Chapter 3
Ap Government
Devolution revolution – The effort to slow the growth of the federal government by returning many functions to the states.
Federalism – Constitutional arrangement in which power is distributed between a central government and subdivisional governments, called states in the United States. The national and the subdivisional governments both exercise direct authority over individuals.
Dual federalism (layer cake federalism) – Views the Constitution as giving a limited list of powers—primarily foreign policy and national defense—to the national government, leaving the rest to the sovereign states. Each level of government is dominant within its own sphere. The Supreme Court serves as the umpire between the national government and the states in disputes over which level of government has responsibility for a particular activity.
Cooperative federalism – Stresses federalism as a system of intergovernmental relations in delivering governmental goods and services to the people and calls for cooperation among various levels of government.
Marble cake federalism – Conceives of federalism as a marble cake in which all levels of government are involved in a variety of issues and programs, rather than a layer cake, or dual federalism, with fixed divisions between layers or levels of government.
Competitive federalism – Views the national government, 50 states, and thousands of local governments as competing with each other over ways to put together packages of services and taxes. Applies the analogy of the marketplace: we have some choice about which state and city we want to “use”, just as we have choices about what kind of telephone service we use.
Permissive federalism – Implies that although federalism provides “a sharing of power and authority between the national and state governments, the state’s share rests upon the permission and