Benefits Of Federalism

When America was founded, there were large concerns about the government being the same when America was colonized by Great Britain. In order to prevent having an abusive centralized government, the Articles of Confederation were put into place. However, this resulted in an overly weak central government. This weakness lead to a large separation between states. Each state had its own army and currency. Several years later, John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton wrote the Federalist Papers which argued in favor of splitting power between state governments and the national government. Federalism remains beneficial to the United States of America. By distributing government power between the national government and local governments, all of the power would not be placed into a single centralized government. With federalism, each state government has three branches similar to that of the federal government (Wyman). In addition to federalism dividing powers between the two forms of government, each government has its own form of checks and balances to ensure the prevention of tyranny. In the national government, check and balances include Congress being able to impeach Presidents and …show more content…
The local governments are more capable of resolving the problems of the minority (“WHY FEDERALISM?”) that the national government wouldn’t be able to take note of. In addition, this allows the national government and state government to work together to deal with foreign and domestic issues by splitting the work. While the executive branch deals with foreign affairs, the Senate takes care of the people's needs. The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 was put into place by President Monroe. This doctrine prevented the Eastern Hemisphere from attacking the Western Hemisphere, simultaneously protecting South America from being colonized and protecting American