Understanding our System: Federalism

Understanding our System: Federalism

1. Federalism: a method of government that allows two or more entities to share control over the same geographic region. Each person in the United States is subject to the laws of that city, county, state and our federal government.

2. There are approximately 193 nation-states in the world. 

3. 14 countries in the world have a federal system of government. These include the United States, Brazil, India, Australia, Argentina, Canada, Russia, Nigeria, Switzerland, Mexico, Germany, Venezuela, Austria, and Malaysia. 

4. One thing these countries all have in common is that they are all fairly large countries.

5. Unitary: system of government; a sovereign state governed as a single entity. The central government is supreme, and the administrative divisions exercise only powers that the central government has delegated to them.

6. More than 150 countries have a Unitary system of government. The largest five are France, China, Japan, The United Kingdom, and Italy. 

7. The difference between a federal and a unitary system is that in a federal government, the upper level government gives the lower level government, the states, authority. In a Unitary government, the upper level government has all of the authority. An advantage for a federal system is that states have some authority in the way they want their citizens to live. A disadvantage of a federal system is that some states authorities are weaker than others. On the other hand, an advantage for a unitary system is that they are often very strong and confident systems. A disadvantage of a unitary system is that some states might want some authority over their citizens. 

8. The attitude that I identify in this cartoon is that states say "yes and no" to a federal system. States say yes to receiving federal benefits but say no to federal authority because they want to have all the authority. States want to have it both ways, they want federal benefits but not federal authority. 

9. I think this cartoon is showing that the federal government is not supportive in legalizing weed (assuming from their shirts), but this man lives in a state where medical weed is legalized. The federal government is interfering in the states' decisions. 

10.  The elephant represents the republican party. He is stating that he believes in federalism, that states should be allowed to set their own policies without the federal government interfering. However, when California proposes that she wants to "hold carmakers to stricter environmental standards", the elephant responds by rejecting that idea and completely disregarding what it believes in. The republicans' believe that states should have rights, but when they don't like the policies they're making, they get mad. 

11. This video describes federalism using a three layer cake, with the federal government on the bottom, the state government in the middle, and the local government on top. Each government has a different job- the federal government takes care of space exploration, foreign affairs, and national parks, the state government takes care of education, health care, and recreation, and the local government takes care of police, water and building permits.  

12. The three layered cake pieces were stacked on top of each other, showing the separation of the federal, state, and local government. However, this image shows by the mix of chocolate and vanilla cake that all the governments are mixed in one. This picture would represent a federal system because the powers of the federal, state, and local governments would be shared and overlapped.