The Advantages of Federalism
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ler had first to destroy the federal structure of the Weimar Republic. Totalitarianism cannot succeed where federalism thrives.
(5) Federalism allows States, regions, and localities to undertake reforms and experiments in political, economic, and social concerns without involving the whole country and all its resources in some project that,
after all, may turn out unsatisfactorily. If it is true that ‘‘variety is the
spice of life,’’ surely a nation is interesting and lively when it has some
diversity and freedom of choice in its political methods. In America today, one State can plan some particular educational reform, another State
can take a different approach to improving schools; and results can be
compared and discussed. Or, different projects of unemployment relief,
or experiments in making tax assessment more just, can be carried on in
several States simultaneously and States can compete with one another
in healthy fashion. In a unitary political structure, no place exists for innovation or experiment except the bureaucratic central administration of
modern nation-states. Commonly that central administration is complacent about its own policies.
Other good reasons for maintaining a federal political structure might
be given readily enough. To some extent, the Framers of the Constitution
were aware of these general or abstract reasons for preferring a federal
plan to a central plan of national government. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe—who would become, respectively, the second, third, fourth, and fifth Presidents of the United
States—all were champions of a federated pattern of politics, as against
unitary power concentrated in a central administration. Such gentlemen—
politicians who w