) national and subnational governments each have at least one policy area in which they are preeminent; and (3) the autonomy of each level of government is officially recognized. Among democratic nations, the American system is the oldest continuous federal political structure in the world. American federalism divides power between the national government, headquartered in Washington, D.C., and the governments of the 50 states. Additional power is distributed between the national government and federally administered territories, in addition to hundreds of federally recognized Native American tribes.

Models of Federalism in America

From the installation of the Constitution in 1789 until the 1930s, the relationship between the national and state governments could be described as dual federalism (Bowman & Kearney, pp. 13-98). Each level of government was understood to be supreme within its own sphere of authority. The national government was supreme in such areas as national defense, foreign relations, mail delivery, and customs enforcement. The state government was supreme in such areas as education and law enforcement. This model allowed for a significant amount of state autonomy with the federal structure.

An extreme version of state-centered federalism is nullification. John Calhoun was the principal advocate of this idea (Kernell, pp. 92). This understanding of federalism holds that states—as sovereign political entities—have the authority to ignore, that is, nullify, national laws with which the states may disagree. Although not a predominant view, even among those who favored a state-centered interpretation of federalism, the spirit of nullification contributed greatly to the crisis that eventually led to the Civil War (1861-1865).

Dual federalism continued to be the dominant model of federalism until the 1930s. The inauguration of President Franklin ...