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Well, Federalism is defining as the allocation of power between the national government and regional government; a system of government in which the power is divided beјen a central authority and constituent political units. One of the advantages of Federalism is that State governments can experiment with different policies and other States and the Federal Government can learn from the mistakes of the experimenting states. A good example Of this is California, whom frequently leads the nation in environmental regulations.
Many measures adopted by California are subsequently adopted by other states. And during the 1 9905, Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson experimented with welfare policy, and those experiments influenced federal welfare reform. This is good for the USA because it means that they aren’t having to take huge risks when experimenting new policies and if anything goes wrong then it only effects a few States out of all of them, and on the other hand if it all goes well then they have a good knowledge and insight into how to set up these policies.
Federalism also ensures the separations of powers and prevents tyranny as it makes sure that if one person or party came into power of all three branches of power in Federal Government, Federalism ensures that the State governments would still function independently. This fulfils the Founding Fathers vision of a government structure that ensures liberty. For example if all of Federal Government was Republican, any vote or decision made by them would still be able to be accepted or ignored by State Governments who could choose whether they would put these policies into practice.
Another advantage of Federalism is that it practices pragmatism. By this I mean that due to the Aqua’s such vast size and large population it is very difficult to be able to permit diversity and make conscious decisions of the local people using such a large group of people who all work in one area and very often come from common ground. It is much easier for everybody if the powers are given to local government officials and the big decisions are made by Federal government, so then the local governments can dictate which policies they want to put into practice depending on which ones they think loud work in their state.
On the opposing end to these points, the Federalist system prevents the creation of a National Policy because they don’t have a single policy on issues, instead they have fifty. This can lead to a lot of confusion, especially amongst the people of America who frequently have to catch up on the rules of the state that they’re in as many states have different rules on different issues, such as the Marriage Act which says in Arizona that people can get married from the age of 12 with the permission of a court, whereas in California people must be at least 16 years of age to get married.
Slightly more confusing laws are ones on guns which vary from state to state, with some states allowing any person to have a gun such as Alaska and some states such as New York insisting upon a license. Also, this system leads to a lack of accountability due to the fact that the overlap of boundaries among national and state governments makes it tricky for people to be assigned a blame for failed policies as people can just pass the blame on and it goes round in a circle like that, with nobody willing to take accountability.
Finally, Critics argue that federalism cannot function well due to ignorance Of citizens and of members of governments. Most Americans know little about their state and local governments, and this is represented by the fact that turnout in state and local elections is often less than 25 percent. Citizens consequently often ignore state and local governments, even though these governments have a lot of power to affect people??s lives. This can result in them not getting the decisions that they want as all they do is listen to the
Federal Government, but only the outlines of major policies are made here and it is the job of the State governments to implement these. In my opinion, the advantages of Federalism outline the disadvantages of it as whilst the system is complicated, all systems are complicated and people just need to get their heads around it. Whereas it not only permits diversity, it also opens up the options for the governments to make their own choices and experiment with different ideas without the worry of anything drastic happening.