Examples Of Cooperative Federalism

The themes I choose to highlight is that of Dual federalism and Cooperative federalism. In dual federalism, “power is divided between the federal and state governments in clearly defined terms, with state governments exercising those powers accorded to them without interference from the federal government”. This implies that the federal and state government share sovereign power over an area of people. Cooperative federalism is defined as “one where federal, state and local governments are able to cooperate to solve common problems. Because of the overlapping nature of the responsibilities of federal and state governments, making no clear distinction between the two”. From looking at the two definitions, I saw a distinct difference between the two; dual federalism is more of a rigid system which creates pressure between the levels of governments whereas in Cooperative federalism that great aspect of flexible is visual and encourages joint intergovernmental action. Instead of each level of government making different polices for shared
problems, under cooperative federalism, they can interact to collectively solve these problems.
Both concepts however, are important when it comes to the history of federalism in the United States. Dual federalism at its time was seem important because according to colon “limited trespassing on the responsibilities of each level of government” governments were viewed to operate in different spheres and render diverse services. As the scope of federalism evolved couple with the emergence of problems that needed cooperative and collective attention from all level of government, cooperative federalism was introduced to jointly solve these problem
With limited knowledge about the topic prior to my readings, I have come across examples of how these two concepts most especially that of cooperative federalism were applied to real world problems.
As a new GPSI intern in the Department of Healthcare and family Services, Healthcare has become a major concern to states and local governments. With the high expenses for healthcare, poor citizens with a low standard of living are greatly affected. Seeing how much the impact the issue healthcare has on the country as a whole, the federal and state government had to cooperate and work collectively to solve this problem through the Medicaid program. The federal government provides funding for the implementation of the program and states are responsible for managing the program and determining how services are distributed according to the state’s own established guidelines based on income and resource limits within federal
limitations.
This chapter has exposed me to a lot of new concepts within the American government system. Some of these concepts I know little of and other, have never came across. Being from a country that practices unitary form of government, this chapter has given me immense ideas of how the federal system of government operates, the different types of federalism were and still practiced, and how the concepts has revolved over the years.
One of the major ideas that I learnt however is how there is an amount of sovereignty in each level of government, and yet still there is coordination and cooperation within them. This, I think is associated with the idea of intergovernmental relations, where different levels of government activities and interactions taking place between governmental units of all types and levels within the federal system.