1. Federalism and the Public Good Pages 80-82
Chapter 4 Section 4
Federalism and the Public Good
Pages 80-82

2. Objectives
1. Describe how the national government in a federal system promotes the public good.
2. Explain how the division of power in a federal system helps government promote the public good.
3. List ways in which balancing federal and state interests has helped promote the public good.

3. Discussion
What would be some of the difficulties the government would have in promoting the public good if there was no central authority or if all the power rested with the federal government.

4. Providing Central Authority
The federal system promotes public good by providing a central authority: federal government.
Federal government acts on issues that are important to all of the states. [environmental issue protections popular with state citizens, but expensive for states to follow.]
Promotes public good if the federal government passes a national environmental policy that all states must follow.

5. Distributing Power
Encouraging Alternate Solutions: “laboratories of democracy,” [conducting experiments with new policies and solutions in which other states and communities can learn from]
allowing states to find alternative strategies to solve issues.
1996: Welfare Reform, states allowed to make own rules for helping people who are poor.

6. Checking Power: Distributing power among the states keeps abuse of power from happening.
Checking power by not ratifying constitutional amendments proposed by Congress.
Reserved powers also prevent the federal government from acting in areas over which it has no constitutional authority.

7. Promoting Participation: distributing power in federal system allows more decision to be made at a local level, this allows people to be involved in decisions that effect their lives.
Example: Public Education funding is different from one state to another. Also, fire protection, car registration, road construction, and libraries are provided by state and local government.
Allowing people to make decisions at the local level promotes democracy and consider the concerns of the citizens’.

8. Balancing Federal and State Interests
Chart on page 81, Federalism in the United States
Good government needs to balance federal and state interests.
Federal government has a growing influence in states’ affairs. It is a constant tug of war between national and state government. [voting rights]
It is the responsibility of the people to determine the balance between state and federal government.

9. Cartoon
Create a cartoon depicting one of the ways that government promotes the public good that have been discussed in this section.
Each student will share his or her cartoon on how government promotes the public good.
Cartoons will be displayed.