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Is Federalism a Good or Bad Thing for the U.S.A?

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Is Federalism a Good or Bad Thing for the U.S.A?
Is Federalism a good or bad thing for the USA?

What is Federalism? 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 between 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 1990s, 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 USA’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

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