9/25/08
Federalism Essay
heart a mixture of two other popular systems, the unitary system, and the
working hand in hand to control and legislate over the same group of people,
and body of land. There are two major systems of Federalism, Cooperative
remain supreme within there spheres, they stack on top of each other, they
and policies are shared between the states and the federal government, this
also spurs the sharing of administration, costs, and blame for programs;
Federalism allows both the states and the federal government to rule
over people. However there are many cases where the states and the
national government do not agree on how to best rule over the citizens. In
these cases the national government wins and there ideas are forced on the
states. This goes against Dahl’s views for proper democratic systems. Dahl
believed that people should be represented and their view points and what
federalism system goes against this in these cases where a state which is
Due to the federalism not allowing the states to actually do what they
want, many people are alienated. While their state may agree in their favor,
their policies are in conflict with the national government. This leads to their
voices not truly being heard, and a major pitfall in the democratic process.
This fundamentally goes against Dahl’s believes that the people are the
central points to democracy and their views must be heard and acted upon.
Under the federalism system, many times voter’s physical votes don’t
mater. This is due to the majority rules system that is associated with the
federalism system. This is apparent in all elections, and is very evident in the
2000 Presidential Election. Presidential nominee George W. did not with the
popular vote, however he did win the Electoral College. This caused great
outrage with many people because they felt that it was not right for the
president to not be the popular vote winner. While democracy was not in
favor of Bush, he was still awarded the presidency because the federalism
system, with Madison’s influence that majority should not be the total ruling
factor, lead to the Electoral College which directly goes against the policies
of Dahl’s Democracy. Dahl did believe that not everyone must vote and
accepted that not everyone would be in accordance with what was decided,
the democratic ideals. Federalism has last for over 200 years, so the
principals do work very well, just they are not strictly following Dahl’s
Democratic ideals.