Читать книгу American Democracy in Context - Joseph A. Pika - Страница 99

The sharing of power between the national government and the states reflected the framers’ belief in limited government. They feared that concentrations of power would breed tyranny. Thus, through separation of powers, they divided power horizontally at the national level between the three coequal branches of government—legislative, executive, and judicial—and established a system of checks and balances. At the same time, they used federalism to divide power vertically between the national government and the states. The resulting division of power not only gives individual states autonomy to deal as they see fit with policy areas over which they have control (such as education) but also increases the number of opportunities for people to influence and control different units of government.

This dispersal of power is thought to be one of the great strengths of federalism. In addition to protecting against dangerous concentrations of power and allowing a degree of autonomy to the states, federalism gives individual states the opportunity to experiment with different types of policy responses to public problems. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once put it, “It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel, social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.”¹⁰ Thus, individual states have been able to experiment with everything from educational policy to the legalization of medical usage of marijuana (currently permitted in over half the states). Federalism has also allowed states to give greater protection than the national government to issues such as the environment (something President Trump wanted to roll back).

Yet, as critics have noted, federalism also has its weaknesses. For instance, although dispersal of power may give citizens more opportunity to influence the political process, it also provides more veto points that can be used to stifle action on important issues. Likewise, state autonomy can translate into inaction; states may be unresponsive to policy problems that fall under their purview. And while federalism may allow states to experiment with different types of policy responses, variation among states can lead to inconsistencies in the way citizens are treated in different states. At its worst, states’ rights can become a justification for policies that undermine social justice, such as racial segregation and Jim Crow laws (see Chapter 5).