Governments and Philosophies - GED Social Studies

One of the core principles of the American political system is Federalism. In Federalism, power and legitimacy is shared by more than one political entity. In the United States, there is the national government, which retains the majority of control over the political arena, but there are also state and local governments, which have their own areas of power and an established legitimacy.

The main reason the South seceded from the Union is that it felt that the states should have greater control over the direction of their laws and should be less subservient to the federal government. The majority of Southerners in this time period identified more with their state than with the nation. So, the Civil War can be seen as a conflict over the interpretation of American Federalism. The South felt that the system of Federalism should divide powers more equally between the state and national governments, and the Union felt otherwise. This disagreement was effectively resolved (legally speaking) with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, which outlined the requirements for states to abide by national laws.

For the first one hundred and fifty years of American political history, the country essentially operated under Dual Federalism, also called "Layer-cake Federalism." This involves a clear delineation of powers reserved for national governments, state governments, and local governments. During the Great Depression, the power of the Federal government grew dramatically, and the United States' federalism system began to appear more like Cooperative Federalism, also called "Marble-cake Federalism." In Marble-cake Federalism, national, state, and local governments work together cooperatively to tackle problems and pass laws.

Nullification declares that the states have the right to declare any federal law unconstitutional or illegal and choose to ignore it within the state itself. This position was championed particularly by Thomas Jefferson as is the central point of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. Because nullification involves the repudiation of the ultimate authority of the national government, it can be understood as a rejection of the Supremacy Clause, which states that the Constitution and the national government make up “the supreme law of the land.”

During the Republican administrations of Nixon and Reagan, many of the powers of the Federal government were transferred to the state and local governments. This policy was branded as New Federalism, but the actual process of the transference of powers is called devolution.

In the United States, state governments are set up with the same separation of powers—executive, legislative, and judicial branches—as the national government. The governor of a state is a member of the state executive branch.

The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution states that federal, or national, law is the supreme law of the land. This is a key component of American Federalism as opposed to the Confederation that existed under the Articles of Confederation. The Founding Fathers observed that under the Articles, the federal government had too little power and the states were free to make their own disparate laws absolute within their territories. Federalism and the Supremacy Clause remedies this situation by ensuring that all state laws must be within the realm of federal laws.

All fifty of the American states have their own constitutions; however, they are all also required to follow the national constitution first, which remains the “supreme law of the land” as established in the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The McCarran Act was signed into law in 1950; it was part of the Red Scare period of American history. The McCarran Act required all Communist organizations and members to register their affiliation with the United States government.

The Equal Protection Clause appears in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. It prohibits the states from denying equal protection under the law to anybody on the basis of race, gender, or other forms of discrimination. It also essentially ensures that the Bill of Rights are extended to cover actions taken by state governments as well as the national government.

The Alien and Sedition Acts were passed in 1798, during the Presidency of John Adams. The Alien and Sedition Acts were released during the so-called Quasi War with France, and sought to (in theory) increase national security by making it illegal to speak out against the government, and by making it harder for immigrants to come to the new nation. The Acts were denounced by Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans as an attempt to solidify the power of the Federalist Party, which helped propel the Democratic-Republicans into the Presidency in 1800.

"Rule by the few," an oligarchy is defined as a system of government in which a small group of people have complete control over all functions of government.

Democracy describes the principle that the legitimacy and power of a government is derived from the people being governed. There are many ways to organize a government in accordance with democratic principles. Direct democracies are marked by the direct participation of voters in decision making. The Swiss government is perhaps the most prominent government that comes close to being a direct democracy. In Switzerland, it is common for groups of voters to band together and make proposals for laws that are then voted upon by the rest of the electorate, often with little input from elected representatives or bureaucrats. Other forms of democracy, like representative democracy, are distinguished by putting most decision-making responsibilities into the hands of elected or appointed representatives who are accountable to voters.

In order to alter the Constitution of the United States of America, an amendment must be passed by either a two-thirds vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the state legislatures.

In a parliamentary democracy, the leader of the executive branch will always be the same as the leader of the legislature. In a presidential democracy, like the the government of the United States, there are separate elections for the legislature and the executive branch. This creates a situation where the presidency and Congress may be controlled by different political parties. Because of this diffusion of power, it is harder to pass legislation in a presidential democracy, as the executive and the legislature might disagree; however, there are more checks and balances in the presidential system.

John Locke was an Enlightenment-era philosopher who is most commonly associated with arguing in favor of the idea that all men have certain inalienable rights: primarily to life, liberty, and property. His ideas were extremely influential to the Constitutional Framers, particularly Thomas Jefferson.

Anarchism is a political theory that favors the complete abolition of government. Anarchists believe that government interferes negatively in the lives and well-being of people, and that society would function best in the complete absence of government.

The political spectrum is usually constructed as follows: On the far left are revolutionaries, on the left are liberals, in the middle are moderates, on the right are conservatives, and on the far right are reactionaries. Reactionary political philosophy is defined by the repeated attempt to resist social change or, even further, to desire a return to a previous, and more rigid, social order.

Pluralism is the name given to a political theory—widely accepted in most modern democracies—that states that a democratic society benefits when there are many competing and varied individual and group opinions working together, or in competition with each other, to direct public policy.