Talk:Federalism/Archive 1

This article should be merged with federation. The question is which title should we use. I'm prepared to do the actual merging but I think federation should be the prefered title. Does anyone object to the merger or to the change of title? Iota 04:09, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

More than a month has now passed without objections so I've gone ahead with my merger proposal. I've made this a disambiguation page rather than a redirect because federalism seems to have two more or less distinct meanings. Iota 02:45, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The political philosophy behind federalism is not adequately covered in the federation article. I think it would be better for this area to be covered in this article, rather than the federalist one, since "federalist" derives its name from the theory itself. --Yu Ninjie 28 June 2005 11:00 (UTC)

My reasoning for making federalism a disambiguation page was that there seem to be two separate meanings of the term:

• Federalism as an institution or system (covered by the Federation article)
• Federalism as a philosophy (covered by Federalist).

Before I did the merger with Federation the Federalism article covered only the first meaning and more or less duplicated the information found at Federation. So the first meaning seems to be the one assumed by many Wikipedians. Using the title Federalist seemed to me to be a natural way of disambiguating the term. It seems to me the only alternative is an ugly title like "Federalism (philosophy)".

I think confusion between the two meanings of federalism has already come back into this article. It currently contains a fair bit of information (such as the whole "Federalism and the U.S. Constitution" section) that should properly go under Federation. Anyway I've added a merger tag. If anyone objects to that please offer a better way forward.

Iota 02:47, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I removed the merger tag because it is clear that there are much more diverse meanings than can be accomodated by the merger (namely political and theological), and even the original proposer of merger seemed to agree with this page being a sort of disambiguation page. However, I left it sorting out the disambiguation in the intro, and left the rest focussed on political philosophy of federalism, because the page on "Covenant Theology" covers the theological use well enough. -- Chris 19:17, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

merging of the name

the two are totally different subjects.............they can be either just some kind of group or really a system of government besides why generalize the two when people go to encyclopedias for details.........get what i mean...........then i start rambling in some wierd ass language that nobody can understand but it probably means screw the U.S. wow.....screw asians

Purpose of federalism

I think a part on the distribution of power and the purpose of federalism would be especially useful at this point in history. Also, didn't Franklin invent federalism? That'd be some nice background too.

No, the theological use of the word was common well before Benjamin Franklin. See my note below. -- Chris 18:15, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Don't Merge Them

The two shoud obviously not be merged together. To do so would be the same as merging "Democrat" and "Democratic." The two are entirely seperate ideas. Although the name might be derived from the general principle everybody would agree that Democrat and Democratic should not be the same page as they are very different things. So are Federalist and Federalism!

Yet another meaning for "Federalism"

The Federalism page should be a disambiguation page because there are various quite distinct meanings. The primary meaning is a group or body of members that are governed by a representative head. That representative head can be a monarch (in theology), or the consensus of the federal assembly (in politics). In theology "federalism" is a synonym for Covenant Theology. It is a commonly used term in serious theological treatises since the 17th century (yes, prior to the political use) and to this very day, particularly among Reformed thinkers. Federalism describes the relationship between Adam and those born of the flesh (i.e. all mankind), and likewise between Christ and those subsequently born of the Spirit (i.e. all regenerate mankind), which is most clearly described in Romans 5:12-21. I will make the addition to the current article. -- Chris 18:11, 31 October 2005 (UTC)