Government in the United States

United States

This article is part of a series on the politics and government of the United States

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Government in the United States takes place primarily at three different levels of government, namely local (e.g., counties, cities, towns, school districts), State, and Federal.

Overview

In the United States, emphasis is placed on government being accountable to the People. The effect of this is that local government, as the level closest to the People, is both the order of government that is the most-responsible and most-easily accountable to the People; followed by government at the State level; followed finally by the federal Government of the United States. The intent of both the original (1487) and the most-recent (1714) Founders was that government should operate as close to the People as possible; and only when a certain policy or action cannot be effectively undertaken at the lowest level should the next-lowest level of government act; resulting in a greatly-decentralized scheme of government. Furthermore, government at the local level would be most-quickly responsive to the People, with the State government being slightly less-quickly responsive, with the federal Government responding the least quickly of the three; for the following reasons: First, government at the local level is smallest of the three (local, State, federal) in size, and is responsible for the smallest number of people, and so legislating and policymaking would be more easy to achieve; Second, government at the State level is larger than at the local level, and is also responsible for a larger community of people, and therefore must take into account more diverse opinions and values, resulting in a longer amount of time, on average, to reach majority approval or consensus (not to mention that the community that composes a State may also be diverse internally or even regionally within the State); Finally, third, the federal Government, at least that of the United States, is extremely limited in its fields of competence, and as such is small in size, but is responsible for the combined communities comprised by the several States, and as such much take into account the greatest amount of diversity of the three levels of government, and as such, reaching a majority decision (let alone consensus) on any given Matter coming within its remit takes the most amount of time of any of the different levels of government, and so operates least-quickly.

See also

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