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1) Analyze a current topic of federalism from a federal, state, and local perspective.
2) Put students into groups. Give each group a recent speech from a politician regarding an international event—for example, foreign aid, the Paris Accords, or moving the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Ask the students to analyze the speech from all the theoretical perspectives that we have studied in the course. Does one perspective come out in the speech at the expense of the others?
3) Put students into groups. Assign students three policy areas and ask them to explain which level of government is best suited to handle the policy, and report back to the class why.
4) Discuss the question of concurrent powers.
5) Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of federalism, asking students to rank them on a continuum in order of greatest advantage to greatest disadvantage. For the greatest disadvantages, ask them to research attempts (across institutions) to address these disadvantages.
6) Discuss why American nationalism continues to be felt by the American people. How does this affect the perception of America and Americans by other nations? Is this good or bad? Why?