4.2: Federalism in America

The delegates to the Constitutional Convention faced the difficult challenge of designing a government that would avoid both the oppressiveness of the British monarchy and the fecklessness of the Articles of Confederation. Most delegates recognized that America’s national government needed more power to maintain the fractious union. Yet they understood equally the danger of a government with too much power, which could easily fall into the hands of a tyrant.

At the time of the Constitutional Convention, it was not obvious that the United States could be governed democratically. Most democratic governments in history, Greece and Rome among them, had either devolved to nondemocratic forms to deal with the strain of administering a large territory or collapsed when they refused to do so. A few long-term, stable democracies existed, such as the merchant republics of Florence and Venice, but these were generally very small. Even with just 13 states, America was already much larger than every successful democracy in history up to that point, and its descent into either tyranny or anarchy seemed a very real possibility. As John Adams would later write, “There never was a Democracy yet, that did not commit suicide.”

Federalism was the solution proposed by the Founders to prevent history from repeating itself. The Constitution would empower the national government to act in areas where nationwide consistency was necessary, such as diplomatic and monetary policy, but it would allow the states to handle everything else. Ideally, the individual states would emulate the successful small republics of the past in managing their own affairs, while the national government would have enough power to keep the states together without completely dominating them.

Under America’s federal system, the national government has certain enumerated powers which the state governments do not have. These powers are listed (enumerated) in the Constitution and deal with national concerns, such as raising armies, coining money, and declaring war. The state governments have reserved powers which the national government lacks, such as the powers to conduct elections, issue licenses, and provide public education. Most of these powers are not mentioned in the Constitution and are therefore reserved for the states according to the Tenth Amendment. The remaining powers can be exercised by both the national government and the state governments, and are therefore considered concurrent powers. For example, both the national government and the state government can establish courts, make laws, and impose taxes on their citizens, although the jurisdictions in which they can do these things differ. (See Figure 4.1 below for a summary of which powers fall into each category.)

Figure 4.1: Enumerated, reserved, and concurrent powers in the United States

The relationship between the national and state governments in the United States is similar in some ways to the relationships between state and local governments. An important difference is that local governments lack the sovereign status of state governments. This means states have much more power over localities — including the power to create, abolish, divide, or merge them — than the national government has over states.