Confederation Vs Federalism

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Before the constitution, there was a system called the Articles of confederation, which was a document that basically said that the state governments had most the power, and the national government was very weak. The founding fathers saw that having the articles of confederation left the nation very weak. So they decided to develop a new system--The constitution, which was to replace the articles of confederation. The constitution made a stronger national government. It worked by dividing the power between the national government and the state governments. This system is called federalism. Federalism is just the division of powers between the nation government and state government; For example, The national government oversees foreign and interstate trade; while the state government oversees trade within the state. They divided the powers where they saw that it made sense. States wouldn’t be fit in overseeing foreign and interstate trade; whereas, the national government is--and the national government doesn’t need to focus on managing public health and safety, but they can focus on declaring war, or conducting …show more content…
President Reagan coined the movement “New Federalism”- an attempt to return power to the states.” Through-out history powers have fluctuated between state and national government, and things sometimes became a bit confusing. As a result of this “New Federalism”, federal aid to state declines--because New Federalism meant that states often had to pay for their new responsibilities, it also led people not liking Reagan as the president, he was criticized for “weakening the states with debt”, which wasn’t what he had intended to do--it was actually the