Federal-State Relations In U.S. Federalism And Lessons For China

Ever since the establishment of federal ideas, the covenantal relationship betweenjoining parties of a federal arrangement has constantly been a dynamic equilibriumbetween centralization and decentralization. Federalism, despite its self-rule nature,should not be identified as a means of decentralization. On the contrary, federalism,from the first day of birth, is a mechanism of centralization. It is the pursuit for ageographically larger nation with strong political and military powers that bringdifferent jointing parties together to establish a federal arrangement. The United Statesof America is the most typical nation of federal arrangement, and thus is waveringbetween the trend of centralization and decentralization. This thesis intends to explorethe innate trend of the development of U.S. federalism so as to judge whether the roleof federal government is waxing or waning and thus to provide possible guidance tothe China's reform in the field of public administration. The adoption of 1787 Constitution signified the beginning of U.S. developmentinto the most powerful country in the world. It is believed that the federalismarrangement plays a significant part in this process. Indeed, the change fromconfederation to federacy in 1878 was a significant step in the process ofcentralization;and therefore, the founding fathers of U.S. did, from the verybeginning, design a way of gradual shift from decentralization to centralizationbecause a dramatic leap-forward was impossible in the context of the situations intheir age. The later evolution of U.S. history, particularly in 20th century, more clearlydemonstrates the trend of centralization efforts of the federal government by means offederal grants, expansion of constitutional enumerated powers, and recent intrusion inresponse to anti-terrorism and disaster salvage needs. The trend of centralizationnever stopped in the past two and a half centuries, though setbacks are frequentlywitnessed throughout the history. Upon the analyses of the historical evolution, wehave plenty of reasons to believe that the centralization trend will not be reversed inthe foreseeable future. The experience of U.S. may serve as a good lesson to China in a bid to reform herintergovernmental relations. Though China is unitary rather than federal and theauthor does not support any suggestion of federalizing China due to, again, historicalreasons, some political ideas of federal arrangement and successful practices of U.S.may be borrowed to China to deal with her problems. In the area of fiscal relationsbetween the central and provincial governments, it is believed that centralizationshould be strengthened to bring the play of the central government to the full so as tobetter address the unbalanced development within China. In the area ofintergovernmental conflict resolving mechanism, the participation of the judicialbranch in the existing mechanism governed by the legislative and executive branchescan solve the efficiency bottleneck of the prevailing system.