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 a result, it ends up contaminating the transparency and accountability of governments to the public.
The process of federalism and intergovernmental relations has many other costs associated to it. So much bureaucratic resources are set aside to operating the process itself. The necessity of constant and frequent consultation cause delays, uncertainty, and unpredictability of major decisions that may require urgent solutions. The process itself dominated the significance of policy. For instance, much time is spent finding out who will perform a given task, who will carry on the cost, who will get credit, or who will be blamed in case of failure. This confusion goes on at the expense of finding out what needs to be done.
The overwhelming demands taking into account both the state and local interests' ends up frustrating consultations that are a necessity in advanced stated. These consultations are between governments and the functional interests, business and labor. Both local and state governments have increased such consultations in the recent years...
Unfortunately, there still stands a challenge of integrating these two processes, of functional and territorial consultation, because they both involve different actors and different players (Zeemering, 2007).
Another criticism is that this process, it has served to increase the conflict much further instead of being an effective system of resolving it. The process engages institutional rivalries, and not real policy disputes. In addition, with the increased competence at the state level as far as governance is concerned and developments in access to information, fewer states are now willing to resort to federal expertise.
In conclusion, it is undeniable that the federal system of government carries a significant portion of misgivings despite the plethora of advantages it offers. In my view, it is it of extreme the operations of the local and state governments are harmonized so as to eliminate the conflicts of interests. Furthermore, bureaucracy and government's over-secretive measures need to be relaxed to eliminate cases of suspicions from the public.
References
Stephens, G.R., and Wikstrom, N. (2007). American Intergovernmental Relations: A Fragmented Federal Polity. London: Oxford University Press.
Saxena, R. (2006). Situating federalism: mechanisms of intergovernmental relations in Canada and India. Texas, TX: University of Michigan.
Zeemering, E.S. (2007). Who Collaborates? Local Decisions about Intergovernmental Relations. New York, NY: ProQuest.
