Custom «Comparison of State and Federal Government» Essay Paper Sample

The USA republic is governed by federal government where power is shared between the national (federal) government and the state governments. However the USA power sharing government is not similar to central governments in other states where the national government maintains total power. In terms of similarity, both federal and state governments have constitutions that facilitate governance. Similar to the federal government, state governments are structured in three branches namely executive, judiciary and legislature (Storey, 2008).

However, both state and federal governments have differences that are worth noting. For instance, the federal government is concerned with the governance of all 50 states of USA while state/local government is responsible for state affairs only. The federal government is headed by the president elected by all states while the state government is headed by a governor elected by residents of that state. In USA state governments are subject to the federal government while the federal government is not subject to state government. The federal government has the responsibility of making sensitive decisions such as declaring war while the state government cannot do this on its own (Kemp, 2002).

There are two contrasting models of governance that affect how states are run namely socialist and capitalism. Socialist model advocates for equality among people in terms of resource sharing while capitalistic model advocate for wealth disparities among people depending on their efforts and resources available. Government of the state of California is structured into local governments such as cities and counties whereas the state of Texas has only the counties in its government structure. In California cities can make their own local laws whereas in Texas counties have no homeland authority. California provides for independent cities and for consolidated city county government while Texas does not (Kemp, 2002).