American Federalism: How Exceptional Compared to Others

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Chapter 3: Federalism: States and Nation

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American Federalism: How Exceptional Compared to Others

Some of the elements of federalism go back in history at least as far as the Union of Utrecht in the Netherlands in 1579, but federalism as it exists today, is largely an American invention,¹ though it has come to take on a variety of forms in the world today. Including the United States, 23 nations, with roughly 40 percent of the world's population, have federal systems today.²

Historical Origins of American Federalism

American federalism emerged from the particular way in which the states declared independence from Britain-becoming, in effect, separate countries-and then joined together to form a confederation and then a single nation, as discussed in Chapter 2. Recall that the framers of the Constitution turned to federalism as a middle-ground solution between a confederation form of government-which was deemed a failed model based on the experience of the United States under the Articles of Confederation-and a unitary form of government-which a majority of states, jealous of their independence and prerogatives, found unacceptable. Federalism was also a form of government that was consistent with the eighteenth-century republicanism of the framers because it helps fragment government power. But we can gain further insight into why the United States adopted and has continued as a federal system if we look at what other countries with similar systems have in common.

Role of Size and Diversity

Federalism tends to be found in nations that are large in a territorial sense and where the various geographical regions are fairly distinctive from one another in terms of religion, ethnicity, language, and forms of economic activity. In Germany, for example, the conservative Catholics of the south have traditionally been different from the liberal Protestants of the north and east, while the former communist territories of the former Germany Democratic Republic differ markedly in living standards from the prosperous West. In Canada, the farmers of the central plains are not much like the fishers of Nova Scotia, and the French-speaking (and primarily Catholic) residents of Quebec differ markedly from the mostly English-speaking Protestants of the rest of the country. In Spain, deep divisions along ethnic and language lines (note the distinctive Basque and Catalan regions). Other important federal systems include such large and richly diverse countries as India, Pakistan, Russia, and Brazil. In these countries, federalism gives diverse and geographically concentrated groups the degree of local autonomy they seem to want, with no need to submit in all matters to a unified central government. In Iraq, the question of the relative degree of autonomy of Kurdish and Shiite provinces in a federal Iraq was the most important point of contention over adoption of a new Iraqi constitution in 2005.

The United States, too, is large and diverse. From the early days of the Republic, the slave-holding and agriculture-oriented South was quite distinct from the merchant Northeast, and some important differences persist today. Illinois is not Louisiana; the farmers of Iowa differ from defense and electronics workers in California. States today also vary from one another in their approaches to public policy, their racial and ethnic composition, and their political cultures.³ In The Federalist Papers, the Founders argued that this size and diversity made federalism especially appropriate for the new United States.

While the American system of federalism was truly exceptional at the founding, other large and important countries have taken on federal forms in the years since, especially since the end of World War II. To this extent, the United States is no longer the single exception or one among a handful of exceptions to the unitary nature of the majority of the world's governments.

FULL FAITH AND CREDIT

The "full faith and credit" provision is what worries many opponents of same-sex marriage about Massachusetts's legalization of the practice in 2004. When people of the same sex are married in Massachusetts, do they remain legally married if and when they move to another state? Currently five states-Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, New Mexico, and Rhode Island-and the District of Columbia have no law barring the legality of such marriages, but all other states have passed statutes or constitutional amendments doing so. A flurry of such statutes and state constitutional changes followed passage by Congress of the Defense of Marriage Act which denied federal benefits (such as Medicaid and Medicare) for spouses in same-sex marriages, and authorized states that wished to do so to enact legislation barring recognition of same-sex marriages from other states, and Massachusetts's action. The matter is not settled, however, because the U.S. Supreme Court has yet to decide a case involving the "full faith and credit" obligations of the states on this issue. There is no doubt that the Court will eventually do so if other states legalize same-sex marriage or if the practice remains legal in Massachusetts (its citizens will vote in late 2006 on a constitutional provision banning same-sex marriage).

¹William H. Riker, The Development of American Federalism (Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1987), pp. 56-60.

²Daniel J. Elazar, "Federal Systems of the World: A Handbook of Federal, Confederal and Autonomy Arrangements," (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Online, www.jcpa.org/dje/books/fedsysworld-intro.htm, October, 2005), p. 5.

^3>Rodney Hero, Faces of Inequality: Social Diversity in American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

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