Entry
Reader's guide
Entries A-Z
Subject index
Federalism
Federalism is a normative concept that emphasizes a diffusion of political authority among levels of government. Federal political systems are political organizations marked by shared power among their constituent units. Some examples of federal political systems include unions, constitutionally decentralized unions, federations, confederations, federacies, associated states, condominiums, leagues, and joint functional authorities. As Ronald Watts has written, a federation
is a compound polity combining constituent units and a general government, each possessing powers delegated to it by the people through a constitution, each empowered to deal directly with the citizens in the exercise of a significant portion of its legislative, administrative, and taxing powers, and each directly elected by its citizens.
In contrast, a confederation is more dependent on its constituent governments, is composed of delegates from ...
- Biographical
- Acton, Lord
- Adams, John
- Aquinas, Thomas
- Aristotle
- Böhm-Bawerk, Eugen von
- Bastiat, Frédéric
- Bauer, Peter
- Becker, Gary S.
- Bentham, Jeremy
- Branden, Nathaniel
- Bright, John
- Brown, John
- Buchanan, James M.
- Buckle, Henry Thomas
- Burke, Edmund
- Burlamaqui, Jean-Jacques
- Cantillon, Richard
- Childs, Roy A.
- Chodorov, Frank
- Cicero
- Clark, Ed
- Coase, Ronald H.
- Cobden, Richard
- Coke, Edward
- Comte, Charles
- Condorcet, Marquis de
- Constant, Benjamin
- Dicey, Albert Venn
- Diderot, Denis
- Douglas, Frederick
- Dunoyer, Charles
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo
- Epstein, Richard A.
- Ferguson, Adam
- Fisher, Antony
- Foucault, Michel
- Friedman, David
- Friedman, Milton
- Garrison, William Lloyd
- Gladstone, William Ewart
- Godwin, William
- Goldwater, Barry
- Harper, Floyd Arthur “Baldy”
- Hayek, Friedrich A.
- Hazlitt, Henry
- Heinlein, Robert
- Herbert, Auberon
- Hess, Karl
- Hobbes, Thomas
- Hodgskin, Thomas
- Hospers, John
- Humboldt, Wilhelm von
- Hume, David
- Hutcheson, Francis
- Jacobs, Jane
- Jefferson, Thomas
- Jouvenel, Bertrand de
- Kant, Immanuel
- Kirzner, Israel M.
- Knight, Frank H.
- La Boétie, Etienne de
- Lane, Rose Wilder
- Lao Tzu
- Las Casas, Bartolomé de
- LeFevre, Robert
- Leggett, William
- Locke, John
- Macaulay, Thomas Babington
- MacBride, Roger Lea
- Madison, James
- Maine, Henry Sumner
- Mandeville, Bernard
- Mason, George
- Mencken, H. L.
- Menger, Carl
- Meyer, Frank S.
- Mill, John Stuart
- Milton, John
- Mises, Ludwig von
- Molinari, Gustave de
- Montaigne, Michel de
- Montesquieu, Charles de Secondât de
- Murray, Charles
- Nathan, Tonie
- Nietzsche, Friedrich
- Nock, Albert Jay
- Nozick, Robert
- Oppenheimer, Franz
- Ortega y Gasset, José
- Orwell, George
- Ostrom, Vincent and Elinor
- Paine, Thomas
- Paterson, Isabel
- Paul, Ron
- Popper, Karl
- Posner, Richard A.
- Pound, Roscoe
- Price, Richard
- Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph
- Röpke, Wilhelm
- Rand, Ayn
- Rawls, John
- Read, Leonard E.
- Ricardo, David
- Rothbard, Murray
- Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
- Say, Jean-Baptiste
- Schumpeter, Joseph
- Senior, Nassau William
- Shaftesbury, Third Earl of
- Sidney, Algernon
- Simon, Julian
- Smith, Adam
- So well, Thomas
- Spencer, Herbert
- Spooner, Lysander
- Stigler, George J.
- Stirner, Max
- Sumner, William Graham
- Szasz, Thomas
- Taft, Robert A.
- Thoreau, Henry David
- Tocqueville, Alexis de
- Tracy, Destutt de
- Tucker, Benjamin R.
- Tullock, Gordon
- Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques
- Voltaire
- Washington, George
- Wicksell, Knut
- Wilberforce, William
- Wollstonecraft, Mary
- Policy
- Abortion
- Affirmative Action
- Antitrust
- Arts and Public Support
- Bioethics
- Black Markets
- Campaign Finance
- Capital Punishment
- Censorship
- Conscription
- Corruption
- Development, Economic
- Drug Prohibition
- Education
- Eminent Domain/Takings
- Environment
- Euthanasia
- Family
- Feminism and Women's Rights
- Foreign Policy
- Free Trade
- Freedom of Speech
- Freedom of Thought
- Gambling
- Genetics
- Globalization
- Health Care
- Illicit Drugs
- Immigration
- Intellectual Property
- Internet
- Interventionism
- Judiciary
- Labor Unions
- Laissez-Faire Policy
- Law and Economics
- Liability
- Market Failure
- Marriage
- Military-Industrial Complex
- Money and Banking
- Paternalism
- Political Parties
- Pornography
- Price Controls
- Privacy
- Privatization
- Psychiatry
- Public Choice Economics
- Racism
- Regulation
- Rent Seeking
- Restitution for Crime
- Retribution for Crime
- Right to Bear Arms
- Rule of Law
- Separation of Church and State
- Sexuality
- Social Security
- Taxation
- Term Limits
- Transportation
- Urban Planning
- War
- War on Terror
- War Powers
- Welfare State
- Topical
- Abolitionism
- American Revolution
- Anarchism
- Anarcho-Capitalism
- Anti-Corn Law League
- Assurance and Trust
- Banking, Austrian Theory of
- Bill of Rights, U.S.
- Bureaucracy
- Capitalism
- Cato's Letters
- Charity/Friendly Societies
- Children
- Cities
- Civil Society
- Civil War, U.S.
- Classical Economics
- Coercion
- Collectivism
- Common Law
- Communism
- Competition
- Conscience
- Consequentialism
- Conservatism
- Conservative Critique of Libertarianism
- Constitution, U.S.
- Constitutionalism
- Contractarianism/Social Contract
- Cosmopolitanism
- Culture
- Decentralism
- Declaration of Independence
- Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
- Delegation
- Democracy
- Division of Labor
- Dutch Republic
- Economics, Austrian School of
- Economics, Chicago School of
- Economics, Experimental
- Economics, Keynesian
- English Civil Wars
- Enlightenment
- Entrepreneurship
- Epicureanism
- Equality
- Evolutionary Psychology
- Existentialism
- Externalities
- Fascism
- Federalism
- Federalists Versus Anti-Federalists
- Freedom
- Free-Market Economy
- French Revolution
- Fusionism
- Glorious Revolution
- Government
- Great Depression
- Humanism
- Imperialism
- Individual Rights
- Individualism, Methodological
- Individualism, Political and Ethical
- Individualist Anarchism
- Industrial Revolution
- Islam
- Italian Fiscal Theorists
- Kleptocracy
- Law Merchant
- Left Libertarianism
- Levellers
- Liberal Critique of Libertarianism
- Liberalism, Classical
- Liberalism, German
- Liberty in the Ancient World
- Liberty, Presumption of
- Limited Government
- Magna Carta
- Marxism
- Material Progress
- Mercantilism
- Minimal State
- Mont Pèlerin Society
- Nationalism
- Natural Harmony of Interests
- Natural Law
- New Deal
- Nonaggression Axiom
- Objectivism
- Peace and Pacifism
- Philosophic Radicals
- Physiocracy
- Positive Liberty
- Praxeology
- Private Property
- Progress
- Progressive Era
- Prohibition of Alcohol
- Puritanism
- Pursuit of Happiness
- Religion and Liberty
- Republicanism, Classical
- Responsibility
- Revolution, Right of
- Rights, Natural
- Rights, Theories of
- Scholastics/School of Salamanca
- Secessionism
- Self-interest
- Slavery in America
- Slavery, World
- Social Darwinism
- Socialism
- Socialist Calculation Debate
- Sociology and Libertarianism
- Spontaneous Order
- State
- Stoicism
- Subsidiarity
- Utilitarianism
- Virtue
- Voluntarism
- Wealth and Poverty
- Whiggism
- Loading...