How has American federalism changed over the years?

American Federalism was initially steeped in the tradition of radical republicanism, which held that ultimate political and legal sovereignty resided with the states. The federal government was kept deliberately weak to avoid its turning into the kind of tyranny the American colonists had fought against during the Revolutionary War.

In the immediate aftermath of the War, however, it became clear that a new constitutional arrangement, and a new understanding of Federalism, were urgently required. The United States needed to have a strong, centralized government if it were to make its way in the world as a serious power. Even after the ratification of the Constitution, however, the states remained an important unit within the American system of government, thanks largely to the incorporation of the Bill of Rights.

Nevertheless, over time, the balance of power between federal government and the states shifted further towards the center. Successive administrations have found that ambitious policy goals such as the enforcement of civil rights can only be achieved by concerted action at the federal level. This has led to an encroachment on areas previously the exclusive preserve of the states. One notable feature of the changing relationship between federal government and the states is the way in which controversial policies such as welfare reform are often devolved by the center upon state governments. Though arguably this is less concerned with a fundamental rethinking of Federalism and what it entails than it is with saving money and deflecting criticism for often unpopular policies.

The Constitutional principle of federalism is the division of government power between national, state, and local levels in the United States. However, as early as the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion the federal government has been strengthening its power at the expense of state power. This shift in government power has changed the relationship between the federal and state governments throughout the history of the United States. I have included several examples below.

1. 1803 Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison. The decision of this case gave the court the power to interpret the meaning of the Constitution.

2. The issue of slavery and the balance of power in Congress. The Civil War defined the sovereignty of the nation.

3. 1819 Supreme Court case McCulloch v. Marland upheld the Constitutionality of a national banking system.

4. The 14th Amendment federalized the Bill of Rights to apply to all states

5. Regulatory legislation such as the Pure Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act 1906

6. Amendment XXIV the abolition of poll taxes (a charge for voting)

7. The Voting Rights Act 1965

Each of these actions (as well as many others) strengthened the federal government and in doing so redefined American Federalism.

How has federalism evolved throughout US history to its current state?

Summative analysis is a complex and relatively recent method of organizing data. It is described in detail in Francis Rappaport's 2010 article in the International Journal of Qualitative Methods, attached below. For the purposes of this question, the important point is that summative analysis is collaborative and based on consensus-building.

A summative analysis of federalism would trace the ideological basis of the concept from the foundation of the United States of America to the twenty-first century, examining the disputes over the limits of federal power and including views of how and if they have been resolved. An early example is the dispute between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson over the authority of Congress to create a central bank. This finally ended with the Supreme Court decision in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), in which it was held that Congress had the authority to take actions not expressly authorized by the Constitution.

McCulloch v. Maryland is the first major blow to the rights of individual states in the nineteenth century, but the greatest was clearly the Union victory in the Civil War. After this strengthening of the federal government, dual federalism, cooperative federalism, and new federalism emerged as successive methods of balancing the rights and duties of the federal government with those of individual states. A summative analysis of federalism would have to include detailed examinations of all these approaches and would probably be a book-length project.