Three Types Of Government In The United States

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How do you control a country? You make a government, but what is that government? Governments keep countries ordered so that they can run efficiently. There are three basic types of governments: unitary, confederate, and federal. In a unitary government the national government has all the power and rules over the whole country. This type is the most common type of government throughout the world today (Edwards). Another type is confederacies in which power rests in the individual local governments. It is the complete opposite of a unitary government in that instead of being completely centralized it is completely decentralized. Because it is so decentralized, it is very rare today. Today, confederacies are mainly international organizations …show more content…

Federalism has many people working in the government as well as many levels to the government. This expansiveness allows people to access the government more easily which makes more people heard by their government and more people happy citizens. The hopeful effect of this access is less conflict in the government as a whole (Edwards). Unfortunately, conflict is a part of life. Inevitably problems will arise and people will be unhappy. More importantly, levels of government will have conflict. In fact, states’ rights and federalism only exist if there is conflict between the two or more levels of government on at least some issues, and no overriding power dictates the choices of both national and local governments. The local governments must argue with the national government. If there were not conflict it would not be federalism. For federalism to work you need different levels, but if there is no difference between the levels is this system really federal? The eternal question in federalism is “who gets more power?” If the central and local governments stopped fighting about this then they would practically merge into one government. Federalism would cease to exist (Moncrieff). The laws at one level would be essentially the same as the laws at every other