Cooperative Federalism

In order to understand where public policy comes from, we must first understand how the government is set up. When Congress was first set up, it had limited powers: wage war, make peace, enter into treaties and alliances, appoint and receive ambassadors, regulate Indian affairs and create a postal system (Bowman & Kearney, 2014, p. 29) . This, however, set up the opportunities for states to disagree. Shortly after, the states got together to create a first of its kind system of government in an attempt to keep each other accountable and named it Federalism. It created a dual federalism system of government where there were very distinct and separate responsibilities between the national and state governments (Bowman & Kearney, 2014, p. 39). After the Great Depression, however, it evolved into a cooperative federalism system. Yet, even while under this system, the federal government understood there were concerns intertwined between states and the federal government and since 1964, the system evolved again and formed a …show more content…
Yet, even if everyone has the same agenda, different proposals to implement might hinder any form of policy from coming to fruition. Then, some issues don’t even make it to the agenda. This is especially true in recent years where due to the extremes now held by the two highest parties, very liberal democrats and extremely conservative republicans, and how they happen to control the US House (GOP) and the Senate (Democrat), productivity is, in fact, at an all-time low (Scott, 2014) . Since the Great Recession, the national gridlock has promoted what is known as the Metropolitan Revolution where localities are taking back some of the power the national government once took from them. Even though they agree that there is gridlock, Bowman and Kearney argue that this is a voluntary shift of power from the top to the bottom; however, Katz and Bradley paint a very different