The American Federal Republic

The government of the United States is a federal republic, and is predicated on the belief that government exists to protect the liberties of its citizens. Federal means that the United States, as its name suggests, is a federation or union of separate states, each of which has its own government. Over the course of American history, the size and power of the federal government in Washington has grown tremendously, sometimes at the expense of the state governments. In the past twenty years, however, the balance of power has in some respects been tilted away from Washington back toward the separate states. Federal systems of governments are comparatively rare around the globe--in most nations, state or provincial governments are divisions of the national government, not separate, independent governments in their own right.

The United States is a republic in the sense that its government is not a strict democracy, in which the will of the majority rules. Instead, the U.S. Constitution places several limits on direct democracy. Most important, in the American republic, citizens elect representatives and senators to represent them. The Constitution also creates the Electoral College, a system under which the president is elected by winning a majority of electoral votes by winning elections in the fifty states. The Electoral College both imposes limits on democracy, because the president is not elected directly by the voters, and embodies the fact that the United States remains a federal republic. The Constitution also imposes other limits on democracy, in that the Supreme Court has the power to settle disputes that arise under American law. Especially in the decades after World War II, the Supreme Court often became the defender of the rights of minorities and individual citizens.