Two of the United States’ most important institutional features are federalism and the separation of powers. Federalism seeks to limit government by dividing it into two levels, national and state, each with sufficient independence to compete with the other, thereby restraining the power of both.1 The separation of powers seeks to limit the national government’s power by dividing government against itself—by giving the legislative, executive, and judicial branches separate functions, thus forcing them to share power. Both federalism and the separation of powers derive from James Madison’s idea, developed in Federalist 51, that the best way to restrain governmental power is to divide it among several institutions that will work to keep one another in check. Setting “power against power,” in Madison’s words, would be a far more effective means of protecting citizens’ liberties than merely guaranteeing liberties on paper.2
In Chapter 1 we observed that institutions organize political life. Institutions, however, take many forms and can choreograph collective action in a variety of ways. One important way in which political institutions vary is the manner in which they distribute decision, agenda, and veto powers. Institutions established by authoritarian regimes usually concentrate power in a small group of leaders who determine what laws and policies will be considered, make the final decisions, and seek to block the actions of others. The political institutions of democratic states, in contrast, usually allow a variety of groups to participate in decision making and provide at least a measure of agenda and veto power to numerous actors.
In the United States, the framers of the Constitution created institutions that would widely disperse involvement in decision making. Federalism assigns agenda, decision, and veto powers to the federal government and to each of the 50 states. The separation of powers gives several federal institutions a degree of control over the agenda, the power to affect decisions, and the ability to block the actions of other institutions. The framers feared that concentrating power in a small number of hands would threaten citizens’ liberties, and they were correct. Yet, although the dispersion of power among federal institutions and between the federal government and the states may well protect our liberties, it often makes collective action seem impossible. This lack of decisiveness sometimes appears to negate the most important reason for building institutions in the first place.
Since the adoption of the Constitution, politicians have developed various strategies for overcoming the barriers to policy change that inevitably arise in our federal system of separated powers. Often, those seeking to promote a new program will find ways of spreading the program’s benefits so other politicians find it in their interest to go along. For example, if the executive branch hopes to win congressional support for a new weapons system, it may try to ensure that portions of the new system are subcontracted to firms in as many congressional districts as possible. In this way, dispersion of benefits can help overcome the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches. Similarly, as we see later in this chapter, federal officials often secure state cooperation with national programs by offering the states funding, in the form of grants-in-aid, in exchange for their compliance. In this way, grants help overcome the limitations of federalism. Thus, consistent with our discussion of the five principles of politics in Chapter 1, America’s public policies are shaped by the institutions—in these examples, the separation of powers and federalism—through which individual efforts must flow.
However, institutions are not carved in stone. They are subject to modification as competing forces seek new decision-making powers that will give them an advantage, and as the leaders of institutions seek to strengthen their own power and expand their own jurisdictions at the expense of other institutions. In recent decades, for instance, the presidency has increased in power relative to Congress, and the jurisdiction of the federal government has grown relative to that of the states. Nevertheless, the core institutional features of federalism and the separation of powers remain at the heart of the American system of government. Let’s examine them and assess their consequences for American government.