| abstract
| - Federalism is the system in which the power to govern is shared between the different levels of government. Basically, there are at least two different levels of government in an established territory, and these different levels govern through power granted to them in a constitution. The central government is the highest of these levels and, despite the many different forms of federal governments worldwide, they're almost always responsible for two things; national security and diplomacy. Okay, now how does it apply to the USA? Glad you asked. Even before The American Revolution was over, the Thirteen Colonies realized they needed some form of national government to replace the British that they were throwing out. So, the first thing they did was each colony decided to call themselves a state (or commonwealth, which is pretty much the same thing), and then agree to form a national government that would look after the stuff like foreign policy and national defense. In 1781, they created the Articles of Confederation to create such a government. However, the last thing anyone wanted at this point was a powerful national government; that was seen as a stepping stone to another British-style tyranny. So the writers of the Articles deliberately made the national government weak and protected the states. This was nearly the nation's undoing. The government could not collect taxes, which meant that it had to raise money by asking the states politely; consequently it had barely enough money to perform the basic functions of government (and sometimes not even that). It also couldn't coerce states or regulate commerce, which often led to conflict between the states putting up tariffs between each other, resulting in hardship in all states. (Most scholars say this more than anything else made it necessary, a good portion of the Constitution is written to make interstate tariffs impossible.) The final straw for the Articles of Confederation was Shays' Rebellion in western Massachusetts in 1786-87, which had to be put down by state militia due to the ineffectual response by the national government. So they got back together and wrote up the Constitution of the United States, which was ratified in 1789. Since no one, in the words of Gandalf, likes to share power, the Constitution sets up a generally "federal" form of government, which is more accurately a republic. This means that the states have power over stuff in their state and the national government has power only over national issues, like trade between states, national defense, foreign policy, and so on. It should be noted that prior to the Federalist Papers(check them out on the Other Wiki if you feel like doing research; otherwise, know that some people didn't want the Constitution to be ratified so guys like James Madison who helped to create it wrote letters to the editor to convince them that it was a good thing), the term "federal" was more closely associated with federations (as in the) than republics. This means that proponents of the Constitution gave themselves an inaccurate name because it sounded positive instead of negative (i.e., the original false advertisement in the United States). (Because the USA has a federal system of government, the term "federal government" has come to mean the national government, which is a rather inaccurate name, but it is very important to realize that 99% of the time, when someone says "federal" they mean "national". Just go with the flow and assume "federal" means "national" unless said otherwise.)
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