As the United States Government and the Constitution were established in 1776, they were formed under a federalism system. Federalism is the understanding that sovereignty between the central government and another political entity such as a state (Huq, 2014). The United States and Texas coexist in a federalism system. This refers to the relationship between the national government and Texas as well as with the other 49 states. The purpose of this paper is to define the three main types of federalism – dual, cooperative, and fiscal.
Of the three main types of federalism, dual federalism is currently how the U. S. system works. Dual federalism is defined as divided sovereignty and is the arrangement where power is divided between the federal and state governments. State governments such as Texas exercise these powers without interference from the federal government. However, the federal government does hold more power than the individual states. It is a check and balance system where corruption does not affect either government (Greve, 2014).
Cooperative federalism is a concept where federal and state governments share power equally. The idea of cooperative federalism was introduced in the U. S. in the 1930’s under President Roosevelt’s New Deal era. This system emphasized the decentralization of power where federal and state governments solve problems and issues together. State and federal governments are simultaneously dependent and independent of each other (Huq, 2014).
Fiscal federalism tries to reduce the size of government. The goal of fiscal federalism is to improve the allocation of expenditures and can limit any political department’s budget if it is not working toward the best interest of the United States. . It focuses on the economic role of the government by defining which functions are best centralized and which ones are best decentralized. In addition, fiscal federalism helps determine which competencies are allocated across the different administrative layers (Sorenes, 2014).
- Huq, A. Z. (2014). The negotiated structural constitution. Columbia Law Review.
- Greve, M. S. (2014). Fallacies of fallacies. Boston University Law Review. 94(4). 1359-1381.
- Sorens, J. (2014). Fiscal federalism, jurisdictional competition, and the size of government. Constitutional Political Economy, 25(4), 354-375. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10602-014-9164-0
