Question

• Develop an essay (300 – 350 words) where you discuss the beginnings of Cooperative Federalism, and how it continues to work in very practical ways throughout the United States.
• Include specific examples, even from within your own state. What are the implications of Cooperative Federalism? What are the disadvantages, if any?

Answer 1

Due to Federalism, there was a significant change in the relationship between the national and state government. The role of national government increased drastically during 20th century and in present era, it has expanded substantially.

Dual Federalism (1789–1945)

Dual Federalism was in practice in the country for the first 150 years of American republic. Here, the main responsibility of national government was to deal with national defense, foreign policy, and fostering commerce and state government had to manage the issues related to local matters, economic regulation, and criminal law. This type of federalism is also known as Layer-cake federalism as state and national government had very clear and distinct areas of responsibilities.

The Civil War and the Fourteenth Amendment (1861–1868)

In this era, most of the Southerners believed hat the state should have greater responsibilities and stake in making the critical decisions such as should slavery be allowed or not. They believed that individual state government should have more power than national government because the states had ratified the Constitution to create the federal government in the first place

Industrialization and Globalization (1865–1945)

During late nineties, the nature and the characteristics of government and politics in USA changed drastically and national government had a lot of control over most of the decisions due to industrialization and globalization. A new deal was introduced by Roosevelt which included a combination of policies and programs which were focused on revering from the great depression in the economy. These new policies included increased regulation of banking and commerce and programs to alleviate poverty, including the formation of the Works Progress Administration and a social security plan. The power of sates were cut in a large extent so that National government can take hold of these plans.

Cooperative Federalism (1945–1969)

This type of federalism is represented more clearly by the marble cake rather than a layer cake as here , it was not easy to find out the limits from where the national government, states and local government states and end as there was a very close integration of all of these government. Here many federal plans were taken care by the state and local governments and the dependence of local and state government increased for funds on national government to support their own plans and policies. cooperative federalism, or marble-cake federalism are the others name by which this federalism is known.

New Federalism (1969–present)

Many scholars believed that at present the power of national government has boosted immensely and there must be handing over of some of power to the states. In number of policies, there is a very strong form of   federalism. In new federalism, there are some regulations on the power of the national government along with devolution in which more power and responsibilities are given to states.

Dual Federalism:- It is also known as divided sovereignty and it can be seen as a political structure in which there is a distinction between the power and authorities of state and national government and there will be no intervention in state governance from national government.

Cooperative Federalism:- It is a political system in which there is a cooperation and mutual understanding among the local, states and national government for governing and making various policies and programmes rather than making their own separate policies and plans.

Fiscal Federalism:- It is a part of broader public finance discipline. It mainly deals with the division of government functions and financial relations among different levels of government.