Describe the primary differences in the role of citizens in government, among the federal, confederation, and unitary systems. The primary differences in the role of citizens in government between these three systems were that in federal systems, citizens were the ones that had the authority of the land and it was the responsibility of both the states and the national government to follow the will of the people. This meant that citizens interacted with both their state government and the national government. In confederation systems, citizens could only affect the government by influencing the government of the state that they live in, therefore they only really interacted with their state government and not the national government. In unitary systems, citizens could only affect the government by influencing the national government, therefore they only interacted with the national government rather than the government of the state that they lived in.
Briefly explain how you understand the system of division of power. The way that I understand the division of power is that the power of the federal government (or national government) is divided into three branches of government: legislative, executive and judicial. This was done alongside a system of checks and balances in order to ensure that no one branch would ever become too powerful, since the branches can always check the power of each other. These branches all work together so that America is ran well and to set guidelines for all citizens to live by. The legislative branch is the branch that is responsible for making the federal laws. The executive branch is the branch that is responsible for enforcing the laws and the government. The judicial branch is the branch that is responsible for applying the U.S laws within local and supreme courts through the cases that are brought to them.
How does the federal government shape the actions of state and local governments? Write your answer based on doing a bit of research on how the federal government has influenced the actions of NY state and local governments, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The federal government shapes the actions of the state and local governments via the laws and orders that they give regarding different situations. Whatever the federal government decides, the state and local governments have to follow suit with that order. On top of that, the federal government are the ones that usually provide the state and local governments with the necessary resources in order to follow suit with the policies that the federal government has put in place or with policies that the state and local governments have put in place in order to serve the people. This can be seen through how the federal government influenced the actions of NY state and local governments, in that the federal government directed aid to the local governments of New York in order to mitigate some of the worst fiscal impacts from the pandemic (through things such as the CARES act and the ARP). There’s also the moment when Trump ended up thinking about imposing a quarantine on New York and Cuomo wanted to push back on that, but ultimately, the federal government had the final say on that since they wanted to make sure that the constitutional rights of Americans were protected within this dangerous time.
