For example, we could consider a local agricultural project. The local and state expertise in determining what are the right decisions to be made on this project should be more useful and in a more timely manner than decisions that could be made at a federal level.
In the current security and economic environment, the answer is probably somewhere mid-way between all the notions previously presented. From this perspective, a combination of both cooperative federalism and decentralization can be used, with the pre-condition that the federal government fixes the overall goals that the country should try to reach and which should obviously be followed and sought at state and local levels as well. The current economic crisis provides an excellent example in this sense.
The current main objective for the United States is to find the appropriate ways by which to fight with the current economic crisis, probably the most significant one since the Great Depression. This can be fixed as a national objective, so that all federal, state or local instruments will work to reach that goal. The federal goal should provide the means to do so, while the state and local administration should find the right local instruments to use the funds received from the federal government, while keeping in mind, at the same time, the primary national objective.
At the same time, the federal government should also have in place the appropriate feedback and control mechanism by which it can record the changes, positive or negative, that occur at state and local level and whether what is going on at these levels are in line with the grander design at a federal level. The importance of such a feedback and control mechanism is critical, because it means that the federal government would also be able to intervene and correct the mistakes that may appear in the implementation of these local measures.
Basically, the relationship between the federal government and state or local administration should be the same as in any other organization, with the federal government/upper management providing the general means and guidelines that need to be followed, with the bureaus and regional managers overseeing the tactical and operational implementations within each of their areas of jurisdiction. As in such an organization, the rules imposed by the federal government...
Once more oriented to the minimal statistics gathering and funding assistance between more or less watertight compartments, intergovernmental relations (IGR) has evolved into dynamic and highly integrated sets of behaviors, not only between agents of government but among a host of non-governmental actors, non-profit and for-profit." (Agranoff, 2008) Agranoff states that intergovernmental relations appear to have started with "the territorial organization of states, often termed in international nomenclature as
Still, state and local governments must realize that unfunded mandates will still occur, and when that happens, federal resources must be made available to state and local governments in order to help them make responsible financial decisions. Thus, an advisory board should be put into place to assist state and local governments in dealing with unfunded federal mandates as a further bridge in the communication gap between these two
They call for greater recognition in the national policies, which negatively affect the goals (Zeemering, 2007). Taking a critical perspective, I find the Federalism and intergovernmental relations to be undemocratic. This system propagated the tendency towards executive dominance in the American system. It further limits the senate and the legislatures. In spite of the increasing number of open conferences, the process has stringent measures to reinforce the government secrecy. As
This program requires the states to create their own safety standards and to implement their rail safety oversight and audit programs in measuring compliance to that program. But the diversity of legal authorities, budgets and staff levels of oversight agencies would not allow this to happen smoothly (Caruso). The proposed Public Transportation Safety Program Act of 2009 hoped to authorize the Department of Transportation to establish the minimum safety standards
Participatory Budgeting CMA In the late-capitalist era during the late twentieth century restructuring of Canada's municipalities toward a new model of intergovernmental alliances, known as 'city-regional' governance, the importance of Public Choice as praxis to reconfiguration of the nation's market relations was asserted by urban planning and political theorists interested in the impetus and affects of the what became known as the Consolidation Movement. A decade of exposure to James Lightbody's
However, post-Reconstruction, 'states rights' often became a code word for Jim Crow legislation. Southern states demanded the 'right' for the majority to engage in de facto segregation of schools and to institute limits upon how voting rights were exercised. Many Americans do not know that the Bill of Rights originally was only intended to govern the actions of the federal government, not the states. "The debate over whether the Fourteenth
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