preview

Examples Of Cooperative Federalism

Decent Essays

Federalism is an issue that has been very prevalent in American politics since the writing of the constitution up until today. Balancing national and state power was a strongly contested issue back when the Anti-federalists were arguing with the Federalists over which section should have more power. This led to the inclusion of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution in order to give the states and the people more rights than they were originally provided. However, the issue is still not resolved and the issue has led to huge conflicts in the nation like the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. Today, people continue to debate over whether the state governments or the national government should have more power.
The state of American Federalism can mainly be described as cooperative federalism although there are elements of other types of federalism in the country’s current system. Cooperative federalism is when state governments and the national government work together on governing the people. There is a higher degree of collaboration and cooperation between the state and national governments and less defined boundaries of responsibility. The federal government has become involved in issues that used to …show more content…

This makes states constantly want to improve their policies in order to attract more people to their state. With a unitary government, competitive federalism could not occur. While some may argue that this could also create “a race to the bottom”, the advantage of competition between states allowing such a broad range of types of governments outweighs the potential negatives. (Bianco and Canon 2015, 90) The United States Supreme Court has also tended to support states’ rights and find that congress has generally overreached its power but only by small margins. (Bianco and Canon 2015,

Get Access