Federalism

Federalism

Federalism

A federal system of government is one that divides the powers of government between the national (federal) government and state and local governments. The Constitution of the United States established the federal system, also known as federalism. Under federalism, each level of government has sovereignty in some areas and shares powers in other areas. For example: both the federal and state governments have the power to tax. Only the federal government can declare war (Barone, 2010).

Federalism is the division of powers between a central government and regional governments. Most developed nations experience ongoing struggles over the relative powers of their central and regional governments. The United States has a federal system of government where the states and national government exercise separate powers within their own spheres of authority. Other countries with federal systems include Canada and Germany. In contrast, national governments in unitary systems retain all sovereign power over state or regional governments. An example of a unitary system is France (Edwards, 2009).

The framers of the U.S. Constitution sought to create a federal system that promotes strong national power in certain spheres, yet recognizes that the states are sovereign in other spheres. In "Federalist No. 46," James Madison asserted that the states and national government "are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers." Alexander Hamilton, writing in "Federalist No. 28," (Finkelman, 2001) suggested that both levels of government would exercise authority to the citizens' benefit: "If their [the peoples'] rights are invaded by either, they can make use of the other as the instrument of redress." (Finkelman, 2001) However, it soon became clear that Hamilton and Madison had different ideas about how the national government should work in practice. Hamilton, along with other "federalists" including Washington, Adams, and Marshall, sought to implement an ...