2. Answer the following question.

   1. When did states’ governments possess the most power?

   2. Why did the principle of ‘federalism’ emerge?

3. Give the examples of

   1. national government

   2. state governments

   3. both

Text two The Principle of National Interest

1. Read the text.

In the Preamble, the framers wrote that one reason the Constitution was written was to “insure domestic tranquility” and “provide for the common defense.” Over the years, this has come to mean that the federal govern­ment has the responsibility for ensuring the peace and prosperity of the United States. In other words, the federal government protects and advances the national interest.

At first glance, the idea of national interest may seem fairly simple: It is what is best for the nation. But not everyone agrees on what is best. Perceptions of national interest vary from person to person, leader to leader, and evolve over time.

Citizens in the United States look to their national leaders to carry out relations with other nations that promote national interest. In turn, national leaders consider the economic health of the nation, potential threats to U.S. security at home and overseas, and the general well-being of all Americans to determine national interest. They then act accordingly – negotiating a treaty with one nation, imposing economic sanctions against another, or giving military aid to still another.

It is important to remember that U.S. policymakers base their views on what they perceive to be the best interest of the nation. However, perceptions change, and people do not always view the same situation in the same way. A perception is but one view – at one particular time – and not necessarily the only view.

2. Characterize the American political system and compare it with the English one. Text three The British Tradition of Federalism: Framework of Analysis

Translate in writing the following text into Russian. Check it with the Russian key.

1. In order to establish an analytical framework within to locate the origins and subsequent development of the federal idea in the United Kingdom it is necessary to identify three separate dimensions to our subject. First, we must recognise the significance of the distant past, stretching back at least to the Middle Ages, which helped to shape and mould the early political attitudes, expectations and activities of the emergent English public. We will be looking, in effect, at the early growth and development of England and the English state. This legacy, after all, determined what today are called customs, conventions, habits and popular traditions. Secondly, it is essential that we situate the federal idea in the context of the making of the United Kingdom. Recent research on how and why England’s constitutional and political authority was gradually extended formally to incorporate Wales, Scotland and Ireland in the United Kingdom it vital to this study. Indeed, I shall argue that the continuity of federal ideas in modern British politics and government during the last century derives directly from the early processes of the state-building and national integration, which were peculiar to the United Kingdom. Finally, I wish to incorporate in this framework the published research of those historians and political scientists who have made important recent contributions to our understanding of our own past. In particular, the recent research on national identity and the peculiarities of the multi-national state are central to the sources of the British federal tradition. And they are especially important for the way in which they have shed new light upon the contingent nature of the United Kingdom.

Together these three dimensions to the British tradition of federalism provide us with an alternative perspective of the past, which rivals the unitary orthodoxy.

2. In combination they also enable us to challenge what I shall call the ‘unitary myth’, which continues today to exert a dominant, if unjustified, stranglehold upon the politics of constitutional reform. Once we strip away the elements of the unitary myth, which continue to represent a powerful symbolism in British constitutional politics, it is possible to conceive of federal ideas as perfectly rational, legitimate responses to a wide variety of practical constitutional and political problems which have confronted successive British statesmen during the last century. Here it is appropriate to connect the analytical framework outlined above to three separate but intimately linked pathways into British constitutional and political evolution. These three distinct routes into the past are, respectively, ‘Empire, Ireland and Europe’. In this way the analytical framework used in our study serve to explain precisely why Empire, Ireland and Europe together have been there continuous source of British federal ideas since at least the 1870s. In short, it explains why there have been persistent attempts to reconstruct the Union along federal, or federal-type, lines. The bulk of the book, then, is devoted to an analysis of these three discrete issue arenas, but its overall purpose is to produce a coherent developmental perspective of the British federal tradition. It is of course important not to make exaggerated claims for this strand of the larger British political tradition, but it is equally important that we do not completely ignore it. To do so would blind us to a significant and continuous source of constitutional reform proposals, and it would lead us ultimately to misunderstand the very nature and meaning of the United Kingdom itself. We will begin our study of the British federal tradition by sketching the broad outlines of our analytical framework which is divided into three parts.

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