TheCSA was signed by the president in 1970. Marijuana was declared a Schedule I drug by the CSA due to its high potential for abuse and no legitimate medical use. California enacted a medical marijuana law in 1996 because of new claims about the benefits of marijuana. Medical marijuana is legal in twenty-five states and the District of Columbia. Federal authorities cracked down on the number of pot shops in California. California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Oregon, Nevada, and Washington increased the ante when citizen referenda approved marijuana use by citizens over the age of 21. Sometimes federalism, the topic of this chapter, is messier than we would like.

During the Constitutional Convention, the question of the relative priority of federal versus state law was one of the central issues that was fought over. We fought a bloody Civil War over this issue in the 1860s.

For most of American history, the claims of state officials that federal officials construed their powers too broadly were taken seriously in the federal courts. During the "Great Depression" in 1937, all of that changed. The Supreme Court struck down major parts of Roosevelt's agenda when he tried to deal with the depression. FDR tried to "pack" the court with new and more compliant members. The court abandoned its traditional role of limiting government regulation of the economy in favor of a focus on civil rights and liberties. An aggressive regulatory agenda was initiated by the federal government.

The court only occasionally challenged federal powers on the basis of the Tenth Amendment.

One option is through nullification, the idea that states can render federal laws null and void if they believe the laws are unconstitutional. We must distinguish between formal and informal nullification to understand this claim. The federal courts would uphold the nullification claim if the state government declared the act of Congress void. The federal courts would have to rule that the federal action was an unconstitutional violation of the "reserved rights" of the states. Twice in the last half century, the Supreme Court has done that.

The Brady Handgun Violence Protection Act required state officials to conduct background checks on people who wanted to buy a handgun.

The case of medical marijuana or the broader marijuana use approved by Colorado and Washington is an example of an informal nullification. State and public reluctance to comply with a particular federal statute are some of the ways in which informal nullification occurs. State legislatures can pass laws or decline to enforce federal mandates. If state authorities do not challenge federal authority directly, or do so carefully, federal authorities may react to the opposition by withdrawing the act or at least limiting enforcement.

This chapter ends our discussion of the origins of American political ideals and institutions and serves as a transition to our treatment of contemporary American politics.

In this chapter, we look at the origins of the American federal system and ask how it has been affected by political development and change in the American society.

The balance of power within American federalism has evolved over time to address new issues and problems in a rapidly growing, increasingly complex, national and now international environment.

The path of the nation's development would be affected by the structure and character of the American government. They were worried about what kind of government they were creating. The founding fathers used separation of powers and checks and balances to allocate and limit executive, legislative, and judicial functions within the national government. Some founding and later generations wanted more power and initiative at the national level, while others wanted less. The drama of American federalism continues because of the struggle between national and state actors for the power and resources to define and address the dominant issues of American political life.

Twenty-first-century American federalism involves a lot of authorities and actors. The nation has more than 300 million citizens. 90,107 governments within the federal system serve these citizens. Only one national government exists. There are fifty state governments. In the states, there are 3,031 county governments, 19,519 municipalities, 16,360 towns and townships, 12,880 school districts, and 38,266 special districts that deliver all manner of services.

Federalism is an old idea. The idea that people can establish lasting compacts or covenants among themselves by discussion and consent has been central to American political thought and development.

There is a great difficulty in thinking about government as resting on the ideas of compact or covenant. The idea of breaking a disagreeable contract whenever there was bad faith on the part of any other party was one of the consequences of thinking of federal government as based on a contract.

Governments over large territories had to take one of two forms according to the best thinking of their day. The empire of the ancient world and the monarchies of Europe had consolidated governments. The centralized states were subject to the will of one man or woman who could control both offense and defense. A confederation of smaller republics was the other.

The individual republics were left in control of their domestic affairs, but pledged to coordinate their foreign affairs if attacked.

The idea of sovereignty was what made the choice between consolidation and confederation so stark. Between 1640 and 1688, there was almost fifty years of civil war in England because of disagreements about the king or Parliament.

In the American case, it seemed that sovereignty had to be located in a national government or in individual states. The Articles of Confederation gave the Confederation Congress modest powers, but left sovereignty with the individual states.

The idea that several governments might operate in the same space and in relation to the same citizens if each was limited in its authority and jurisdiction was not widely understood or accepted.

The problem that they were trying to solve was set aside by the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and they were able to think in new directions. The New Jersey Plan demanded that the national government be grounded on the sovereignty of the states. The Convention came to understand that a new understanding of federalism was needed and that neither old model applied well in the new nation.

The choice between a consolidated national government and a loose confederation of states was false according to the most fundamental insight of the founding fathers.

The answer to this question was given by James Madison. In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments and then divided into separate departments. "After this double security is in place, everything else must be left to the people, who, as they will hold the scales in their own hands, it is to be hoped, will always take care to preserve the constitutional equilibrium between." The Constitution gave certain powers to the national government, barred the states from making policy in certain areas, offered them guarantees and assurances in other areas, and left still other areas open to the authority of both national and state governments. Despite Madison's assurances that the constitutional equilibrium between the national and state governments would be maintained by a watchful people, only occasionally has federalism been the target of popular tumult, as with the modern "Tea Party" movement. The Congress, Supreme Court, and state and local officials have shaped American federalism.

James Madison wanted to strengthen the national government. A national Congress with a broad grant of legislative authority and the right to review, amend, or reject acts of the several state legislatures was envisioned by the Virginia Plan. This strong national federalism, in which the states would play a decidedly secondary role, was rejected in favor of a national Congress wielding specifically listed or enumerated powers. The Convention's adoption of the supremacy clause soothed the nationalists' disappointment.

The powers of Congress are laid out in the US constitution.

There are seventeen enumerated powers, including the powers to tax, to regulate commerce and coinage, to declare war, and to raise armies. Congress can only make law and policy within its areas of enumerated power.

The Constitution gives Congress implied powers that go beyond its enumerated powers. Congress has the power to make all laws which are necessary and proper for carrying into execution, according to the closing paragraph of the article. Theelastic clause suggests that Congress has a general authority beyond its enumerated powers.

The idea of inherent powers is related to specific constitutional provisions if the enumerated powers are fairly specific. The idea that nationhood requires the right and necessity, without reference to specific language in the Constitution, to deal with other nations from a footing equal to theirs has been accepted by both Congress and the Supreme Court.

One example of presidential initiative, taken in threatening circumstances, but with no narrow constitutional authorization, will clarify the nature of inherent powers.

Even though Congress was not in session and had not previously authorized these actions, President Lincoln called up additional troops and spent a lot of money in the wake of the southern states' independence. Lincoln assumed that the answer was "no" and that he had no need to justify his actions.

The idea of concurrent powers was central to the idea of a complex republic. The power to tax and borrow, to regulate commerce, to establish courts, and to build roads and highways are all examples of dual sovereignty. Both levels of the federal system are authorized to act in these areas. The tax bill is an example of concurrent power. All but seven states require citizens to fill out income tax returns for both the national and state levels.

The national government's powers were denied by section 9 of the Constitution.

Congress was forbidden to suspend normal legal processes except in cases of rebellion or grave public danger, to favor the commerce or ports of one state over another, and to grant titles of nobility. The Constitution has limitations on national power, but students should know that this is a brief paragraph.

In a course on American government, students often miss out on how important the states are, even in the federalism chapter. The logic of American federalism is that the states have complete power over matters not delegated to the national government and not denied them by the U.S. Constitution. The jurisdiction of the Congress extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the States a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects. Many demanded that protections be added to the Constitution because of the concern that the new national government might take over the powers of the states. The Bill of Rights was one of the ten amendments adopted by the first Congress.

The police power, provision of services to citizens, and creation and control of local governments are some of the powers reserved by the states. The police power covers regulation of individual and corporate activities in order to protect and enhance public health, welfare, safety, morals, and convenience. Police and fire protection, road construction, and education are some of the services provided by states. Local governments are regulated by the states.

The problem of individual states antagonizing dangerous foreign powers and trying to create economic advantages for their own citizens to the detriment of other states was experienced under the Articles of Confederation. The U.S. Constitution forbids the states to enter into treaties with each other or with foreign powers, to keep their own armies, or to engage in war unless actually invaded. States can't coin their own money, impair contracts, or tax imports or exports.

There are explicit promises made to the states in the U.S. Constitution. The states are promised that their boundaries and equal representation in the Senate will not be changed without their consent and that their republican governments will be protected from domestic violence.

Provisions require the states to respect each other's civil acts, deal fairly with each other's citizens, and return suspected criminals who flee from one state into another.

Civil statutes are enacted by the state legislature. Records include deeds, mortgages, and wills. Final civil court proceedings include judicial proceedings. The states were required to respect each other's legal acts and findings in order to create a national legal system. Over the course of American history, social issues such as religious toleration, slavery, and the decision by some states to allow gay marriage have strained cooperation between the states.

The Constitution left the states in charge of their own internal police and gave the national government responsibility for military and foreign policy.

Over the course of American history, the boundary line between the national government's supremacy within its areas of constitutional responsibility and the states' reserve powers has been fuzzy. The main point of tension in thinking about American federalism is how to balance federal power with the powers reserved to the individual states by the Tenth Amendment.

From the founding period through the first third of the twentieth century, the view of American federalism was dual federalism. A layer-cake federalism sees the nation and several states as being within their areas of constitutional responsibility, but with little policy overlap between them. During the nation's early history and throughout the nation's history, dual federalism had two challengers, one a nation-centered federalism and the other a statecentered federalism. The idea was that the nation preexisted the states when the Continental Congress ordered the colonies to sever ties to England.

A second group of American statesmen disagreed with each other.

President Jefferson Davis of the Confederate States of America believed that the states preexisted the nation and created it by compacting themselves. If the national government violated the compact by encroaching upon the prerogatives of the states, individual states could break away from the Union. States have the option of declaring federal laws null and void if they believe they fell outside of Congress's enumerated powers.

Through the early years of the country's history, the nation-centered and state-centered visions of federalism clashed. State-centered federalism became increasingly isolated and strident as the industrial economy of New England outpaced the agrarian economy of the South during the 1840s and 1850s. When Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, the South decided to break away from the United States and fight in the Civil War.

The issue of whether Congress could legally charter a bank allowed the court to limit state interference with them.

No power to establish a bank appeared among the enumerated powers of Congress, so opponents of the bank argued that Congress had no power to create a bank at all. The right of the Congress to establish and administer a bank on the "necessary and proper" clause was rested by Chief Justice Marshall. He argued that the bank was an appropriate way to go about this.

The Tenth Amendment's "reserved powers" of the states were undermined by this expansive interpretation of national power.

Chief Justice Marshall's attempt to include the nation centered vision of federalism in the Constitution was completed by a third decision.

The expansion of national power in our federal system has been fueled by the broad interpretation of Congress's commerce power.

The advocates of the state-centered vision disagreed. Marshall, writing for the majority, held that the Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce applied to navigation, even in a single state, if any of the passengers or goods being carried on the steamship were engaged in a "continuous journey" that found or would find them in interstate commerce It is almost certain that not a single person or piece of cargo on such a steamship would end up in interstate commerce. The foundation for the triumph of national federalism was laid by these decisions. Marshall's opponents would have a long day in the sun.

President Andrew Jackson named Roger B. Taney the new chief justice after John Marshall's death in 1835.

South Carolina senator John C. was a stronger advocate.

The doctrine of the concurrent majority would allow each region to veto national laws that threatened their interests. If the South was denied security, it was argued that the states could break away from the Union. Sometimes these ideas are still heard.

Congress had no right to prohibit a slave owner from taking his property, even his human property, into any state in the Union, even a free state, and holding that slave as property.

The citizens of individual states should be able to vote for or against slavery according to Douglas. Abraham Lincoln, a little-known former congressman, argued for the right of the national government to limit slavery to those states where it existed. Lincoln lost.

The Civil War was set in motion by the strong arguments made by Taney and Douglas in favor of federalism and an expansive view of states' rights. Lincoln was elected to the presidency in the election of 1860 because of Northern opinion against the expansion of slavery. America went to war with itself over the nature of its federal Union after the South seceded.

The idea of states' rights being a large and secure place for the states in the federal system was not a casualty of the Civil War. The federal government did not regulate state and local affairs until after the Great Depression. Cooperative federalism was better described after the 1930s than dual federalism.

David Walker, a political scientist, has described the defining aspects of cooperative federalism, or marble-cake federalism, as it is often called to highlight the sharing of national and state responsibility. Walker made two important points about federalism. National, state, and local officials share responsibilities for virtually all functions in cooperative federalism. They are coworkers. Over time, however, concern about the national government's dominance of the federal system, usually by attaching mandates to federal funds provided to states and communities, has become a growing concern.

Between the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 and the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, social change in America was massive. The nation went from being mostly of small towns and isolated farms to being a large-scale industry. The nation was bound more tightly into a web of commerce and communication that seemed to demand tending above the levels of states and communities.

Over the course of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, debate raged over the reach of congressional power through the Constitution's commerce clause.

Consider the rise of railroads and the telegraph. Prior to the arrival of railroads, businesses were either local or regional. The size of a business was determined by how far away finished products could be distributed. Businesses expanded rapidly after the telegraph and railroads made it possible to deliver products quickly over long distances. Banking, railroads, communications, steel, oil, and sugar dominated the nation's business landscape by the last decades of the 19th century.

The nation's largest businesses were beyond the control of congress and state.

The relative power of the national and state governments is ambiguous in the U.S. Constitution. The powers granted to Congress are enumerated rather than general.

Prior to the Civil War, the rights of the states in the new Union were discussed around the idea of nullification. The idea of nullification was to suspend the operation of an act of the national government with which it disagreed.

The idea of states' rights remained important despite the Civil War's destruction of nullification and secession as practical ideas. The fights against racism and poverty of the 1960s and 1970s left behind programs that no longer work and a federal government that is too large and intrusive for the needs of the twenty-first century, according to some. Many conservatives believe that federal money and authority should be returned to the states to be closer to the problems that need to be solved and to the people in the best position to know how to solve them.

The liberals worry that the old states' rights arguments for local control will once again be used by powerful local majorities to ignore the needs of weaker local minorities. The modern opponents of states' rights claim that fairness and justice require that national standards be set and maintained, not just in the obvious area of equal rights for minorities and women, but also in such diverse areas as health, welfare, and education. Some states will do less for their neediest citizens if standards are not in place.

Democrats across the nation cheered when the Democrats in Congress passed the health care law. Conservatives didn't know whether to cheer or cry when the Supreme Court upheld the health care law.

Knowing what changes are needed is not the same as knowing how to get political agreement to adopt and implement a particular set of changes. Theodore Roosevelt threatened to "trust busting" to encourage large private sector actors to accept more federal oversight.

President Wilson urged a broader view of federalism. It can't be settled by the opinion of one generation because it is a question of growth, and every successive stage of our political and economic development makes it a new question. The balance of American federalism did not begin a shift of responsibility and authority to the national level until after Franklin Roosevelt came to power.

President Wilson proposed a federal income tax in 1913. For the first time in American history, the national government could raise large amounts of money by taxing the annual incomes of citizens and residents. During the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, the national government's share of spending increased. The federal share of total spending never reached pre-crisis levels after each crisis. The federal government has accounted for 65 percent of all government expenditures since the mid-1960s, while state and local governments have accounted for 35 percent. In order to combat the recession, federal spending increased in 2009, but has since fallen back.

The collapse of the American economy in October 1929 was more clear than anything else. A decade of deep economic depression and persistent unemployment began after "The Crash" in which the stock market lost almost a quarter of its value in two days of panic trading. World War II began after the depression ended.

There was a period of national emergency in the 1930s and 1940s. The country was in a depression for more than three years before Franklin Roosevelt took office. The economic collapse of the Depression was global. The economy had fallen from its 1929 high and one-third of the workforce was out of work. The needs of their citizens overwhelmed the governments. During his first hundred days in office, Roosevelt's dramatic response, known as the "New Deal", included an extraordinary assumption of federal authority over the nation's economy and a major expansion of its taxing powers. Almost all of the logic and operation of dual federalism was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court blinked. Roosevelt had a Supreme Court that would bless a vastly expanded role for the federal government after some members changed their votes. The National Labor Relations Act, the Railway Labor Act, the Farm Mortgage Act, and the Social Security Act were approved by the court in June of 1935. The end of dual federalism and the beginning of a period in which the national government would have the power to regulate economic activity in the states were what these decisions amounted to. The national government's spending proportion increased from 28 percent in 1927 to 50 percent in 1936.

The Agricultural Adjustment Act regulated the amount of land that could be planted. Filburn was given permission to plant 11 acres of wheat. He planted 23 acres to argue that the wheat from only 11 acres would be sold and the other 12 would feed livestock. The Supreme Court, for decades a defender of free markets and of a limited role for Congress in economic regulation, held that feeding the excess wheat to his own animals meant that he did not have to buy that wheat in the open market.

By 1944, the federal share of government spending was 90 percent.

The Korean War of the early 1950s pushed the federal share of total government spending back up to 70 percent. It has ranged from 60 to 70 percent over the past 50 years. Domestic policy was involved in the consolidation of political authority at the national level.

For most of American history, the limited congressional authority outlined in section 8 of the Constitution was understood to forbid national control of broad policy areas including education, health care, income and retirement security.

During the Great Depression, the need in the nation's states and communities seemed to call for an activist federal government.

During the 1960s and early 1970s, the reach of the national government within the structure of American federalism continued to expand. After the calm of the Eisenhower years, John Kennedy promised to "get the country moving again" when he was elected president in 1960. This new movement was powered by federal money. The categorical grant was favored for delivering federal funds.

State and local governments were offered opportunities to receive federal funds if they engaged in a certain narrow activity and if they complied with detailed federal mandates on eligibility, program design, service delivery, and reporting.

There were only five categorical grant programs in 1900.

Major transfers of funds from the national government to state and local governments did not begin until after World War II, but fifteen more were added during FDR's first two terms as president.

Federal expenditures increased from more than $20 billion in 1950 to more than $275 billion in 1978. President Carter and the Congress reduced spending on grants to state and local governments modestly in 1979 and 1980, before the new Reagan administration slashed them by more than 20 percent in the early 1980s. Not until the early 1990s did federal grants to state and local governments begin to increase as part of the Clinton administration's domestic focus. The Clinton administration resisted devolution of federal authority to the states, but the Bush administration's homeland security initiatives dramatically increased federal transfers to state and local governments before they leveled off.

National emergencies, whether they are external threats, like World War II or 9/11, or economic catastrophes, like the Great Depression of the 1930s or the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009, call for concerted national action. The new administration's economicStimulus program pumped tens of billions of dollars into the states. Initial cuts were made after the Republican gains in the 2010 House elections.

There were 132 categorical grant programs in operation when John Kennedy was in the White House. More than two hundred new categorical grant programs covering the full range of U.S. domestic policy initiatives were passed during Lyndon Johnson's five years as president.

Creative federalism describes the range and breadth of Johnson administration activities.

The "Great Society" initiatives of the 1960s were driven not just by Democratic activism in the White House and the Congress, but also by a federal judiciary determined to end racial discrimination and segregation, protect civil liberties, reform criminal justice procedures, and afford new protections to rights of the accused and When Lyndon Baines Johnson left office in 1969 his opponents began to refer to creative federalism as coercive federalism.

Nixon's "New Federalism" was intended to make it easier for the states to decide how to use their money. Two major federalism initiatives were undertaken by President Nixon.

The first, called special revenue sharing or block grants, bundled related sets of categorical grants into a single program. States and localities were able to decide how to spend the money. The second Nixon initiative, called general revenue sharing, provided $30.2 billion to the fifty states and approximately thirty-eight thousand local governments over a five-year period. General revenue sharing funds had no strings attached. States have the ability to set their own priorities.

Nixon's New Federalism was purchased from the Democrats.

Increased expenditures and expanded regulation of state and local governments were exacted from President Nixon by Congress. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw an expansion of federal regulation of state and local governments.

Many state and local officials complained about the complexity of application, administration, and reporting requirements while conservatives in Congress were concerned about the expense of federal mandates and regulations. Jimmy Carter began to trim federal transfers to state and local governments in the late 1970s.

The long-running conflict between nation-centered and state-centered federalism has been worsened by the rapid rise in federal spending and federal transfers to the states over the past half century. State and local governments were encouraged to follow their lead by the federal government in the 1960s and 1970s. State and local authorities were displaced by the federal government.

The power of the national government is based on the "supremacy clause" in the constitution. According to Joseph F. Zimmerman, one of the nation's leading federalism experts, 70% of the statutes passed by Congress after 1970 were in the policy areas of banking and commerce, health care and the environment.

The idea of the Tenth Amendment stems from devolution.

The constitution protects the states against intrusion by the national government.

Proponents of devolution want authority and financial resources back to the states so they can deal with the issues that are most important to them.

Ronald Reagan came to the presidency with a different view of American federalism than any other president.

The Reagan administration found that the national and state governments were doing too much and would only do less if they had less money. The Economic Recovery Tax Act reduced the individual income tax rates by 25 percent over three years. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 reduced the top tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent. Federal revenue losses were massive even though tax rates were adjusted marginally upward.

Huge annual budget deficits put a lot of pressure on domestic spending and transfer payments to state and local governments. The general revenue sharing program was dropped from states in 1980. Between 1980 and 1987 outlays to state and local governments fell by 33 percent. State and local governments were given the choice of picking up the slack or taking the heat for program cuts.

Virtually all state and local governments are required to balance their budgets each year. States and communities are particularly vulnerable to economic downturns because of the decreasing federal support. When an economic downturn takes hold and revenues decline, the federal government can run a budget deficit but the states have to cut spending and people feel it.

Since 1980, only the first President Bush and Barack Obama have not been governors. Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and the second President Bush all thought that the national government should relate to the states. Ronald Reagan believed that government was too big, too intrusive, and too expensive. The government's role in American life would shrink because he cut taxes at the national level and revenue transfers to the states.

Government has an important role to play in American life, but many problems are better addressed by people in their states and communities, according to Bill Clinton.

He wanted to shift financial resources and responsibilities to the states. After 1994, President Clinton's desire to produce a balanced budget joined with the Republican Congress's desire to shift primary responsibility for social welfare policy in the United States from the national to the state level to produce a dramatic overhaul of federal relations. In key policy areas like welfare, health care, job training, and transportation, Congress and the president rolled dozens of separate grant programs into a few large block grants. Each block grant gave the states more flexibility in how they spend the money. The federal government spent about 70 percent of what it spent on the same programs when it administered the block grants.

The process of moving financial resources and policy responsibility to the states was accelerated by President George W. Bush.

Constitutional interpretation rarely goes in a straight line. The court's conservatives, led by Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice O'Connor, and Justice Thomas, were dismayed. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, the federal government is no longer limited in its powers, argued Justice Thomas.

In 2010 there was a much larger battle. The Obama health care program, passed in early 2010, was quickly challenged by twenty-six mostly Republican Attorneys General as an unconstitutional intrusion into the policy domain of the states.

There was a chance that the Supreme Court would strike down most or all of the law. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a divided court, surprised almost everyone, especially conservatives, when he upheld most of the health care law, not because of the commerce clause, but because of the federal government's power to tax. He acknowledged the role of the states in the federal system by holding that the national government could not force the states to expand Medicaid as part of health care reform.

State governments get a third of their general revenue from the federal government.

Since 1995 a number of cases have strengthened the immunity of states against being sued in their own courts or the federal courts by state government employees or citizens. Worker rights, patent protection, and age discrimination are federal laws that apply to state governments.

General regulation of medical practice was a state responsibility according to the court. Over the course of the twentieth century, the weight and focus of government in the United States shifted from the state and local levels to the national level.

The number of democratic nations in the world has grown dramatically over the past two hundred years, but the number of federal systems has not.

It is not the case that all democratic systems are federal. Only about two dozen nations use federal systems, and they have little in common except that most are well-off by world standards.

The countries that have chosen to use federal systems vary in a number of ways. Most of the time, federal systems are chosen by the political leaders of countries who believe that some of the efficiency of centralization should be sacrificed to local and regional autonomy. In the United States, the claim is often made that federalism leads to bold experimentation and problem solving in the "laboratories of democracy" that are the fifty states.

Federalism has been a part of American constitutionalism since the founding of the New England Confederation. One might think our commitment to federalism would be secure after 350 years of experience. Some wonder if American federalism has been compromised by American political development and the globalization of the world communication, finance, and trade structures. They support the devolution of recent decades. The serious threat of global warming, international terrorism, and the threat of Aids and bird flu require more national authority, not less, according to others.

Massive political change has been caused by American political development over the last 150 years or so. The need to strengthen the abilities of local, state, and national forces to coordinate their efforts in dealing with natural disasters was highlighted by Hurricane Katrina. Man-made disasters may confront us with worse in the future and our federal system must be prepared to respond. Consider the nation's transportation infrastructure.

There is a sense that it built itself. The roads are community projects and may not need to be managed. New England villages elected town officers to monitor, improve, and extend roads and trails as growth and new settlements required. Management and integration above the level of towns, cities, and even states is required for highway systems.

As societies and their economies grow and mature, more and more of their activities occur nationally and internationally.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signed by Canada, the United States, and Mexico in 1993 permits free trade throughout North America and limits each nation's ability to manage its own internal trade and national labor markets.

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade restricts each nation's ability to protect and nurture its particular national industries. Twenty-four-hour-a-day trading in every nation's stocks, bonds, and currencies is possible thanks to instantaneous satellite and Internet communications. The financial markets in each nation are less subject to national control now. Challenges to American federalism are posed by these developments.

Federalism splits political power and responsibility between national and subnational levels of government. According to the Constitution, the national government would be responsible for dealing with foreign and military affairs and for economic coordination between the states and with foreign powers. The states have the power to deal with domestic affairs. In areas where power had not been granted to either the national or subnational level of government, the rights and liberties of the people would remain unfettered.

Many issues that used to be appropriate for state or local resolution, such as building and tending a transportation system, now need support and coordination from the national level. Power within the federal system had to be redistributed or realigned as problems moved within it. The Civil War era of the 1860s and the Depression era of the 1930s were periods when power was redistributed upward within the American federal system.

The integration of the American economy and society was marked by distinct phases in the 1860s and 1930s. Before the Civil War and after, a national structure of communication and transportation was developed. Railroads and telegraphs allowed businesses and corporations to become national entities by moving goods and information. By the last decade of the 19th century, it was clear that corporations dominating key sectors of an integrated national economy could be regulated only from the national level. By the time FDR took office in 1933, most Americans were convinced that federal regulation of the economy needed to be improved.

FDR's "New Deal" and LBJ's "Great Society" initiatives involved the federal government in almost every area of policymaking. Education, job training, health care, and welfare have traditionally been the exclusive responsibilities of state and local governments. States and localities were too eager to receive federal funds to worry about the rules and regulations that came with them.

The rules and regulations that seemed reasonable when there were thirty categorical grant programs in the 1930s seemed unreasonable as the number of such programs passed four hundred in the 1960s, and by 1970 nearly one dollar in every four spent by state and local governments came as a transfer from the federal government. It was difficult for state and local governments to apply for, administer, and report on these grants.

Problems of fiscal federalism and of American federalism were redefined by the late 1980s and early 1990s. Ronald Reagan believed that the federal government was too large and expensive. Reagan wanted to scale back governments at all levels. Although Bill Clinton sought to restore federal assistance to states and localities, he and the Republican Congress that he faced through most of his administration agreed that federal responsibilities and funds should be given to the states.

In the last half of the 1990s, Congress moved to reconstitute the federal system by repackaging dozens of social programs into block grants, cutting the funds allocated to them by up to 30 percent, and returning primary responsibility for them to the states. When the "Great Recession" of 2008-2009 strained state budgets and the Obama administration offered help, it was reversed. 30 percent of the dollars spent by state and local governments are supplied by the federal government.

Beer traces thinking about federalism from the ancient world to the American founding period.

The influences on policy innovation and adoption are described by Karch.

The roots of American federalism are traced by LaCroix.

The Social Security Act of 1935 was designed for male workers in cities. Women and minorities were not eligible for the program because they were not part of the fulltime workforce.

America's federal structure has shaped the nation's politics in critical areas like economic policy and race.

The analysis shows that federalism can explain how politics and political institutions have evolved over the years.

Dozens of top websites dealing with federalism are highlighted on this site.

A better understanding of federal/state relations can be found in the journal.

If an individual is interested in fiscal federalism, this website can help.

The page gives access to current budget statistics as well as analytical and historical data.

Links to information about state legislators, tax and budget issues, and general news relevant to state policymaking can be found on the National Conference of State Legislators' home page.

There are links to various local governments in each state on the State and Local Government on the Net.