NEW FEDERALISM
Timothy Conlan
Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1988
274 pp., $34.95
Since the birth of our constitutional republic, the relationship between the national and state governments has been a matter of controversy and concern. As James Madison asserted, our federal system is a "novelty" because it stands between the two traditional forms: a "consolidated," or unified, government and a mere "association," or confederacy of states. Our government constitutes an experiment without parallel: Experiences of past regimes can provide no guidance as to what the precise nature of the federal relationship ought to be.
But in this connection Madison made still another, and perhaps more important, observation that helps to account for our continued preoccupation with federalism: consolidated governments have shown an incapacity to provide "order and justice." Confederate governments have proved too weak to meet the external dangers. In this vein, he warned, those who would deny "the possibility" of federalism "aim a deadly blow at the last hope of true liberty on the face of the Earth." For those who share Madison's view, federalism is thus the object of careful study because its health is seen as vital to the preservation of liberty.
Varying Perspectives On Federalism
Not all students of politics share Madison's beliefs concerning the blessings of federalism. In recent decades, federalism has come under attack on the very grounds that Madison invoked to defend it: that it allows unjust and oppressive majorities (in the states) to deprive minorities and individuals of their civil liberties. In fact, this is the impression conveyed in American college texts, "message" movies, and the media.
There is also a consensus among both friends and foes of federalism that in this century we have moved closer to the consolidated form of government against which Madison inveighed. We have, for instance, Robert Nisbet's recent work, The Present Age, which decries the political centralization since World War I that has, in his judgment, led us precariously close to intellectual and moral chaos. Nisbet's work, following in the tradition of Tocqueville, is macroscopic; it is concerned with the impact of centralization on virtually every element and facet of our society. We have also, by way of contrast, Raoul Berger's newest book, Federalism, which is concerned with the constitutional status of relations between the national and state governments. Berger, too, is concerned with the courts' resolution of national/state controversies; particularly with the abandonment of constitutionalism that has permitted this political centralization.
Political Strategies
Shortly after the turn of this century, Herbert Croly and his Progressive cohorts set forth a strategy that found a receptive audience in the political leadership of the New Deal: to wit, that the surest way of realizing the egalitarian goals of Jeffersonian democracy was through Hamiltonian means that vest political authority in the hands of the national government. This view also prevailed throughout Johnson's administration
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