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Assuming that "federalism" means what I think it means (federation of independent entities, delegating economy-of-scale responsibilities like war and diplomacy

Assuming that "federalism" means what I think it means (federation of independent entities, delegating economy-of-scale responsibilities like war and diplomacy to the center while keeping everything else for themselves), my guess would be this: that it ensures that government operates on a local level, where the number of people represented by a given legislature is smaller -- so individual votes have more impact and the proportion of voters frozen out by being in minorities is smaller. This has two obvious failure modes: it can decay into warlordism, and the member communities can hate each other passionately enough to go to war. (So federalism is a non-starter for the US at the present day.) Of course, if the poster here didn't mean by federalism what I guessed that it means, the above is irrelevant.

redblacktree 11y ago
It's odd that you say "federalism is a non-starter for the US at the present day," since that is exactly the system we have in the United States. Individual states are responsible for much (most?) of the government of their citizens, while the Federal Government takes care of higher-level tasks like war, as you mentioned. it's in the constitution, the 10th amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
- clock_tower 11y ago
  Also in the constitution is the Interstate Commerce Clause, a loophole big enough to drive a country through. There's also the Fourteenth Amendment, which basically repeals federalism -- because federalism had proven itself unworkable. ("All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.") The individual states are still allowed to administer themselves in uninteresting and uncontroversial areas, but they have no right to legalize dueling, or ban guns, or write their own marriage laws, or set up a state religion, or reorganize themselves as anti-clerical theocracies -- matters where a federal government would presumably let them do as they pleased. (See what I mean about parts of the federation coming to hate each other enough to go to war?)

redblacktree 11y ago

It's odd that you say "federalism is a non-starter for the US at the present day," since that is exactly the system we have in the United States. Individual states are responsible for much (most?) of the government of their citizens, while the Federal Government takes care of higher-level tasks like war, as you mentioned. it's in the constitution, the 10th amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

clock_tower 11y ago
Also in the constitution is the Interstate Commerce Clause, a loophole big enough to drive a country through. There's also the Fourteenth Amendment, which basically repeals federalism -- because federalism had proven itself unworkable. ("All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.") The individual states are still allowed to administer themselves in uninteresting and uncontroversial areas, but they have no right to legalize dueling, or ban guns, or write their own marriage laws, or set up a state religion, or reorganize themselves as anti-clerical theocracies -- matters where a federal government would presumably let them do as they pleased. (See what I mean about parts of the federation coming to hate each other enough to go to war?)