Politics Essay - UK-USA Comparative

“The USA is a federal state with governmental powers distributed between the states and the federal government. The UK is a unitary state with political power concentrated within central government.” How far is this the case today?

The current systems of government of the United States and the United Kingdom have evolved and developed along very different lines. The United States Constitution laid down a federal system with Article IV establishing the relationship between the states and the federal government. The powers of the two institutions were fully defined by Section 8 of Article I which established the powers of the federal legislature (known as enumerated powers) and the Tenth Amendment which states that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” By contrast, in the United Kingdom there are no constitutional checks on the actions of central government. While it is the powers of the federal government that are clearly defined in the USA, in the UK it is the powers of the devolved institutions which are so dealt with. Over recent years the shift in power in the two nations has been in converse directions; while power in the USA has gravitated more towards the federal government, the introduction of devolved assemblies has seen power shifting away from Westminster. There have undoubtedly been shifts in the distribution of powers in the UK and in the USA but it is still the case that the USA operates on a federal system with a distribution of powers between the states and the federal government while the UK remains a unitary state with a concentration of political power in central government, though inroads have been made.

The powers of the US federal government are more constrained than the powers of the UK parliament. Article V of the US Constitution requires an amendment to gain the consent of two-thirds of both houses of Congress and be “ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the several states”. This requisite of state consent for an amendment is a clear distribution of power between the federal government and the states. This requirement supports the principle of dual federalism and demonstrates the division of powers in a system of checks and balance. This is very different from the UK system whereby a single act of Parliament effectively amends the UK constitution as it is uncodified. Other than in terms of amending the Constitution, the federal government of the USA is also constrained by the constitution itself. Certain powers are denied from congress, such as the ability to apply taxes to exports. The UK Parliament suffers no such restraints on its constitutional power. While there are some requirements relating to treaties and convention, the Parliament is free to do as it wishes without the consent of regional government; this is far from the case in the United States.

The states have greater degrees of autonomy than devolved assemblies. In the USA, individual states have far greater power over the running of their own affairs (known as states’ rights) than the devolved assemblies of the UK. While the Scottish Parliament may vary rates of taxation by three pence in the pound, the individual states in the USA can levy their own taxes including a state income tax which many choose to levy with Montana’s being set at the highest rate. All of the states hold primary legislative power and their own legal systems (hence some states have the death penalty and others do not) and while the Scottish Parliament holds such powers, the Welsh Assembly does not. The previously mentioned Tenth Amendment grants a high level of autonomous jurisdiction to state governments, something which the devolved assemblies clearly lack. As autonomous bodies, the federal government also cannot dissolve state governments, a power which the UK Parliament reserved to itself when it passed the Scotland Act and the Government of Wales Act in 1998 and is at has demonstrated through taking back power from the Northern Ireland Assembly. The differential between the powers of the states and the power of devolved governments clearly demonstrates that power is distributed between the states and the federal government within the USA whilst it is centrally concentrated within the UK.

In times of national crisis, the federal system clearly demonstrates its distribution of powers. While in the United Kingdom, in times of national crisis the central government can step in and take command as it has frequently done when dealing with the “Irish problem”, the federal government in the US cannot do this. Specific request by state governments has to be made for federal aid and for National Guard troopers from outside the state to be sent in. This was a primary reason for the delay in the response to Hurricane Katrina as Kathleen Blanco, Governor of Louisiana had to formally request help before it could be given. As big a flaw as this is, it clearly supports the principle of dual federalism.

De-centralised government has impacted upon centralised policy. Even when the federal government intervened in areas traditionally reserved to the states such as Roosevelt’s “alphabet agencies” which included the National Youth Administration, whose head in Texas later became President Lyndon Johnson. While it is often said that the United States is now governed by a system of co-operative federalism with the federal government supreme over the states, this simply is not the case as the state governments can heavily influence the federal policy through their implementation of it as southern states often did during the earlier years of the twentieth century by directing funding for education primarily to white schools. If co-operative federalism was in any way the case in earlier years of the twentieth century, the rise of New Federalism under Reagan firmly dissolved it and this has continued to be the case, especially due to rising budget deficits which has undermined co-operative federalism. This is similar to the United Kingdom where both the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament are imperative in implementing government policy, allowing them to place their own local spin on it. The ability of state and devolved government to manipulate federal and parliamentary legislation is a clear demonstration of their powers.

However, throughout recent years definite inroads have been made into the powers of the state governments. In the UK, power has always been centralised, but this has not been the case in the United States. The policies of Roosevelt’s New Deal and Johnson’s Great Society have made huge inroads into state powers with important legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Supreme Court decision Brown vs. Board of Education, Topeka, overruling state decisions on segregation. These shifts in the balance of power towards central government form the basis for the idea of co-operative federalism. The United Kingdom has also to some extent experienced shifts towards central government and away from the local government which has been progressively weakened through the increased government use of quangos. Inroads have definitely been made and power is increasingly being centralised.

While the federal government increasingly threatens the powers of state governments, the UK Parliament allows for regional differences to be incurred by devolved assemblies. The federal government of the USA has increasingly used forms of blackmail and coercion to ensure that the state governments comply with federal ideas. The legal drinking age is set universally at twenty-one across the United States, despite not being a federal law. This is because the federal government threatens to withhold some highway transportation funding to states which do not set their minimum drinking age at twenty-one. Such forms of coercion are common within the federal system. In Britain, however, the situation is progressively changing with the UK Parliament having never overturned or coerced the Scottish Parliament to follow its lead. While the UK Parliament voted in favour of university top-up fees, the Scottish Parliament voted against them and thus they are not being introduced in Scotland, clear evidence of the fact that the UK Parliament is more prepared to leave the devolved institutions to mind their own affairs.

While inroads have been made into the two systems, the USA still works on a federal system with a distribution of powers and the UK still remains to all intents and purposes a unitary state with centralised powers. The rise of devolution has definitely cut into the powers of the central government; however power does remain with central government which can dissolve devolved assemblies as it did with the Northern Ireland Assembly. The federal state of the USA still remains with governmental powers distributed. Whilst some powers are enumerated to the federal government only and the federal government has attempted to coerce and impose its powers on the states, there is still a large degree of autonomy for the states and the concept of new federalism is more prevalent, especially with seventeen years of Republican administrations in the last twenty-five years. Inroads have definitely been made into the system, but they are minor and for all intents and purposes, the USA has governmental powers distributed between the states and the federal government whilst the UK has a unitary state with power centralised in Westminster.

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Anybody have any comments or recommendations for change? I am a bit lacking in places on examples.

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