Marble Cake Essay, Research Paper

in political scince, Federalism is defined as a government devided between two or more levels of power. the united states of america is one of the nations that utilizes such system. the United States system is a three level government. Politians are devided on how to represent the sytem. some say that it is a layered system where the federal government is on top, followed by the state government, then the local governemt. this model suggests that there is a chain of power where the federal government has to go through the state government in order to interact with the local government and vice versa. however, it is evedent that this is not the case. one example is when the local government apply for federal loans without refering to the state governments. another example is when the federal government reaches to the local government directly without the state government in the middle, such cases arise when there are natural disasters, federal law enforcement, and/or any other demanding situation. other polititians argued that due to these curcomstances, the layered federalism does not well represent the governemt system, thus, they came up with the marbel-cake. the marble-cake is a parameter the encloses the whole system, in which the level in question is then represented by geometric symbols that has interaction with the other two levels.

in the united states, the marble-cake is the one widly used to represent the government system. this is due to its simplisty and most important relative accurcy. the state of texas also utilizes the marble-cake system is it better represnts the government system.

I tend to agree more with the marble-cake system as it not only shows the interaction between the levels, but also shows the fact that even the citizens have the opportunity to communicate directly with the federal overnment. this can be easly proven by showing how easy it is for the normal citizen to interact with federal law enforcment agency, or the Federal Aviation Assosiation (FAA). however,in my opinion, both had problems. where the layered federalsim system’s lack of accurcy is discussed earlier, the marble-cake is not the perfect solution. this is due to the oppurtinty that one might get confused over which level has the higest word.

I see the solution to both problems is by modifying the layered system. the modification can be easly done by drawing arrows that goes directly from the federal level to the local level, and vice versa. the outcome will show a layered system that clearly puts the local system in the base as it is the system that fulfils the basic needs for the citizen. then the state level on top of the local level, and the federal level on the top. also, one needs to vary the thickness of the layers to show the volume of interaction between the layers. where this representation is very vage due to the fact that there needs to be a better difintion for the degrees of interaction between each layer and the US citizens (i.e. if the local government interacts the most with the citizen, then it needs to have the thickes layer).