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Roles of social institutions in society
Social institutions and their role in society
Role of a political institution
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Political institutions have been part of humanity since the beginning of societies. Institutions have developed in different organizational performances and have shaped in what they are nowadays. Institutions have shown us that they are necessary and essential for all societies around the world. We never realize how important and how essential they are for our daily lives, but more than that, we never realize how institutions affect or influence political outcomes. Whether institutions are federalist or centralists, they always vary in the types of outcomes and shortcomings, or if local governments function better than a federal government, or if state governments are better.
The implications effects of decentralization for political society are mixed but generally positive especially in consideration to democratic principles. Decentralization scholars focus on decentralizations ability and role as a democratic process efficiency, economic development and ethnic conflict.
Decentralization is viewed as an instrument in allowing competition, and promoting economic growth. Central government is a weaker institution for realizing democracies because central tend towards uniform policy and where there is a lot of diversity you don’t want uniform policies. Some of he disadvantages of central governments are overall not business friendly, strain growth because its hard to restrain, and no hard money constraints. On the other hand, a decentralization process increases democratic process efficiency, economic development and tends to avoid ethnic conflict.
Larry Diamond discusses the influence of smaller states versus bigger states. He asserts that local governments foster democratic vitality. It helps to develop democratic values and sk...
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...tends to increase policy stability. Also local information and policy innovation, in better use of local information and increase in policy experimentation and adding to this, Ethnic conflicts are defused, all conflicts by satisfying limited demands.
Because decentralization is a good thing, power concentrated in the hands of central government will lead to despotism. Letting each state or local government to develop their own policies encourages experimentation, because every state comes up with its own solutions to issues, a country has the chance to see firshand which policies work better or if the don’t work at all. Overall, state governmnets are always more close to the population than the national government is, so letting states or local governmnets to decide is more democratic and more fficient than leaving everything to the federal government to decide.
As James Madison said, “The different governments will each control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.” What James Madison is trying to say is that the central and state governments have enough power that they don’t control everything. The central government has enough power to help some of the country’s major needs, and the state government has enough power to help the state’s needs because the state’s needs may be more specific. From this, you may conclude, that dividing powers between the central and state governments prevents tyranny. The first guard against tyranny was Federalism, which means a system of government in which power is divided between a federal government and state government.
Thomas Jefferson believed that states could best govern the domestic matters within its state, but a strong Central Government is needed as well to deal with foreign affairs and to keep the country strong as a unified nation. "While smaller governments [states] are better adapted to the ordinary objects of society, larger confederations more effectively secure independence and the preservation of republican government."-Thomas Jefferson to the Rhode Island Assembly, 1801. What Thomas Jefferson was saying in this quote is that small governments like our state and our towns are the ones best fit to deal with the concerns of the people. In turn helping the people live the best and happiest lives possible. Which is the reason we have government.
The Founding Fathers had multiple reasons on why they created a federalist government, the main reasons were avoiding a tyranny, more people participating in politics, and “experimenting” the states in order to find new government ideas and programs James Madison stated the Federalist Papers, The Federalist, No. 10, If "factious leaders kindle a flame within their particular states," the national, or federal government, can "conflagration through the other states." Federalism and the 10th amendment prevents one to take control of a state or the federal government, avoiding tyranny. The idea of having more people evolved in government came from the ideals of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson believed having both local (state) and national (federal) officials would increase participation in government.The last concept with using states as “experiments” comes from this concept: let us say that a state disastrous new policy, it would not be a disaster for everyone. In contrast, if one state 's new programs or policies work well, other states can adopt them to their own
Following the failure of the Articles of Confederation, a debate arose discussing how a centralized government ought to be organized. The prevailing opinion ultimately belonged to the Federalists, whose philosophy was famously outlined in The Federalist Papers. Recognizing that in a free nation, man would naturally divide himself into factions, they chose not to remedy this problem by stopping it at its source; instead, they would limit its effects by placing strict structural safeguards within the government's framework. The Federalists defined a facti...
Some of the advantages of having a federal government are that the national level of government can work on the bigger picture tasks while the state government solve the local and specific issues, so that each departments time can be used wisely and efficiently. Furthermore, if citizens took their everyday problems to the national level, then the national government would be over worked and the citizen might have to travel far to even reach the states capital. Each side of the
Talk about some of the advantages and disadvantages of federalism. Does this system serve the United States well? Why or why not? From my notion federalism has a more moral outlook on our country as a hold. They try to prevent a stronger power by distributing some essential power to the states which also gives the United States citizens more option. Different states have different policies which will attract citizen that concur with their laws. For instance gay marriage, some states in the United States support gay marriage and believe that people should marry who they want to marry no matter the gender. California is one of those states. According to an article written by Tamara Thompson, “States are strongly divided on same-sex marriage; thirty-three states prohibit same-sex marriage, including 29 states that have prohibitions in their state constitutions. With New Mexico, 17 states along with the District of Columbia allow same-sex marriage; most states that have recently allowed same-sex marriage have done so through legislation.” With that said individuals who live in Georgia, where gay marriage is banned, are free to move to any other states where gay marriage is permitted. Legalization of marijuana in certain states but not in another can be a second example of why giving states power to make their own law can benefit us as citizens. If we don’t concur with one state law, we can move to a state with the laws we do agree with; therefore, giving states control is definitely a pro rather than a con. On the other hand, we have the cons and disadvantages of federalism. One disadvantage of federalism is the fact that states that have contradicting laws that is in the vicinity of each other can be affected by each other. For example states who legalize marijuana, which includes but not
Most Federalist are elitist that own large amounts of land, educated and feel that they should govern to spare the republic from a democracy. Due to their education and experience with negotiations and treaties I feel that they are better suited to make decisions that will benefit the nation as a whole instead of each individual colony. With those in control that are educated and aware of the opportunities they can do what’s best for everyone by educating those that are unfamiliar with the opportunities that are available. A national government would strengthen the new nation as well as improve international trade for the benefit of all. This would not be possible with each colony being responsible for its own government without guidance. A strong national government relates to the economic development of the nation
National, Local, and State governments work together cooperatively to solve common problems rather than making separate polices. They work more on an equal level to get things fixed. This type of federalism is hard to tell where one type of government ends and the next one begins. National and state governments are independent and interdependent with an overlap of functions and financial resources. It is difficult for one to accumulate absolute power with this type of federalism.
In conclusion, a system based on balanced federalism was originally envisioned by the founders and serves as the best option for an efficient government. It is essential for the powers to be distributed in a manner where states deal with state matters and the national government does not overstep its role as the organizational factor in the system. As for the recent shift towards a central government one can only hope that the nation takes caution as it proceeds and that power transfers back to equilibrium between the federal and state governments.
Kevin B. Smith, Alan Greenblatt, and John Buntin, Governing states and localities: First Edition (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press), 2005, 95.
Frank J. Goodnow’s “Politics and Administration,” infers that politics and administration cannot be divided and are in need of each other to function. However, politics are superior to administration. Goodnow’s further analyzes and identifies three forms of authorities that enforce and implements states will. The first responsibility of authority is to respect the right of the people when conflicts ascend between either private or public matters. The second is judicial authorities also referred to as executive authorities that ensure the needs and policies of the state are executed. The third authority also referred to as “administrative authorities,” focuses on the mechanical, scientific and business authorities pertaining to the government.
Throughout history different types of instrumental regimes have been in tact so civilizations remained structured and cohesive. As humanity advanced, governments obligingly followed. Although there have been hiccups from the ancient times to modern day, one type of government, democracy, has proven to be the most effective and adaptive. As quoted by Winston Churchill, democracy is the best form of government that has existed. This is true because the heart of democracy is reliant, dependent, and thrives on the populaces desires; which gives them the ability for maintaining the right to choose, over time it adjusts and fixes itself to engulf the prominent troubling issues, and people have the right of electing the person they deem appropriate and can denounce them once they no longer appease them. In this paper, the benefits of democracy are outlined, compared to autocratic communism, and finally the flaws of democracy are illustrated.
I believe that the advantages that Federalism provides far outweigh those of the anti-federalist movement. Our founding fathers wisely perceived that the idea of a centralized government was a big concern for abuse of power. Federalism represents many of the values of modern Democracy and grants individual states the power to make decisions that best suit their needs. Local government understands local issues better than a centralized government that often sees the nation as one big piece of land instead of smaller areas, each with distinct demographics and problems. For instance, issues concerning illegal immigration in Texas would be best handled by local authorities rather than by someone in Kansas, a non border state. By the same token, representatives of communities with different aspirations, ethnicity and cultures should be handled locally as the federal government might overlook the needs of these groups. One perfect example of the above mentioned scenario is the public school system. In a federalist system the local government decides what kind of schools will operate. Therefore, they might make better decisions when it comes to opening schools among large immigrant populations, perhaps creating a few bi-lingual schools to fulfill the population’s needs.
There have been enormous efforts to spread democracy as a political system throughout the world by the developed democratic countries and the international development organizations including the World Bank. By the late 1990s the United States alone spent over a half billion dollars to promote democratic expansion throughout the world (Diamond, 2003). These were done considering that the democratic system leads towards development. As a result in the late 20th century we saw a huge political transformation towards democracy. During the last few decades a huge number of countries adopted democracy as their political system. However, it retain a big question how far democracy is successful in bringing development of a country? At this stage, some people also criticizes the effort of democratization arguing that it is done without considering the context of a country, sometimes democracy is not ideal for all countries and it is an effort to extinct diversity of political system. In studying the literature regarding the debate, we found a paradoxical relationship between democracy and development. Some argue that democracy has failed to ensure expected outcomes in terms of development. While others confronted that democracy has a considerable impact on development. Another group of people argue that form of political system actually does not have any impact on development process. On the verge of these debates, some development institutions and academics throw light on why democracy is not working properly, and what measure should be taken to make it more successful in bringing effective development of developing countries. Consequently, this writing is an effort of revisiting the different views about impact of democra...
There is no fixated process on decentralizing a government, the state has to decide the different step or rules that they will apply upon decentralizing their government. There are also a lot of fact...