Decentralization
Zachary Mitchell
USU-1300-001
9-13-2014
Decentralized power
Since the late 1700’s, the United States of America has been known as “The Grand Experiment”. What makes us so different from the rest of the world and their Government system? Not only is our Government for the people, and by the people; our government is one of the first to decentralize the power. Some may argue that this decision by our founding fathers was a wrong one, others argue that it’s one of the best decisions that has ever been made for the US. As said in the past “Our nation was founded as an experiment in human liberty”.
Why did our founding fathers choose to decentralize power? To decentralize is “To distribute the administrative powers or functions of (a central authority) over a less concentrated area”. My first topic will be showing where the idea of decentralization came from and how much of an influence the ancient Greeks had on our constitution. Another argument behind this is seeing how poorly the Articles of Confederation worked, and why we had to re-body our whole government. My last discussion will be to simply look at America in the past couple hundred years, and decide if decentralization has had a positive, or negative impact on us.
The ancient Greeks existed from 1000 BC all the way until 300 BC; which is an extremely long time in my opinion. Many people don't realize how big of an impact Greece had over the US constitution, and structure of our government. The Greeks had no central government back then. They had multiple city states across the land, and each one of those city states had their own unique government.
The United States chose to use a lot of the greek’s governmental system. The only issue the Greeks had was they were never unified as a country; in fact, they were never even considered a country. The United States wanted their government to be divided into 3 separate powers: State, Local, and National. So basically they take the good parts, and got rid of
USU-1300-001
9-13-2014
Decentralized power
Since the late 1700’s, the United States of America has been known as “The Grand Experiment”. What makes us so different from the rest of the world and their Government system? Not only is our Government for the people, and by the people; our government is one of the first to decentralize the power. Some may argue that this decision by our founding fathers was a wrong one, others argue that it’s one of the best decisions that has ever been made for the US. As said in the past “Our nation was founded as an experiment in human liberty”.
Why did our founding fathers choose to decentralize power? To decentralize is “To distribute the administrative powers or functions of (a central authority) over a less concentrated area”. My first topic will be showing where the idea of decentralization came from and how much of an influence the ancient Greeks had on our constitution. Another argument behind this is seeing how poorly the Articles of Confederation worked, and why we had to re-body our whole government. My last discussion will be to simply look at America in the past couple hundred years, and decide if decentralization has had a positive, or negative impact on us.
The ancient Greeks existed from 1000 BC all the way until 300 BC; which is an extremely long time in my opinion. Many people don't realize how big of an impact Greece had over the US constitution, and structure of our government. The Greeks had no central government back then. They had multiple city states across the land, and each one of those city states had their own unique government.
The United States chose to use a lot of the greek’s governmental system. The only issue the Greeks had was they were never unified as a country; in fact, they were never even considered a country. The United States wanted their government to be divided into 3 separate powers: State, Local, and National. So basically they take the good parts, and got rid of