Rethinking Federalism Studies (Rethinking Political Science and International Studies series) 1800880677, 9781800880672

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Rethinking Federalism Studies

Carol S. Weissert

Rethinking Federalism Studies

RETHINKING POLITICAL SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES This series is a forum for innovative scholarly writing from across all substantive fields of political science and international studies. The series aims to enrich the study of these fields by promoting a cutting-edge approach to thought and analysis. Academic scrutiny and challenge is an essential component in the development of political science and international studies as fields of study, and the act of re-thinking and re-examining principles and precepts that may have been long-held is imperative. Rethinking Political Science and International Studies showcases authored books that address the field from a new angle, expose the weaknesses of existing concepts and arguments, or 're-frame' the topic in some way. This might be through the introduction of radical ideas, through the integration of perspectives from other fields or even disciplines, through challenging existing paradigms, or simply through a level of analysis that elevates or sharpens our understanding of a subject. For a full list of Edward Elgar published titles, including the titles in this series, visit our website at www​.e​-elgar​.com.

Rethinking Federalism Studies Carol S. Weissert Professor Emerita, Department of Political Science, Florida State University, USA

RETHINKING POLITICAL SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

© Carol S. Weissert 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2023910254 This book is available electronically in the Political Science and Public Policy subject collection http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781800880689

ISBN 978 1 80088 067 2 (cased) ISBN 978 1 80088 068 9 (eBook)

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Contents Acknowledgmentsvi 1

The relevance of federalism research

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Political parties and federalism

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Federalism in times of crisis

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Intergovernmental relations: the hidden dimension of government

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Federalism and public policy

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Fiscal federalism

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A look ahead for federalism scholarship

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References103 Index126

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Acknowledgments What a treat it has been to spend months poring over old and new scholarship on federalism to produce this book. Of course, along with the scholarly work has been the daily political reminder and media coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, contested elections, spread of disinformation, public skepticism of governments and their policies, economic ups and downs, and unprecedented political party tribalism. These too play a role in this book, providing the context and highlighting that each of these trends affects and are affected by federalism. I entered my career as a federalism junky many years ago as a young, politically ignorant staffer at the Washington office of the Council of State Governments. I knew little about federalism scholarship or practice at that point but was willing to learn and had great teachers. Deil Wright, Thad Beyle, Daniel Elazar, and Richard Leach were among the scholars who guided me in those early years. Colleagues at the NCSL, National Governors Association, and the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations helped me understand the relevance, really the centrality, of federalism on our system of governance and the public’s response to it. Wayne Anderson, David Walker, Carl Stenberg, Tim Conlan, John Shannon, Earl Mackey, Steve Farber, Jim Martin, Rochelle Stanfield, Sylvia Hewitt, Deidre Riemer, Barry Van Lare, and many others who knew their way around the politics and policy of federalism were willing to share what they knew with me and made a real difference. Thad Beyle, Deil Wright, David Lowery, George Rabinowitz, and Duncan MacRae at the University of North Carolina instructed me in federalism scholarship and especially about conducting research during my years earning my doctorate there. As a federalism scholar, I was privileged to serve as editor of Publius: The Journal of Federalism. I was honored to receive both the Daniel J. Elazar Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations from the American Political Science Association and the Donald Stone Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Intergovernmental Relations from the American Society for Public Administration. As Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Political Science in Australia, I was able to connect with fabulous Australian federalism scholars who became friends. The federalism scholarship team is way too big to thank individually but you know who you are and you know you are appreciated. However, John vi

Acknowledgments

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Kincaid gets a special place given his prominence in the field and in his long ties to Publius: The Journal of Federalism. Thanks for selecting me as editor, John. I loved it. Thanks too for the colleagues at Michigan State and Florida State political science departments who were able to combine high academic standards with friendship and even fun, especially Fran and Bill Berry, Bob Crew, Dale Smith, Charles Barrilleaux, John Scholz, Jeffrey Hill, Jack Knott, Michael Mintrom, and Bob Lowry. I have also been privileged to mentor a number of graduate students who became or are becoming productive federalism scholars including Matt Uttermark, Kevin Fahey, Jaclyn Bunch, Daniel Scheller, Jessica Ice, Shelley Arsenault, Brian Janiske, Susan Silberman, Kenny Mackie, and Alexandra Artiles. Finally, there is the love and continued support from my husband, Bill, and sons Will and Rob. They all know much more about federalism than they ever thought possible and secretly (very secretly) love it too.

1. The relevance of federalism research To some extent, federalism had its day in the terrible weeks and months as governments across the world sought to deal with deadly and unanticipated choices pitting public health against economic stability. In federal countries, states and provinces often made tough decisions that the central government could not or would not make, decisions reflecting their own constituents— just as federalism is designed to do. But these decisions also led to conflicts between national and subnational levels that often deteriorated into political screeds. For all those praising federalism during these times, there were others who decried it. But it was clear: federalism was undeniably relevant. But how relevant is federalism scholarship? Too often federalism scholars talk only to each other, and sometimes, even then, not so well (Weissert 2011). Our students learn about federalism primarily in terms of marble and layer cakes, with little understanding of its day-to-day importance. But the COVID crisis taught others, including politicians, reporters, and professional and amateur pundits, that federalism scholarship has much to offer a broader audience. In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to reverse the long-standing precedent on abortion and turn it over to the states, again defined a hot-button policy issue in stark federalism context. Relevance comes with a price. As federalism deals with hyper-partisanship, public skepticism, persistent centralization, and problems of compliance and implementation, those of us who study federalism must be prepared to answer questions of its relevance, along with its implications, trends, and unintended consequences. This book will consider challenges affecting federalism and how well scholars are dealing with them. It will consider the strands of federalism research—what scholars do well and what is still needed; the traditional areas of study and the newer approaches; definitions and values. The advantages and disadvantages of federalism are well known, but their application to current events highlights them anew. Newer concepts of multi-level governance and partisan federalism both challenge and engage federalism scholarship in important ways. This dynamic nature of federalism is widely recognized but difficult to capture in time-sensitive form. Some scholars examine the question of stability and instability (Landau 1973; Filippov, Ordeshook and Shvetsova 2004; Bednar 2009; Braun, Ruiz-Palmero and Schnabel 2017). Benz (2016) examined how constitutional policy affects the dynamics of federalism, arguing 1

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that constitutional policy can restore the federal balance of power even when formal amendments of the constitutions are not ratified. Today’s federalism faces the strong winds of centralization and nationalization, public skepticism of governments of any kind, extreme polarization defining parties and citizens alike, and a society that seems to consider conflict, not consensus, the desired behavior. But first, let’s consider the basics. What is federalism and why do we care about it? Riker’s (1975, p. 101) definition is a good start: “Federalism is a political organization in which the activities of government are divided between regional governments and a central government in such a way that each kind of government has some activities on which it makes the final decision.” This notion of divided powers within spheres of government goes back to Wheare (1946) who also highlighted coordination and independence—what Elazar later called shared-rule and self-rule. Elazar (1987, p. 7) adds the public role to the definition highlighting the importance of sovereignty with “each (governmental level) possessing powers delegated to it by the people and empowered to deal directly with the citizenry in the exercise of these powers.” Benz (2021) notes that federalism means not only the division of powers but also the coordinated exertion of power to solve conflicts. Thus, in addition to institutions, federalism includes an important behavioral component including intergovernmental bargaining. Comparative scholars are generally more attuned than U.S. scholars to the behavioral aspects including bargaining (Samuels and Mainwaring 2004), political games (Filippov, Ordeshook and Shvetsova 2004), and identifying incomplete contracts (Rodden 2003). However, most federalism scholars recognize the importance in changes over time leading to the dynamic nature of federalism—change more likely to flow from behavior than institutional reforms. Autonomy is an important component of the definition and key to normative federalism. By dividing powers, national and subnational governments are assumed to have the ability to act almost fully on their own, representing their own constituents. It is autonomy that allows states to push back against the federal government in ways that an administrative unit cannot. Gerken (2014) calls this the state-autonomy school of federalism, differentiating it from the nationalist school which argues that states are the agents of the national government. And, of course, federalism is political. The 2016 Republican Party platform put it this way, “Federalism is a cornerstone of our constitutional system. Every violation of state sovereignty by federal officials is not merely a transgression of one unit of government against another, it is an assault on the liberties of individual Americans” (Republican National Committee 2016, p. 15). The problem with federalism definitions is how to deal with variations in governmental powers, individual behavior, and institutional structures.

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Federations differ in their governmental organization, size, authority, and oversight. Thus, comparing federal countries to each other and to nonfederal countries is difficult when there is so much variation within these countries. Scholars often look at levels of decentralization (fiscal, administrative, and political) as a way of placing federal countries on a continuum, but these too are very different and do not fully capture differences. Further, centralized countries can have fairly high levels of decentralization where subnational units are active in pursuing goals of the national government (Rubin and Feeley 2008). Federalism has been studied through a variety of lenses but most predominately with these three: institutions, functions, and actors. Institutional federalism relies heavily on the study of constitutions but also includes examining the organization of the legislative, judicial, and executive bodies, the intergovernmental mechanisms, and political parties. U.S. federalism scholars, in particular, have focused on institutions and their consequences. This is in spite of early federalism theorists, William Riker and Daniel Elazar, who urged more behavioral analysis (Weissert and Fahey 2018). Functional federalism refers to how powers are distributed among governments, generally set out in constitutions. Decentralization measures are often used to reflect functional federalism. Fiscal federalism initially focused on the allocation of responsibilities of national and subnational governments. Bolleyer and Thorlakson (2012) highlighted the importance of interdependence in federal institutions and developed a measure to apply to federations. Actor-centered federalism places emphasis on agency, or self-interested actors who make decisions affecting the design and operation of federalism. Actor-centered institutionalism highlights the strategic power of interest actors to use institutions or a sense of belonging to purposefully pursue their interests (Petersohn, Behnke and Rhode 2015). Comparative scholars are particularly associated with actor-centered research, often related to the European Union. This research has dealt with bargaining (Elgstrom and Jonsson 2000; Heisenberg 2005; Petersohn, Behnke and Rhode 2015), cooperation (Scharpf 1994), intergovernmental relationships (Hooghe 1995; Bolleyer, Swenden and McEwen 2014; Salageanu 2014), and elite decision-making (Petersohn, Behnke and Rhode 2015). Rational choice highlights the self-interest of actors and the strategic goals of elites. Issues or policies are an important aspect of federalism scholarship focusing on how the distribution of power affects policy outcomes.

THE PROMISES AND PERILS OF FEDERALISM One of federalism’s strengths (and weaknesses) is its normative component. As the U.S. Supreme Court described in 1991 in Gregory v. Ashcroft, federal-

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ism provides a means to secure individual rights, check government abuse of power, encourage sensitivity to the diverse needs of a heterogeneous society, increase opportunity for citizen involvement in democratic processes, innovate and experiment and heighten government responsiveness due to competition among states and a mobile citizenry. Elazar (1994) saw federalism as the only safeguard for peace and stability in a rapidly changing world. Federalism can help meet the challenge of diversity by protecting minorities and integrating distinct societies—what has been called “peace-preserving federalism” (Elazar 1987; Stepan 1999; Lustick, Miodownik and Eidelson 2004). However, research from Gordan and Landa (2022) differs from these arguments. They find that polarization over national policy may be higher in federal than in unitary systems. Innovation An important promise of federalism that has been widely studied—especially in the U.S.—is innovation. Empirical research on innovation, what one U.S. Supreme Court justice said flows from states as “laboratories of democracy,” is robust in U.S scholarship and in practice. States have passed innovative progressive legislation in areas such as minimum wage, LGBTQ policy, cannabis use, and immigration. In recent years, Republican legislators have innovated with limitations on LGBTQ, abortion, immigration, and school curriculum and testing. The learning sometimes goes from states to Washington as illustrated in health care (Massachusetts was the model for the national Affordable Care Act). Rabe (2004) documents that states have been leaders in greenhouse gas regulation that was later adopted in Washington. Some comparative research shows similar learning in India and Brazil where national social policy moved from individual municipalities and states to the national level (Tillin and Pereira 2017). Testing these promises has often proven difficult for both theoretical, empirical and measurement issues. Elazar (1987) noted that the great strength of federalism—flexibility—makes it difficult to discuss satisfactorily on a theoretical level. Early research—and research continuing today—often relies on case studies which provide a richness to developing hypotheses but are limited in hypothesis testing. There are simply too many differences in institutions and behaviors across countries—what Fenna (2018) calls “too few cases, too many variables.” Researchers often pick cases carefully to match federal countries that are alike in all ways except the variable of interest. But even this is difficult and often unconvincing.

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Federalism Theory William Riker (1964) was among the first to develop a general theory to explain both the origins of federalism as a form of government and its sustainability. He argued that the federal bargain was one where both national and subnational governments saw gains in working together to deal with an external or internal threat. The arrangement is sustained because it is too inconvenient to abandon it or costs to maintain it are slight for the majority. While subsequent scholars have refined components and elements, new general theories have not emerged in federalism scholarship. One exception is Filippov, Ordeshook and Shvetsova (2004) who develop a game-theoretic theory concerning sustainability. They argue that the motives of political elites must be moved away from divisive bargaining even if such bargaining serves the myopic interests of those who elect them and that voters must generally reward these actions. The answer, they argue, is a political party system that coordinates voters to act as if they support existing constitutional arrangements, even if this is not the best option—thus providing an equilibrium of constitutional legitimacy at the popular and elite levels. Fiscal federalism theory developed by economists and a few political scientists dictates that responsibilities should be assigned according to the idea that the jurisdiction responsible for a public policy should coincide with the geographic coverage of the impact of these policies on households and the relevant electorate (Ahmad and Brosio 2006). Spillovers generated by local government operations could be addressed by earmarked grants from the federal government. Decentralization would assure that local citizens’ preferences were met but problems with boundary-crossing policies could be dealt with by the national government. While early fiscal federalism work was largely normative, more recent work has taken a political economy approach which highlights the interplay of the national legislature and a set of locally elected policy makers. Another vibrant branch of comparative fiscal federalism research has examined the role of federalism with respect to developing and emerging market federations. Weingast (1995) developed a theory he called market-preserving federalism where political institutions credibly commit authorities to respect economic and political rights. To achieve this condition, a number of factors must be in place such as a clear delineation between the authority of national and subnational officials and each government is forced to internalize the costs of its own borrowing. Scholars have built on this in analyzing the role of federalism on shaping market reform and fiscal performance (Treisman 1999; Rodden and Wibbels 2002; Wibbels 2005). Chapter 6 deals with fiscal federalism scholarship.

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Measurement Issues And finally, measurement has long been a problem. Institutional differences involve largely nominal data and are often unchanging over time. Voigt and Blume (2010) are among those arguing that the use of a dummy variable to represent federalism is too simplistic. But behavioral measures are difficult to capture. Fiscal decentralization can be captured by the share of total expenditures or revenues of subnational governments (Lijphart 1984; Falleti 2005; Arzaghi and Henderson 2005), but fiscal issues are only one element of local autonomy (Blochliger 2013). Scholars also recognize structural issues such as the devolution of power to local government (Arzaghi and Henderson 2005) and subnational decision-making power (Brancati 2006). Hooghe et al. (2016) developed a widely used measure of regional authority that can be used to test hypotheses related to decentralization (Uttermark 2020). Recent scholarship has taken on a more systematic quantitative measurement of subnational democratic performance (Libman 2017; McMann 2018). One example of a new measure applied to India found that there was substantial variation across states and over time. Both vertical threats (where the central government suspends elected institutions and places states under central role) and horizontal threats (where actors outside political systems subvert elected institutions) help explain the variations (Harbers, Bartman and van Wingerden 2019). Grumbach (2022a) developed a state democracy index for U.S. states that aggregated 47 variables related to electoral democracy dealing with the freeness and fairness of elections and strength of civil liberties. He found that the Republican Party has a large negative effect on democratic performance in the states. The party of overwhelmingly white and mostly male based outside of urban areas can benefit from democratic contraction, from restricting protest activity to making it more difficult to vote. Inequities The premier problem with federalism is the inequality that flows from it, called, “the price of federalism” by Paul Peterson (1995). With states’ autonomy comes the variation that flows from meeting the needs of a smaller group of citizens which in turn leads to those citizens being treated differently from citizens with similar preferences in other states. U.S. research has highlighted inequities, largely in social policy (John Peterson 1995; Kelly and Witko 2012; Hatch and Rigby 2015). In short, citizens in some states who are poor are provided with considerably different benefits from policies than similar citizens in other states. But a more recent example of inequities flowing from federalism might be COVID-19 where a number of Republican states, led by Florida and

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Texas, opened businesses, restaurants, and bars quickly and refused to mandate masks (or have their local governments and schools do so). Democratic states were more likely to require masks, close businesses, and limit the opening hours of restaurants and bars. Thus, citizens of Democratic states were treated quite differently from those of Republican states. Post-2022 abortion policies similarly led to women in some states being offered very different birth-related policies than those in states with different ideological preferences. Apart from the politics or preferences of the citizens in some states, horizontal competition among states can inhibit generosity. Although the research in the U.S. on states that might be dubbed welfare magnets is mixed and certainly not overwhelmingly persuasive, the idea of competition among states for businesses, tourists and low taxes is popular among elected officials and thus can affect citizens of those states differently. A second reason for differences in social programs leading to inequality is the number of veto points that can empower interest groups and make it harder to achieve improvements in social provisions (Tillin and Pereira 2017). Inequities flowing from federalism can come from decisions at the national governmental level as well. One good example is waivers in health and social policies. Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for the poor, sets a number of requirements for all states to follow but increasingly has allowed states through waivers to make policy changes that dramatically affect the operation of that program in the states. Thompson, Wong and Rabe (2020) found that Trump’s administrative waiver process was a strategy to erode core program benefits and structures. Following a U.S. Supreme Court case that prevented federal law from mandating extensive expansion of Medicaid as part of the Affordable Care Act, most states expanded Medicaid to cover the near-poor who had been excluded in many states (along with generous federal assistance). But a handful of states including two of the nation’s largest—Florida and Texas—refused to accept the federal dollars and have much more restrictive programs. Thus, again someone near-poor in New York is treated very differently in their availability to health coverage than someone in Florida—the definition of federalism’s inequities. Of course, the biggest inequity was one of the earliest in the U.S.—the adoption of racist policies in the Southern states before and after slavery under the flag of “states’ rights.” Mickey (2015) called these “subnational autocracies.” Other scholars have applied similar terms to the U.S. and other countries (Benton 2012; Gibson 2013; Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018). In the U.S., these subnational autocracies are again taking the lead in policies dealing with sexual orientation, book banning, and election reform seemingly targeted to racial minorities. Miller (2010, p. 806) argues that American federalism perpetuates racial inequality in criminal justice—inequality that is well documented and well

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known. She notes that “American federalism limits the authority and political incentives of the central government to address a wide range of social problems that give rise to crime and diffuses political power across multiple venues, which makes it difficult for the poor and low-resource groups to access decision-making.” Michener (2018) makes a similar case for Medicaid. She notes that federalism allows political elites to shirk their responsibilities by pointing to other levels of government, undermine efforts of advocacy organizations, and fragment civil legal infrastructure for client redress. She also highlights the importance of politics in understanding the role of federalism in Medicaid policy and the democratic ramifications of federalist policy fragmentation. In 2022, as the U.S. Supreme Court reversed long-time nationwide constitutional precedent on the right to abortion, inequities again came to the fore as proponents and opponents turned to states. Liberal states quickly passed laws supporting abortion, including expanding the types of medical personnel who can provide abortion services and shielding residents from facing penalties if they go to other states for the procedure while conservative states essentially shut down abortions in their states and looked to restricting the use of abortion pills and penalizing citizens for going out of state for the next policy victory. These actions were particularly notable since it is poor women and minorities in states with restrictive laws, who are currently negatively affected by the abortion patchwork due to their limited access to health care, who will likely be unable to afford to travel to states where abortion is available (Pettus and Willingham 2022). Representation While some argue that federalism moves decision-making closer to the people thus improving representation, others note that the complex and often opaque relationships and divisions of responsibilities between levels of government in federal systems reduce the ability of voters to hold governments accountable for policy performance and thus reduce representation (Cutler 2004). Ideally voters will hold each level of government responsible for what it does and will reward that government for actions it likes and punish it for those they do not. In fact, this fundamental representational notion was a key element in The Federalist Papers where Madison argued that federal and state governments are different agents and trustees of the people instituted with different powers. Thus, voters at different governmental levels would hold their elected officials accountable for responsibilities of their governmental venues. However, in a multi-level governance system like a federation, responsibility can be difficult if citizens are not aware of what it is that governments do. There is some evidence that citizens do understand what governments do (par-

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ticularly in economic and health-related issues), but less support for whether they reward or punish based on this knowledge (Johns 2011). Atkeson and Partin (1995) find that voters hold governors responsible for state economic conditions and senators are tied more to the president of their party—evidence that the electorate holds candidates functionally responsible for the agenda assigned to their office. Similarly, Arceneaux (2005) finds support for what he calls the federalist theory of representation. However, Carsey and Wright (1998) find that national politics plays a larger role shaping subnational voting behavior, specifically that presidential approval has a strong impact on gubernatorial vote choice. Johns (2011) finds that partisanship and salience can play a more dominant role in vote choice than functional responsibility. Arceneaux (2006) and Schneider, Jacoby and Lewis (2011) find that citizens do appear capable of making distinctions in terms of what different levels of government do. In an analysis of survey data in Scotland and Ontario, Johns (2011) found that voters tended to agree on where powers lie and expressed confidence in their judgements. (However, he also found that there was little evidence that governmental responsibility played a role in their voting choices.) As might be expected, the functional responsibility argument for vote choice is nuanced. Arceneaux (2006) found that citizens’ voting behavior flows from functional responsibility within a federal system only under specific conditions, specifically where the issue upon which voters are attributing responsibility is highly accessible and the level of government perceived to be functionally responsible for the issue actually is responsible for that issue. A counter-argument for the accountability notion is the exact opposite: that federalism can lead to misunderstandings of what government is responsible for, encouraged by the ability of elected officials to shift blame to other governments. Beramendi and Rodden (2022) found that federal countries were particularly likely to have weaker accountability during COVID-19 as incumbents could blame other governments for poor performance indicators. But extreme partisanship plays a role in the lack of accountability as well. Beramendi and Rodden (2022) argued that when governments are highly polarized, officials know they won’t be held accountable by voters who value ideology more than competence. In the case of COVID-19, they found preliminary evidence that death rates were higher in more polarized countries. With a broad-ranging definition and an ambitious set of outcomes flowing from federalism, there is little wonder that the empirical scholarship has struggled to make the necessary connections. What scholars have done is better define components of the definition and selected outcomes—with varying results.

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SAFEGUARDS OF FEDERALISM Key among the Framers’ arguments for federalism in the U.S. were the checks and balances flowing from having two autonomous governments responsive to their own constituents. As James Madison put it in Federalist Papers 51, federal and state government officials have various powers “to resist and frustrate the measures of each other.” These powers might be called safeguards of federalism. Wechsler (1954) argued that the constitutional system where states control Congressional redistricting, the determination of voter qualifications, and selection of presidential electors is intrinsically well adapted to retarding or restraining new intrusions by the center on the domain of states. Bednar (2009) delineates four types of safeguards: structural, popular, political, and judicial. Structural safeguards are especially interesting in comparative federalism where safeguards include court review, composition of the legislature, centralization or decentralization of the political party system, powers of the governmental units, and organization of elections. Popular safeguards are conceptually simple but more difficult to study—essentially, how the public might serve as an umpire between the levels of government. Judicial safeguards flow from the view of the courts as umpires solving federal and state disagreements. Political safeguards are in a sense the most interesting to scholars—the informal ways that states and the federal government negotiate policy. The party organization, discussed in Chapter 2, is a political safeguard. But so are the informal negotiations and bargaining that result from a federal system (Nugent 2009). States can refuse federal policies (or stall); they can bargain with federal officials to get their desired outcomes; they can go to the courts arguing that the federal actions are unconstitutional, not statutory, or sometimes just bad policy. Nugent argues that these informal and extraconstitutional safeguards are more important than the formal constitutional provisions.

CHALLENGES FACING FEDERALISM TODAY To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, once you have a federation, can you keep it? Centralization and nationalization, public skepticism of governments of any kind, extreme polarization defining parties and citizens alike, and a society that seems to consider conflict, not consensus, are all current challenges facing federalism in practice and in scholarship.

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Centralization Balance is key to successful federations. Federalism was conceived in the United States to balance the powers of states with the nascent national government. Scholars and, to a lesser extent, practitioners worry about an imbalance—especially one that benefits the national government. Nevertheless, scholars agree that centralization is inevitable and inherent in federal systems (Kollman 2013). Once the national government captures an authority, it does not generally lose it. Over time the system centralizes, increasing pushback from states, sometimes even secession, although the primary determinant of secession is regional identity (Nadeau and Blais 1991; Serrano 2013; Munoz and Tormos 2015; Guinjoan 2022). Other scholars have found that territorial decentralization is extremely fragile and can be abandoned by majority groups and regions in favor of centralization and by minority groups and regions in favor of full political autonomy or secession (Lake and Rothchild 2005). Riker (1964) believed that American federalism was very centralized from its beginning. It is interesting to note that his definition of centralization was political centralization, measured by asking who typically prevails in significant disputes between the national and subnational governments (Volden 2004). Other factors that lead to centralization are globalization and economic modernization (Hueglin and Fenna 2015), the judiciary (Aroney 2019), and national media (Hopkins 2018). How is centralization defined? One common measure is the percentage of spending from each of the governmental levels, where a higher percentage at the national level means relative centralization. Other measurements have relied on analysis of the centralization substance and scope in federal law over time (Krause and Bowman 2005; Weissert and Uttermark 2017). Dardanelli et al. (2019) developed a seven-point measure of static decentralization. While many federalism scholars would posit that decentralization is a positive trend and leads to good things, such as improved perceptions of accountability to constituents (Escobar-Lemmon and Ross 2014), there are unintended consequences of decentralization as well. Grumbach (2022b) points out that with the inability of the national government to act in the U.S., state policy resurgence has led to laboratories against democracy, rather than the much more famous laboratories of democracy. Rather than learning from other states’ policy successes, states take their policy cues from partisan interest groups and partisans in other states with ideological goals. Further, state leaders are reluctant to emulate successful policies from the opposite party which could improve that party’s brand and are far more likely to implement policies of co-partisan states that can lead to electoral gain. These policies

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often lead to growing polarization, inequality, and weakened democratic institutions. In 1969, Riker and Bast noted that if presidents become more involved in endorsing Congressional candidates, this could lead to a more centralized federal system. In the 2020s, a former U.S. president became very active in not only endorsing Congressional candidates but also governors and other state officials, including state election officials. More recently, scholars are concerned with a related but different term— nationalization. This involves not simply which government wins in disputes or whether the federal government takes on more policy or spending responsibility, but rather deals with citizens’ discernment of differences in state and national policies and candidates. If there are few differences in citizens’ views of national and state candidates, for example, nationalization may be in place. Madison thought citizens would be more loyal to their states. Emotional connection to their state and local governments is key to federalism (Levy 2007). However, Rocco (2021) argues that nationalism is weakening this connection, evident in the declining interest in state and local politics. Nationalization is important to federalism since it can crowd out local issues, leaving state and local officials unaccountable for their actions (Hopkins 2018). Elected officials are highly attuned to national issues that resonate with their base—devoting their attention to those issues even though they may not be evident in their jurisdictions or, more troubling, to a majority of their citizens. For example, Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida, gave ten examples of problems of what he called “wokeness” in business training programs as evidence of his support for state legislation to counter super-sensitivity to racial issues, but none of the examples was from Florida. Polls show us that in abortion and guns, legislators tend to be much more extreme than their constituents (The Economist 2022). When states are run entirely by one party (sometimes called a trifecta meaning the governor, and the majority of the upper and lower house are of the same party), there is little need for compromise or recognition of concerns of those of different partisan and ideological bents. In 2022, there were 37 trifecta states; 23 Republican controlled and 14 Democratic. Thirty years ago, there were 19 (The Economist 2022). Empirically, we have several ways of measuring nationalization: comparisons of gubernatorial voting and presidential voting differences (or similarities) and citizens’ self-reports about their engagement in and knowledge of national politics compared to state and local politics (Hopkins 2018). Rogers (2018) used another measure—when presidential evaluations and the national economy matter more for state legislators’ elections than state-level economic conditions, state policy outcomes, or voters’ assessments of the legislature. Blame for nationalization is shared between state political parties, social identities, and the role of the media. (Clearly this is an area where more

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research is needed for both the U.S. and other countries. For example, Rocco notes that this nationalization is largely evident in the U.S.—not Canada and the U.K.) Lack of Trust Trust is implicitly connected to the rationale for federalism. The important responsibilities of federalism—securing individual rights, checking governmental abuse of power, increasing the opportunity for citizen involvement in the democratic process, and heightening government responsiveness—assume that citizens value, understand, and trust the governments playing these roles. Skogstad et al. (2013, p. 7) put it this way, “Trust is crucial to the success of federations.” However, Zahar (2013, p. 78) is more skeptical about the rationale noting that “(t)heoretically … there is no compelling argument linking federalism to trust.” Americans’ trust in many aspects of government—particularly federal government—is low and falling. State and local governments continue to fare better, but this level of trust has also fallen in recent years. According to Gallup, trust in the federal government to handle domestic problems fell from 51 percent in 1997 to 40 percent in 2022. Trust in state governments handling of problems also fell over the time period: from 68 percent in 1997 to 57 percent in 2022. Trust in local governments is much more stable: 69 percent in 1997 and 67 percent in 2022 (Gallup 2022). Partisanship plays a role in the allocation of trust. Trust in the federal government, especially, depends on the party of the president. Democrats are more likely to trust their state and local governments (Brennan Center for Justice 2021). Rozell and Wilcox (2021) cite figures about how trust has fallen over time and is now highly partisan. Other scholars have analyzed public opinion regarding the centralization or decentralization of public policies. Generally, Republicans and conservatives are more supportive of decentralization than Democrats and liberals (Dinan and Heckelman 2020). Of special interest has been the role of party control in shaping these preferences. Wolak (2016) found that the party of the state government played little role in these views, but the party of the president does—if the president is NOT of the party of the respondent. In that case, individuals prefer decentralization. Dinan and Heckelman (2020) find this partisan effect in Democrats, but not Republicans. McWhirter and Uttermark (2022) found a similar asymmetric partisan result when examining citizens’ blame attribution related to the COVID-19 pandemic: Democrats—but not Republicans—were more likely to assign blame to the level of government controlled by their disfavored party. Trust in government (and in expertise in general) came to the fore during the 2020–2021 COVID response when large numbers of citizens refused to follow

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state and local governmental guidance to get vaccinated. In August 2020, only 23 percent of Americans approved of the federal government’s pandemic management compared to 44 percent for the states’ and 48 percent for local government’s management (Kincaid and Leckrone 2022). Trust in federalism is more difficult to gage. Kam and Mikos (2007) found in an experiment where federalism arguments were highlighted that Americans do care about federalism, in addition to concern for individual issues. Rendleman and Rogowski (2022) developed a comprehensive preference measure of citizens’ preference for federalism using a battery of ten survey questions focusing on the relationship of national and state and local government. They find that federalism preferences are more deeply rooted in core political values than partisanship. Extreme Polarization Baumer and Gold (2010) assert that political polarization is the dominant theme of modern American politics. Polarization is also important to the operation of federalism since it pervades national, state, and increasingly local levels. Conlan (2021) concludes that vertical partisan polarization has replaced picket-fence federalism where administrators worked together with more states refusing federal dollars and even cutting off unemployment pay earlier than national programs, thus seemingly harming their own citizens to make a political point. Posner (2018, p. 89) argues that (t)he growing polarization among states and within the Congress has made it difficult to enact new national initiatives, thereby fortifying the long-noted power of states to serve as laboratories for policy reform. However, it has also arguably increased the leverage states have over national policy implementation, if for no other reason that states are more willing than ever before to opt out of national programs for ideological reasons.

Increasing Intergovernmental Conflict Some specialists suggest that federalism functions well when officials at the federal and subnational levels share common values and speak a similar vocabulary as a result of common training in a particular profession or discipline (Zahar 2013). While cooperation is clearly important, conflict is not absent in federations. In fact, federalism is sometimes proposed as a way to deal with group or ethnic conflicts. Canada, Belgium, and Spain have developed what is called asymmetric federalism in multinational states, thus using federalism as a solution to otherwise national unity problems (Agranoff 1999; Swenden 2002; Zuber 2011).

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A different type of conflict emerges when states and sometimes localities object to national actions, made possible by federalism. In the U.S., state pushbacks, particularly through the courts, are sometimes successful. In 2013, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott quipped: “I go into the office. I sue the federal government and I go home.” He filed more than 30 suits against the federal government, spending millions in taxpayer dollars (Swartz 2022). Within minutes of the signing of the Affordable Care Act, Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum had filed a case in federal court arguing the law was unconstitutional, joined by 12 other state attorney generals—Republicans except for the Louisiana Democratic attorney general. Fast forward two decades and Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis, whose presidential ambitions are widely evident, has sued the Democratic White House four times over immigration and vaccine policies in two years. In addition, he has urged state legislators to approve new penalties on contractors and companies that assist the Biden administration in relocating migrants from the Texas–Mexico border (Kennedy 2022). Sometimes governors resort to media events to make their point as when Governor Abbott of Texas loaded a bus of undocumented migrants at the Mexican border and drove them to Washington D.C., saying that “Texas should not have to bear the burden of the Biden administration’s failure to secure our borders.” In response, Democratic President Joe Biden’s press secretary quipped that “it was nice” that the state of Texas is helping processed migrants get to their final destinations as they await the outcome of their immigration proceedings (Shabad 2022). At what point does conflict among governments prove harmful to federalism? This is an important federalism question for the U.S. and other federations.

WHERE THIS LEADS US These challenges facing officials and scholars who study federalism will be examined in the following chapters that deal with political parties and federalism, particularly the currently highly extreme parties (Chapter 2); federalism in times of emergency (Chapter 3); intergovernmental relations including local government (Chapter 4); compliance and implementation and representation, including how to be representative when citizens don’t trust governments (Chapter 5); and fiscal federalism (Chapter 6). The final chapter ends with challenges and a pathway to relevance.

2. Political parties and federalism Political scientists have long atoned the importance of political parties, sometimes harkening back to John Stuart Mill’s (1859) comment that a healthy state of political life flows from two political parties. Nevertheless, skepticism has also prevailed since the earliest days of the U.S. when Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and George Washington all viewed them as desultory to the young republic. Thomas Jefferson (1789) expressed his distain most clearly, “If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.” Political parties also play an important role in the functioning of federal institutions (Ordeshook 1996; Garman, Haggard and Willis 2001; Samuels 2003; Filippov, Ordeshook and Shvetsova 2004; Wibbels 2005; Conlan 2021). Grodzins (1960) and Elazar (1987) recognized parties as one of the main guarantees of state and local influence in the federal system. Riker (1964) thought political parties were probably the most important factor in the operation of a federation since they are the principal intermediary organization through which bargaining occurs. Riker argued that central governments are only able to expand their regulatory power if the constituent governments are run by subordinate party colleagues who refrain from political or judicial resistance. Filippov, Ordeshook and Shvetsova (2004) posit that a properly designed political party system is the most durable source of federal stability but determining what that design is can be tricky across very different federal institutional designs. They note that the cultivation of labels by political elites and the ladders of advancement offered by party systems for elites are two important factors in the party system’s role in a stable federation. Integrated political parties are those where politicians at one level of government bear an organizational relationship to politicians at other levels. (Filippov, Ordeshook and Shvetsova [2004] provide a more detailed definition with seven criteria.) Rodden (2006) found that only if the federal government and lower-level units are governed by the same party do we see fiscal discipline in federal systems. However, Okpanachi (2019) provides evidence from Nigeria that counters this assertion. He finds that although the president and governors were in the same party for 16 years, their relationships were so divisive that it threatened the stability of not only the ruling governments but also the federation as a whole. Wibbels (2005) argues that what is needed is a system that is neither too centralized nor too decentralized. He points out that if regional voters reward regional incumbents for the performance of their national party, there is 16

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a democratic problem. Only if regional electorates are aware of the importance of subnational policy for the provision of national public goods (such as macroeconomic stability) and cast their subnational votes on such evaluations is the dilemma moderated. Even given the importance of political parties to federalism, scholarship in this area in the U.S. was largely descriptive and until recently was not particularly vibrant or abundant. In the 1980s Bibby et al. (1983) systematically examined the party system, noting that it was durable and dynamic. They also documented that state party organizations were stronger at the state level in 1980 than they were in the 1960s. Research began to highlight a trend toward centralization in the party system, beginning with the popularity of presidential primaries, changes in the Democratic nomination process, a refocus in the national Republican Party on gubernatorial and state legislative races, and a reduction in soft money dollars to state parties (Bibby 1979; Frymer and Yoon 2002; Jenkins and Roscoe 2014). Comparative scholarship has engaged more extensively on political parties, particularly related to their participation in the European Union (see for example McKay 2001). Congruence and discongruence are especially relevant to comparative political party research. Party system congruence/discongruence can be measured by a party’s electoral support or disconnect in voting in federal and regional elections and number of effective parties. Congruent party systems can signal a high degree of linkage of issues and party and voter behavior; incongruence can signal evolution of areas of competition and distinct issue spaces (Thorlakson 2005). Chhibber and Kollman (2004) link the integration of party systems to which level of government has the most economic and political power. Where the national government has more authority, candidates have an interest in coordinating to influence policies under a common party label and citizens are more likely to support that party. Their work was based on a longitudinal study of party systems in Canada, Great Britain, India, and the United States. This chapter will address the important role political parties play in the stability of federations, highlighting the centralization of parties which some scholars feel is beneficial and others feel is harmful to federations. Also considered will be the polarization of parties and how that affects federalism. Democracy and political parties will also be addressed. Interest groups play an essential role in federalism, but also are increasingly important to political parties—enhancing the trend toward centralization. The chapter ends with a discussion of possible additional scholarship.

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PARTIES AND FEDERALISM In one sense political parties can shape the nature of federalism. Parties are central actors in parliaments and governments and help define the institutional dynamics including strengthening decentralist tendencies or encouraging territorial conflict (Detterbeck and Renzsch 2015). In turn, federalism also shapes the nature of political parties. In looking at 27 parties in seven countries, Thorlakson (2009) found that clear patterns emerged between the form of federation and the design of party organizations. Decentralized federations with low coordination requirements between federal and state governments tended to have highly autonomous state parties; when resources were centralized and intergovernmental coordination requirements were high, state parties had low autonomy. Interestingly the method of power division had no effect on the influence of state parties on the national party. Centralization/Decentralization Of special interest in federalism theory is the centralization or decentralization of political party systems as defined in constitutions or statutes. Key elements determining this categorization include the degree of interdependencies of the parties, distribution of political competences and fiscal resources, the scope of legislative decentralization, and access of constituent units to federal decision-making (Detterbeck and Renzsch 2015). Parties can be integrated or bifurcated (Smiley 1980); their role differs based on whether the system is presidential or parliamentary. Also important is whether elections are concurrent or on different schedules (Tillin and Pereira 2017). Like other areas of federalism, differences between federations’ political systems are considerable (Detterbeck, Renzsch and Kincaid 2015). Whether party integration is beneficial or harmful to federalism is not fully clear. Riker (1964) thought decentralization was important and that centralization would embolden national officials to expand their regulatory power without pushback from subordinate party colleagues. Filippov, Ordeshook and Shvetsova (2004) see a more positive role of integration or centralization. They feel that the party creates relationships of mutual dependence among politicians in different units of government through two mechanisms: Party labels link electoral prospects of co-partisan politicians in different units of government and parties provide ladders of advancement for politicians. They think that the development of a notion of a shared fate and identity for state- and federal-level parties creates the incentive for parties at both levels to commit to mutual accommodation required to preserve the federal balance.

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Rodden’s (2006) work on centralization and deficits provides some support for the positive aspects of centralization. He found that overall deficits are lower in federal countries when larger proportions of the leaders of state and local government are members of the same party that controls the central government. Turgeon and Wallner (2013) look at Australia and Canada and find that leftist political parties played an important role in centralization (not decentralization of party as expected by Riker). Tillin and Pereira (2017) find that party centralization is more important than institutional factors in predicting social policy adoption in Brazil, and party decentralization negatively affected social policy adoption in India where states took credit and there was substantial variation across states. State and local political parties were once stronger in the U.S. than they are currently. State and local party systems began waning in the 1960s due to the erosion of patronage politics, weakening party loyalties among the public, and changes in party rules and campaign financing. In contrast, the formerly weak national party organizations have grown much stronger, raising larger sums of money, expanding staff and capacity, and recruiting, training, and providing a range of campaign services to candidates (Conlan 2021). However, others have come to different conclusions. A 2019 classification found the U.S. parties to be autonomous but also well integrated, strongly influencing the national party (Thorlakson 2009). They are also not programmatic (Bulman-Pozen 2014). While there has been some comparative research comparing the centralization of political party systems (see Thorlakson 2009 for example), much of the political party research across countries remains largely case-study based (Detterbeck, Renzsch and Kincaid 2015). Feeley and Rubin (2008, p. 367) substitute political identity for political party in the Riker model, arguing that “federalism must be understood as a matter of political identity”—meaning their commitments in the political realm, their sense of who they are and where they belong. While interesting, this notion of political identity is harder to quantify and is more difficult to link to institutional safeguards than political parties. Nationalization of Political Parties In recent years, a broader interest in the nationalization of parties has emerged. In nationalized party systems, narrow regional interests and identities are gradually supplanted by broader national platforms and the creation of a nationalized electorate, oriented toward national identities and policies. Nationalized politics can contribute to the development and maintenance of an integrated political community where voters make their decisions based on national-level considerations and use these regional elections as an opportunity

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to express support for or lodge protest votes against the federal governmental party. Thorlakson (2013) says this leads to vertical coordination. Citizens are increasingly inattentive to state and local politics and are primarily engaged with national and, above all, presidential politics (Hopkins 2018). Grumbach (2018) argues that over the past half century, Democratic and Republican parties have transformed from loose networks into more tightly knit partisan teams of activists and organizations who share policy agendas with a specific party. For example, pro-life advocates and evangelical churches linked with the Republican Party in the late 1970s in ways that made abortion a local and national issue. These groups and activists often have the resources and organizational reach to fund candidates and ply the airways with ads for their preferred candidates by highlighting national issues. Instead of having gubernatorial candidates outline issues of consequence to state officials, they often define themselves with national Congressional leaders and the U.S. President especially when they are in the opposite party on national issues such as inflation to immigration. This translates to the public as well. For example, Bishop (2018) found that individuals rely primarily on information drawn from national-level politics when asked to assess state parties. Another new development in nationalization in the U.S. is the reach of national officials into state elections. Riker and Bast (1969) posited that future presidents might become more involved in endorsing Congressional candidates, leading to a more centralized political system. Indeed, in 2022, former president Donald Trump was relentless in supporting Congressional candidates who questioned his 2020 presidential election loss and in opposing those who did not. Perhaps more meaningfully for federalism, he also endorsed many gubernatorial and other statewide candidates—with the endorsement based in large part by the candidates’ full-throated response to the 2020 election results. Even local non-partisan school board candidates in 2022 were asked by voters in candidate events to express their position on the 2020 presidential election.

PARTY POLARIZATION AND FEDERALISM Few would argue that U.S. partisanship has reached levels unimaginable just decades earlier. President Ronald Reagan was a dyed-in-the-wool Republican partisan, but he still valued those in the opposite party such as the Speaker of the House whom he met with frequently. Today’s partisanship has produced a Congress where gridlock is the most commonly used descriptive term and where civility seems a thing of the past. Not surprisingly this partisanship has filtered down to other elected officials and the citizenry. Local school board members and election workers and officials reported being threatened, harassed, and intimidated by those unhappy with the 2020 presidential election or

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school boards’ decisions protecting students during COVID-19 (Jenkins 2021; Bedekovics 2022). Roll-call voting in state legislatures has polarized in recent years (Shor and McCarty 2011) as have policy differences. Grumbach (2018) found that policy polarization increased dramatically after 2000 in 14 of 16 issue areas. Only education and criminal justice saw no increase in policy variation. Grumbach doesn’t examine the causes of this increased polarization, but it may flow from several possibilities: preferences of individual voters have diverged; national interest groups are more involved in state legislatures and are more partisan; and states are venues for advocates unable to achieve what they want in Washington. Party polarization clearly played a role in the public’s assessment of responsibilities during COVID-19. Jacobs (2021) found that political party—not seriousness of the epidemic in their state—best predicted survey respondents’ views on the distribution of governmental authority. This finding was in stark conflict with Malhotra’s (2008) conclusion that debates about governmental performance and responsibility had not been politicized following Hurricane Katrina. Further Jacobs found that the general evaluation of state and federal performance in COVID-19 varied in response to individuals’ reception of arguments from their fellow co-partisans. Competition between today’s ideologically distinct parties emboldens leaders at the state level, particularly if they are of the party not in control in Washington D.C. (Bulman-Pozen 2014). In the U.S. we see partisan state officials of the party not in control of Washington working individually and together to oppose national policies. For example, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, seemed to be gleeful in verbally jabbing the Democratic president on issues relating to immigration, COVID-19, and “medical authoritarianism” (Fineout 2022). He also pushed the state to take the federal government to court on the Biden administration’s failing to deport undocumented immigrants who committed crimes, mandating masks on aircraft and public transportation, and requiring vaccinations for workers in large companies. To some extent, partisan federalism turns Riker on its head. Instead of political parties being a safeguard for federalism, federalism is a safeguard for political parties—keeping state parties alive and vibrant when they do not control Washington.

INTEREST GROUPS AND POLITICAL PARTIES Like political parties, intergovernmental lobbying has seen a growing nationalization in the sense that groups at both national and state levels are responding to similar policy stimuli (Lowery and Gray 1994; Baumgartner, Gray and

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Lowery 2009). Another factor is the key role of state affiliates of national federations in linking state and national interests. Research on intergovernmental lobbying is sparse especially in the U.S. Specifically of interest are when do interests lobby both federal and state governments or when do they choose one over the other and how intensely. Holyoke (2003) takes issue with the typical resource exchange models that argue that interest groups will target all venues where they have exchange relationships. On the surface, this appears helpful in determining whether interests will lobby Washington or one (or some number) of the states. But Holyoke finds that lobbyists’ choice of different venues at the national level is also explained by pressure from membership, access the lobbyists has within a venue, and whether there are other interest groups concerned with the same issue attempting to influence the policy. Holyoke, Brown and Henig (2012) in a study of state and local venue shopping found that while ideological congruence between lawmakers and advocates matters, most advocates are drawn to any venue actively working on an issue. Baumgartner and Jones (1993) were among the first to examine intergovernmental lobbying—particularly why interest groups will sometimes work at one level and othertimes another. They noted that interest groups and policy entrepreneurs will shop around for a governmental venue that offers the highest return on investment. In short, if groups fail to achieve their goals at one level, they can try another more receptive venue (Constantelos 2018). Clearly this rational venue shopper model is much more nuanced, particularly in whether both levels of government can be targeted and recognizing the differences in states that can affect rational choice. In the U.S. the sheer number of states also complicates the venue shopping rationale. Partisanship is also a factor. Constantelos (2010) found that interest groups in Canada and the U.S. engaged in partisan shopping where they focused on the governmental level headed by the party most sympathetic to their priorities. Another problem with the venue shopping model according to Pralle (2003) is that decision-makers do not have the full knowledge necessary to make a rational choice and have both external and internal constraints on their actions. Thus, venue shopping is much more complicated than a simple rational approach—making answers to the question when and where groups will lobby more difficult to answer. Baumgartner, Gray and Lowery (2009) examine the impact of Congressional hearings on the mobilization of state interest groups in the same area by highlighting the importance of context—in this case whether the state has a professional legislature and whether the policy area has substantial federal involvement. They find that in professional legislatures and in policy areas where there is higher than average levels of federal involvement, Congressional hearings stimulate lobbying activity at the state level. They also find that there

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is a contemporaneous direct effect—that is that lobbyists at the state level and members of Congress both react to the same incentives for action. They conclude that “organized interests react to their environments and other levels of government and their activities are a large part of the environment” (p. 564). More work has been directed to lobbying across governments in the EU— called multi-level lobbying or forum shopping (Murphy and Kellow 2013). Research on multi-level lobbying goes back three decades when scholars began documenting the proliferation of lobbies engaged at the EU (Greenwood, Grote and Ronit 1992). This research has documented lobbying across subnational, national, and supranational channels to effect policy (Constantelos 1996; Beyers 2002; Tatham 2010). Beyers (2002) finds that interests strong at the national level also invest in European-level networking; they don’t bypass national governance to compensate for domestic weakness. He finds that most actors start at domestic level and then move on to the supra level, particularly specific interests that are strong in both levels. Tatham (2010) found that the more autonomous substate entities (state offices, networks of substate entities and other related groups) are the more likely they were to cooperate with, not bypass, supranational engagement. While interest groups have long been the subject of political science research, less attention has been paid to their role in state and federal political parties. In fact, as Bulman-Pozen (2014) notes, allied interest groups, issue activists, political action committees, super PACs, candidates’ personal campaign organizations, political consultants and the like are key parts of political parties and have actually replaced state and local government officials as the loci of party influence. The rise of allied interest groups has, in turn, made the parties more ideologically distinct, as these groups have pushed the parties to take positions on divisive issues, such as abortion, global warming, and gay rights that have shaped both national and state elections. These groups work across the nation to elect fellow partisans—and not necessarily through state partisans. As Washington becomes more deadlocked, states are the logical venue for these groups’ policies, especially those states led by their preferred party.

HOW ABOUT THE VOTERS? While early research highlighted the differentiated roles of federal and state officials—for example senators versus governors—and suggested that citizens knew generally the differences in roles of the federal and state governments, more recent elections strongly question this assumption. Split-ticket voting—where voters pick one party candidate at the federal level and another at the state level—has nearly disappeared—even in the highly contentious 2016 and 2020 elections (Rakich and Best 2020). Hopkins (2018) found

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that voting patterns in contemporary gubernatorial races are almost indistinguishable from those in presidential races. Other evidence is the decline in Congressional incumbency advantage, drop in “friends and neighbors” voting, and even a decline in presidential candidates’ home-state advantage. Rather, as Bulman-Pozen (2014, p. 1119) puts it, “Individuals may reasonably regard state elections as outlets for their national political preferences.” However, work in Spain counters this simplistic notion. Lineira (2016) found that regional considerations are a greater determinant of ballot choice than national ones although there were variations related to party at the national level and individual characteristics. Voters living in regions governed by the same party as the national incumbent were less aware of the regional government and gave more leverage to national politics when casting their regional ballots. Politically sophisticated voters were more aware of regional government and gave more weight to regional retrospective evaluations than non-sophisticated voters. The nationalization of voting is also evident at the local level where Tausanovitch and Warshaw (2014) found the same underlying values, attitudes and predispositions affect citizens’ positions on municipal policy questions and federal policy questions. Party preferences of voters often reflect the partisanship of party elites. In the month before the 2020 election, eight in ten registered voters in both parties said differences with the other party were about core American values. Nine in ten worried a victory by the other party would lead to lasting harm to the United States (Dimock and Wike 2020). Perhaps the good news is that this extreme partisanship is much greater than that found in other countries, in part, say Carothers and O’Donohue (2019), because U.S. parties are more aligned with ideology, race, and religion than other countries. In the past few years, U.S. political parties have become more engaged with hot-button, morality issues such as abortion, gay rights, immigration, and guns—often so much that they are out of step with the public as a whole. Public health—previously a relatively non-salient topic—also became a dividing point for both parties in the 2020 response to COVID-19. In the past, U.S. voters picked parties based on their issues; today’s voters support issues based on their party, often called their tribe. The U.S. has personalized political parties to such an extent that when “our” party loses the election, all parts of us feel like losers (Mason 2018).

DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL PARTIES The election of a black president in the U.S. in 2008 deepened racial, cultural, and ideological divides between the two parties, legitimized by the candidacy and election of Donald Trump as president in 2016. Abramowitz and McCoy

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(2019) argue that both affective polarization and negative partisanship are increasingly evident in U.S. politics. Affective polarization means that voters are divided not just by policy preferences but also by their feelings about the parties and their leaders. Negative partisanship is when voters dislike the opposing party and leaders more than they like their own party and its leaders. According to Grumbach (2022a), the Republican Party recognized that their economic arguments would not sway their potential voters in the way that social and cultural issues would. This began before the election of Trump who enhanced the rejection of democratic institutions and fine-tuned the underdog, our-country-is-slipping-away notion. Political scientists, columnists, and pundits have expressed grave concern about the Republican Party’s willingness, even encouragement, to question the results of an election—even before it occurs (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018; Mason 2018; Epstein 2022; Leonhardt 2022). While concerns over the viability of democracy are particularly acute in the United States, there is evidence that democracy is struggling across the world (Leonhardt 2022). Federalism should provide a bulwark for a strong democracy with decentralization of elections and political parties. But as discussed in this chapter, the centralization of parties and nationalization of party allegiances has undercut this safeguard as well.

WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE Political parties and federalism was a topic important to early scholars such as William Riker and remains highly relevant today. Federalism, Baumgarter and Jones (1993) note, adds great dynamism to American policy making—leading to more rapid change than would otherwise be possible. This dynamism is clearly an opportunity for more federalism scholarship. Some key questions for scholars are: • Is the partisan polarization of parties and its implication for centralization evident in other federations? Is nationalization evident there as well? Obviously more work needs to be done on the impact of polarization and nationalization on U.S. federalism as well. • What is the role of interest groups in state and national parties? Are nationalized and highly ideological interest groups displacing state political parties or redefining them? What are the informal aspects of intergovernmental lobbying and how successful are they? • Are parties propping up federalism or is federalism saving parties? In addition, U.S. scholars can build on comparative research concerning diffuse vs. concentrated issues, types of issues, and bypassing state parties.

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Comparative scholars can build on U.S. scholarship on intergovernmental interest group linkages (see Baumgartner, Gray and Lowery 2009) and the nationalization of political parties.

3. Federalism in times of crisis Shared power is the essence of federalism, but it can and often does lead to confusion in disasters, especially those that occur quickly. States carry most of the burden for dealing with emergencies and natural disasters ranging from hurricanes to nuclear plant scares, from fires, floods, and droughts to toxic releases in drinking water. States also have the primary responsibility for responding with public health threats under a broad police power that the federal government was never given (Sullum 2020). However, in both normal and extraordinary circumstances, the federal government provides important backup, if not leadership, in national emergencies. The primary services are provided by localities or states with federal funding, technical assistance, and the invoking of federal law to provide equipment or manufacturing assistance. A good public health example is the role of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that is tasked with data collection, surveillance, and hard science. Yet the CDC cannot enforce these measures but must rely on states for implementation. States also provide the on-the-ground data that the CDC relies on to make its decisions. This level of cooperation looks good on paper but can be difficult to implement. One downside is the blame game. In 2005, the three levels of government each blamed each other for mistakes responding to Hurricane Katrina which caused 1,800 deaths and long-term destruction. Maestas et al. (2008) found that the blame game played by officials during Katrina was successful—particularly when these officials were of the citizens’ political party. They note that federalism provides avenues for blame shifts that make it easier for political actors to get off the political hook. Similarly, in responding to a lead-in-water crisis in Michigan, officials at local, state, and federal levels pointed fingers at other governmental officials as a way of obfuscating their own mistakes, what Kettl (2020) called finger-pointing federalism. During the COVID-19 crisis and aftermath, Anthony Fauci, the head of the nation’s prestigious allergy and infectious disease office for nearly four decades, was often the face of blame from Republican governors who argued the federal government was overreaching and overestimating the seriousness of COVID-19. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, widely viewed as having presidential ambitions, sold drink koozies and T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan, “Don’t Fauci My Florida” even as the state saw some of the 27

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highest COVID-19 hospitalizations, new infections, and deaths in the country (Knowles 2021). He later intoned that “someone needs to grab that little elf (Fauci) and chuck him across the Potomac” (Galbraith 2022). Shifting the blame from Tallahassee to Fauci’s office was seamless—and highly effective as the governor saw his national poll numbers rising. Rodden (2021) concluded that the polarization plus blame-casting inherent in federalism were key problems in the U.S. COVID-19 response. Timing can also be important. Sometimes governmental actions change as the crisis mitigates. At least initially, in the 2008–2009 global economic crisis, the early actions in the U.S. were highly cooperative with national policy makers working in effective partnerships with their state and local counterparts to cope with the enormous fiscal and economic stress (Posner and Conlan 2017). The U.S. experience was also evident in other countries where a consistent element in countries with successful experiences dealing with the economic crisis was the strong role taken by the national governments in economic management combined with unprecedented cooperation from subnational governments (Eccleston, Krever and Mellor 2017). However, as the economic stress lessened in the United States, partisan politics emerged with some Republican states opting out of major federal grant programs and refusing to extend unemployment benefits paid for by the federal government headed by a Democratic president. The result was a growing fiscal policy divergence among the states as Republican state legislatures cut taxes and reduced spending while others expanded their programs of assistance to needy constituents. This chapter will focus on the 2020–22 COVID experience in federal countries. This global pandemic challenged governments at all levels to act quickly and effectively to protect their citizens from disasters. As might be expected, the responses varied enormously with some countries acting responsibly and cooperatively and others failing to make and implement decisions that could have alleviated at least some deaths and disruption. The chapter discusses the U.S. experience which highlighted in stark terms the advantages—and disadvantages—of the responses in a federation. It then outlines responses of other federal countries and draws some conclusions about what we’ve learned.

FEDERALISM AND COVID-19—U.S. COVID-19 far outpaced earlier emergencies in the U.S. and around the world in severity and provided a case study for governmental disassociation—at least at the national level. Federalism was front and center of responses and highlighted both its positive and negative aspects. In 2020, the federal government abdicated much of its responsibility for COVID response with President Trump arguing that the role of the national

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government was to serve as a backup to states and local government in the weeks after the initial national shutdown (Karch 2020). Later, he told governors, “You are all very capable people. I think in all cases, very capable people. And you’re going to be calling your own shots” (Liptak, Holmes and Nobles 2020). In December 2020, journalists declared that “the surging coronavirus finds a federal leadership vacuum” (Stolberg et al. 2020). As Cameron (2021, p. 266) put it, “Trump inadvertently activated American federalism by his conduct.” In the absence of leadership from Washington, state governors stepped up to make the key decisions including obtaining critical supplies. Cameron continued, “The lesson from this (U.S.) experience is that federalism does matter in a public health crisis, but that states cannot do their job effectively if Washington does not play its part.” Rozell and Wilcox (2021) compared the U.S. and three other federal countries—Canada, Germany, and Australia—and concluded that the problems in the U.S. were not due to federalism but rather presidential leadership. The problem was, however, exacerbated by the fragmentation of the U.S. public health system. Unlike many other countries with more vertically organized health systems, public health functions in the U.S. are shared among federal agencies, states, counties, and cities. Many federal policies are voluntary in nature, and state policies vary enormously from state to state. The bulk of operational responsibilities are carried out by 2,459 local health departments (National Academy of Public Administration 2022). The patchwork of responsibilities and policies caused inconsistencies, inefficiencies, inequities, ineffectiveness, and confusion in dealing with one of the most dangerous health crises in a century. County officials were especially squeezed. As the government with the primary responsibility for public health, they found themselves in a highly uncomfortable hot-seat as political rhetoric made their jobs harder than it already was when wearing masks, stay-at-home protocols, and vaccine distribution became subjects of skepticism, if not downright public opposition. County officials were seldom at the table when decisions were made and even saw their authority limited in over half of the states (Smith 2021). Some states, particularly those hit first by the pandemic, acted quickly to close schools and universities, restaurants and bars, retail outlets, public transit, public performances, and even beaches. Some states, such as New York and New Jersey, mandated masks for adults and children when out in public. Other states, such as Texas and Florida, more aligned with the White House’s position that COVID-19 was simply another virus, opened up their states quickly and did not mandate masks in public (National Academy of Public Administration 2022). The federal non-action led to competition and confusion when President Trump resisted using federal powers to address problems including the

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dwindling supply of ventilators, personal protective equipment, and testing— explaining that the federal government is not a “shipping clerk” as states competed with each other to get protective equipment and tests (Forgey 2020). One example was Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s purchase of 500,000 coronavirus tests from South Korea. Hogan, a Republican, noted that “The Administration made it clear over and over again they want states to take the lead and we have to go out and do it ourselves. So that’s exactly what we did” (Wood and Broadwater 2020). The administration did relax federal regulations to allow Medicare telehealth visits, eased hospital hiring of health workers, and decreased paperwork for federal health care programs (Kincaid and Leckrone 2020). More importantly, it partnered with drug developers and manufacturers to accelerate vaccine development. Trump held more than 90 conference calls with state, local, and tribal leaders from late January through March 31, 2020, but did not negotiate a reciprocally cooperative relationship. He blamed governors and dealt with them bilaterally, treating federal aid as personal favors (Kincaid and Leckrone 2020). Bowling, Fisk and Morris (2020) use the term transactional federalism to describe the Trump administration’s intergovernmental response to COVID-19 where federal decisions were made based on rewards and punishments targeted to subnational officials and market strategies were dominant. After blaming governors for a shortage of tests then telling them to go out and get their own, the administration seized some of the tests and equipment the states procured and distributed them with a political calculation in a process marked by a total lack of transparency (Rozell and Wilcox 2021). In another example, the Trump administration used the Stafford Act to provide states with disaster relief funds, but the president did not take executive action to waive the substantial 25 percent cost-sharing requirement to obtain the funds. Instead, he suggested that governors could use a portion of their Congressionally provided Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) funding to make up the differences (Lecours et al. 2021). Then the administration determined that personal protective equipment and disinfectants were no longer reimbursable under the Stafford Act. By the end of March 2020, nearly every state had shut down by declaring a state of emergency, issuing stay-at-home orders, and closing businesses and schools. The President was not supportive, saying that the country should not shut down for the flu (Artiles, Gandur and Driscoll 2021). The presidential dismissal wasn’t unique at the time. In April 2020, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suggested that the states pursue bankruptcy, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) a politically powerful national association of conservative state legislators, organized an effort where state legislators were encouraged to say “no thanks” to federal “bailouts” (American Legislative Exchange Council 2020).

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Diverse State Actions Politics was important at the state level as well. Adolph et al. (2021) looked at the timing of governors’ shutdown actions and found that partisanship was paramount. Republican governors were two days slower to enact emergency measures on meetings, schools, and public events than their Democratic counterparts. Politics also played out as governors and legislators of different parties fought for their preferred policies in the courtroom. Sometimes this led to intrastate political warfare with Republican governors clashing with Democratic mayors and governors fighting their legislatures run by those of the opposite party over policies to protect citizens or embrace the economy. The Republican legislatures of Michigan and Wisconsin brought successful suits against their Democratic governors’ extension of the stay-at-home-orders (and mask mandates in the case of Michigan). Legislatures in Kentucky and a few other states limited the scope and timing of governors’ emergency orders. The Kentucky law had an additional kicker: allowing businesses to comply with either the governor’s orders or CDC guidance, whichever was less restrictive (Latek 2022). Hundreds of cases were filed by individuals and groups against state COVID restrictions. Republicans in Ohio fought each other: the legislature passed a law stripping the Republican governor and his health director of the authority to issue emergency health orders (Pelzer 2020). Perhaps even more important was the variation in responses that is the price of federalism. Most states—but not all—issued state mask mandates (ten did not). Similar differences were evident in the closing of restaurants and public places, definitions of essential businesses, closure of public schools, and stay-at-home orders. A number of Republican governors did join Democratic governors in issuing statewide mask mandates, but only a few and only for a short period of time. Ironically, given the differing state responses, it was unclear how much “learning” there was across the states. Rather, Daguerre and Conlan (2020, p. 287) summarize the situation as “incoherent and ineffective federal policies, diverse and conflicting state responses, and fractious intergovernmental relationships.” However, there were examples where states worked together in horizontal federalism to share information and obtain supplies. Governors in the Northeast and Northwest—primarily Democratic governors—formed loose groups, vowing to cooperate on some pandemic actions (Kincaid and Leckrone 2020). As the months of the pandemic rolled on, more differences emerged with some states such as Florida opening back up quickly while other states were more cautious. When the second wave hit in Fall 2020, some states quickly imposed public health restrictions and again closed down businesses while others did not. Since local governments were also issuing public health orders,

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states had to work with them—or against them. Although local governments sometimes provided the earliest response to the pandemic, when the states stepped in, they did so with gusto. State and Local Differences Georgia Governor Brian Kemp initially allowed local officials to close parks and beaches, ban large gatherings, and implement night-time curfews until he changed his mind when he began reopening the state in early April 2020 (Nadler and Amy 2020). In mid-July when Georgia, like many other states, saw a surge in new COVID-19 cases, the governor strongly encouraged citizens to wear masks but signed an executive order explicitly banning cities from enacting their own mask mandates. When the mayor of Atlanta ignored him, he took her to court, requesting an injunction barring the mayor from enforcing the city’s ordinance or speaking to the media about her authority to do so (Flynn 2020). A few weeks later, the governor signed an executive order allowing local governments to enact mask requirements with some additional requirements (Associated Press 2020). Two South Carolina cities, Charleston and Columbia, issued stay-at-home orders to slow the spread of the virus in late March 2020. The South Carolina attorney general issued an opinion that only the governor, not cities or counties, can order citizens to stay at home during the emergency. The cities had argued that their actions did not contradict the governor’s actions because he had not acted (Trainor 2020). Similarly, Phoenix and Tucson ordered the closure of bars and restaurants before a statewide mandate was implemented. But when the state did act, it constrained local action by forbidding counties and municipalities from making rules or regulations that conflicted with the governor’s order (Polletta and Oxford 2020). Arizona Governor Ducey explained his actions this way, “I will continue to believe that government closest to the people is best—except in a global pandemic.” The mayor of Houston described the situation from the cities’ view: “The state is driving the car. We are the passengers” (Abrahams 2020). Governors Step Up The quick hand-off from federal to state responsibility and the ability of most governors to take unilateral action led to a strengthening of the governors’ roles. As journalist Dan Balz (2020) put it, “As Washington has stumbled, governors of both parties have acted to fill the void. This spring, the balance of power has been flipped, with states forced to compensate for failings at the national level.” Two years later the governors were still the leaders and federalism was still important. One journalist put it this way, “The pandemic has

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given Americans a refresher course in federalism, reminding us of the central importance of governors…” (Knox 2022). Some governors took full advantage of the pandemic to assume more power. Texas Governor Greg Abbott extended the state’s disaster declaration through executive orders over two and a half years after the outbreak of COVID-19 in the state—giving him the ability to make spending and public health decisions quickly and decisively. Following COVID, he also pushed through the legislature measures expanding his line-item veto over the budget, giving him more power to spend money when the legislature is not in session, and having his office vet rules agencies propose (Garrett 2022). Vaccine Rollout When COVID-19 vaccines became available in December 2020, the Trump administration left to the states distribution decisions such as which groups to prioritize for vaccination, the extent of validation of eligibility, and where shots were available. Again, state approaches varied leading to inconsistent access across the country. While COVID-19 vaccines were expeditiously developed, getting the vaccines out to the states proved slow as the Trump administration wound down. Instead of the 100 million doses of vaccine the administration’s Operation Warp Speed promised would be available by the end of 2020, the actual number provided was 2.6 million doses. The administration blamed the states for the slow rollout (Jha 2020). States blamed poor guidance from the federal government. Funding for the vaccine rollout was provided in December 2020 that was helpful to fiscally stretched state and local public health agencies which were also dealing with testing, contract tracing, disease control, and other aspects of the COVID response. In the transition period, the CDC developed recommendations on who should get vaccines first, including front-line workers with grocery store employees, transit staffers and other front-line workers and people 75 years and older following in the second tier. Two Republican governors (FL and TX) balked—asking front-line workers to wait while the elderly population got the first shots. Other states also prioritized those 65 and older (Stanley-Becker 2020). The incoming Biden administration vowed to set up a coherent vaccine rollout, and the states were eager partners in the early months. However, social media and some Republican officials often shared misinformation about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines—leading to high percentages of non-vaccinated citizens. When the Biden administration put in place vaccination requirements for staff of hospitals receiving federal funding and large businesses, a dozen states with Republican governors pushed back in court,

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arguing the requirement was an overstep of federal authority. They got an early victory when a federal appeals panel suspended the Biden administration’s new vaccine requirement for private companies, noting possible “grave statutory and constitutional issues with the mandate” (Rosenberg 2021). Federalism at Fault? As might be expected, federalism has come under criticism for state and local activities in response to COVID-19. For example, Kettl (2021) concluded that “(f)ederalism as practiced in the United States has been dangerous to our health.” Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease expert who was the most highly visible advisor in both the Trump and Biden administrations, told a reporter that federalism had proven to be “a major weakness in our response” (Sullum 2020). The reason? It was the considerable disparities among states’ responses. However, there was disagreement about this conclusion. While court cases were filed and verbal sparring aired in the media between federal, state, and local officials, there were also many instances where states and localities shared power and worked cooperatively. Municipalities partnered with businesses and nonprofits to provide meals to the poor; localities helped citizens avoid utility disruptions and housing evictions; big cities and states provided rent relief, enacted foreclosure moratoria, and offered tax relief (Kincaid and Leckrone 2022). Kincaid and Leckrone (2020) argue that it was not federalism at fault in the U.S. response to COVID-19, but the partisan fractures and presidential and gubernatorial preferences that blocked a cooperative federalism response. Cigler (2021) agrees that it was not federalism but rather the president who had the (statutory) authority to act and did not. She says that the national government is not only responsible for coordinating a comprehensive and timely national response to a catastrophic event, but it also has primary responsibility for what the emergency management community labels critical functions. She called COVID-19 the stress test of federalism. While there were many examples of partisan federalism where governors and presidents of different parties were engaged in verbal warfare (Trump and Democratic governors; Biden and DeSantis), there were also examples where the interests of governors and presidents in the same party diverged. One case was as the country began to recover from a new strain of the virus in early 2022. Governors of Democratic states including New York and California put a partial end to mask mandates while the Democratic administration in Washington urged continued masking in areas of high and substantial transmission. The governors were reflecting the desires of their constituents who were COVID-fatigued and needed to move on; the administration was

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following the Centers for Disease Control’s more cautious reminder that the pandemic was far from over (Nirappil and Pager 2022). Partisanship and Blame-casting But it was the partisanship and blame-casting to those officials of the opposite party that most characterized the COVID-19 intergovernmental response. Not surprisingly, partisanship (and the spread of misinformation that accompanied it) led to public skepticism of the efficacy of governmental responses— particularly evident in the uptake of COVID-19 shots. In the United States, the range of states’ populations fully vaccinated was from 50.5 percent in Wyoming to 77.6 percent in Massachusetts. The U.S. overall vaccination rate was 64.8 percent (Kaiser Family Foundation 2022). Goldstein and Wiedemann (2022) examined the impact of partisanship and trust on individuals’ compliance with COVID-19 orders. They found that both played a role on whether citizens would comply with stay-at-home orders (in a novel approach, they measured how much individuals moved on a daily basis following stay-at-home orders). They found that Democratic-leaning counties complied with the order at significantly higher rates than Republican-leaning counties but that when there were Republican governors, the compliance gap shrank. The gap between the two types of counties increased when Republican counties had higher levels of social capital. Finally, it is interesting to note that in the U.S. and at least in one European regional case, citizens did not hold their incumbents accountable for deaths from COVID-19 (Beramendi and Rodden 2022). In democratic societies (as opposed to nondemocratic ones) citizens might well tolerate more deaths to preserve their rights to more freely pursue economic opportunities. Indeed, this very issue of personal rights vs. public health did play out in states led by Republican governors who often bragged about opening up their states (while ignoring the deaths amassed in doing so). Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis was a case in point, encouraging supporters to don T-shirts saying “Freedom has a home here” during events where he lambasted the federal government for mandates on masks, social distancing, and vaccines. Polarization played an important role in understanding why voters failed to hold incumbents accountable; voters clearly valued ideology above any retrospective evaluations of candidates of their party. In the 2022 midterm elections, responses to COVID took a back seat to economic and hot-button issues such as abortion and immigration.

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Data Collection: A Case Study in Federalism During the COVID crisis in the U.S., accurate, timely data were prized by policy makers and followed closely by citizens, often isolated in their homes. Yet even rather mundane data collection became contentious with politicians and experts questioning and even ignoring data that should have helped, not caused, more dissension. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has long been the designated repository of data provided by state and local public health agencies. Yet data problems emerged early in 2020 in large part because the data provided by states and localities were voluntary and, in the case of the new virus, inconsistent. States used a variety of approaches to determine the disease prevalence, including contact tracing, lab reports, and individual reporting. Hospitals reported their own data to the states which included the number of COVID-19 patients in the hospital and in the ICU, percentages of hospital beds going to COVID-19 patients, and the number of ventilators in use. The data were often unverified and not submitted on a timely basis, in part because local health departments across the country have traditionally been underfunded and the methods they use to study disease outbreaks are outdated. The CDC did a poor job of sharing the guidance flowing from the science and the data and even flip-flopped on important advice such as wearing masks—at first not recognizing the importance before then strongly encouraging masks (Kirlin 2020). Stepping in to provide data were universities, especially Johns Hopkins University, and newspapers including The New York Times which started to collect its own data in late January 2020. The data were important for several reasons. First, policy makers needed up-to-date, accurate information to make decisions related to closing down businesses and mandating citizens to stay at home. Once those decisions were made, the data were necessary in reopening their states; many states used regional- and county-level data to phase in and out restrictions on citizens. Second, the disease did not affect citizens uniformly across states. Thus, with data, states could make targeted decisions, shutting down the parts of the state that were most at risk, but allowing areas with few problems to continue to operate. Third, the public was very engaged in understanding the scope and depth of the pandemic and turned initially to government for this information. In addition to sheer numbers, citizens sought information on their own communities, institutions like nursing homes, and racial and ethnic impacts. As might be expected, there were large variations in data collection efforts among the states in part due to their size and wealth and in part due to politics. Some governors simply didn’t want to know or trust the data. California was one of the states with a highly developed data system that quickly pivoted to deal with COVID-19. In Florida, early in the pandemic, a whistleblower

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reported that data were manipulated to make things look better. She was fired, then charged with a criminal felony by allegedly accessing the state computer system to send a plea for Department of Health workers to speak up before more people died. The case engendered much publicity and pushback from the governor’s office (Lati 2020). In mid-2022 variations continued with a handful of states continuing to report daily COVID figures and others reverting to reports every two weeks. Problems with data collection were not unique to the U.S. Several countries including Italy, Spain, and Switzerland had no coordinated system of data collection (Steytler 2021a).

COVID-19 IN OTHER FEDERAL COUNTRIES The U.S. case is interesting and instructive, but the question remains how many of the problems were from federalism and how many from other U.S. issues—notably partisan tribalism and haphazard presidential leadership. If other factors were so important, can we really explain how much of countries’ responses were from the institution of federalism? One additional question is: are there long-term consequences for federalism from the pandemic? In most federal countries, health care is the responsibility of subnational governments. Even where health care is a concurrent power (Ethiopia, Brazil, and Mexico, for example), subnational governments (both states and localities) are crucial players on the front-lines of pandemic management such as provision of clinical services, enforcement of public health measures, and lockdown (Chattopadhyay and Knupling 2021). In Australia, conservative governments have reduced the federal capacity to deliver services due to privatization and outsourcing. The states were not as successful at offloading responsibilities and thus were in a stronger position to deal with COVID-19. Brett (2021) observed that as Australian states “have become more effective in these regards (responsibilities including health, policing and emergency services), and the federal government less so, people have been drawn back into their orbit.” Emergency management is also primarily the responsibility of subnational governments in some federations (Steytler 2021a). In Australia, responsibility for emergency management relies primarily with the states which operate public hospitals, public schools, the police, and emergency services agencies. States have their own public health and emergency management acts (Fenna 2021). However, in Switzerland the national government has emergency power regarding communicable diseases. During COVID-19, it imposed country-wide mandates, some of which were coordinated with cantons which could not deviate from the national orders (Schnabel and Hegele 2021). The German constitution allows the federal government to pass legislation regulating the response to an epidemic or pandemic. In Spain and South Africa,

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the national government managed the crisis, only ceding some power in later months of the pandemic, in the case of Spain (Chattopadhyay and Knupling 2021). Not surprisingly, the relationships among governments in federations changed over time—particularly as the first phase of shutdowns and closing national borders was replaced by the second phase of reopening. For a number of federations, the national government played the most important role in the early months, followed by a stronger state role when decisions were made balancing the economic problems caused by shutdowns and the public health concerns about reopening. Germany was an exception where local governments were the first to lock down, followed by a national effort. A few months into the pandemic, impacts on the economy began to play a role and some states and localities began to open up with a great deal of variation across the country. The third stage—distributing vaccines—has generally involved a sharing of responsibility with the national governments certifying and securing vaccine supplies from national and global suppliers and subnational governments overseeing the process of delivering shots to the population. One of the important advantages of federalism during the pandemic was the ability of states or provinces to deal with their responses in the way preferred by their citizenry. For example, four states closed their borders in Australia but two did not. Germany also saw policy variations across the lander where only one lander declared a state of emergency, Canada also saw differential responses based on the needs of its provinces. Steytler (2021a) called this a “traffic light” system used in most federal countries where localities were coded by infection level, allowing a differential approach to reopening. As might be expected, courts played a role in supporting, or overturning, national actions in Germany, Switzerland, and the United States. Courts also were asked to determine the legality of local governmental actions that defied national directives. The courts in Germany generally sided with government control over issues related to individual personal freedom. Exceptions were in Saarland where the constitutional court ruled against the state’s physical distancing measures as being too restrictive and the German Supreme Court holding that the right of assembly cannot be categorically suspended by the government but proposals must be reviewed on a case-by-case basis (Siewert et al. 2020). Intergovernmental Cooperation Cooperation was a major issue in most federations. For example, Australian and Canadian federal and state officials generally worked together using their intergovernmental councils. Although Australia did have some intergovernmental tensions and blame-casting, the three-step framework developed by

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the newly formed National Council helped limit conflict and provided considerable leverage for states—with states prevailing in contests with the federal government more than in usual interactions (Lecours et al. 2021). Canada’s response was led by provincial and territorial governments which introduced measures under their emergency acts. According to Beland et al. (2021), both provincial and national governments set up income safety nets and provided aid to businesses. Steytler (2021a) concluded a study of nine federations during COVID-19 by saying that success stories were those where the federal government and the states enjoyed close working relationships. He gave as examples Australia, Canada, and Germany. Federations with well-established intergovernmental forums had an advantage (Saunders 2021) since federations without these forums had no easy way to bring the heads of government together. In some cases weak bodies were activated or reactivated (Italy and Belgium). However, Schnabel and Hegele (2021) concluded, in a study of four countries, that the existence of strong intergovernmental councils did not lead to closer intergovernmental coordination. Germany was also high on coordination with lander leaders and the Chancellor meeting on a regular basis to negotiate common guidelines (Kincaid and Leckrone 2020). In Brazil, as in the United States, the governors stepped in when the national government faltered. Greer et al. (2020) noted that Brazilian governors’ disputes with President Bolsonaro over physical distancing appear to have unified voters around governors, making them more popular while Bolsonaro’s popularity fell. What comparative studies of the governmental response to COVID-19 have generally shown is the importance of intergovernmental coordination in the management of the crisis—in both traditional federations and those that are almost unitary. Some federations were center-dominated (Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, India, Austria, and Russia); others were dualistic (U.S., Canada, and Australia). In a number of countries, governments worked closely to deal with problems. For example, the German government did not invoke emergency powers but worked with 16 heads of lander to negotiate a shared set of guidelines. Germany had broad support from the public and both federal and state governments largely received high grades for their actions (Siewert et al. 2020). In Argentina the president consulted with the governors to develop measures and diagnostic capabilities and establish criteria for distributing scarce medical equipment and supplies. The federal government also implemented a series of measures to backstop the economy and support the provinces. In India, there was an unprecedented level of intergovernmental interaction by the first ministers, leading the prime minister to admit that without the coor-

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dination and cooperation between various levels of government, containment would not have been possible (Saxena 2020). Horizontal cooperation was also key in the success of some countries’ responses. In Argentina, city and provincial governments worked together on public health measures and some provinces shared medical resources with other provinces (Bianchi 2021). In India, some states worked closely with local governments to provide locally appropriate responses (Saxena 2020). Intergovernmental Conflict But the U.S. was not the only federation where intergovernmental competition, not cooperation, prevailed. In early 2020, passengers infected with COVID-19 returning from an international cruise were allowed to leave the ship in Sydney and travel to other parts of Australia. At issue was whether the fault was that of the commonwealth or the state of New South Wales. An official inquiry concluded that the responsibility lay with New South Wales, but the commissioner recommended that both federal and state officials learn more about their own and the other level’s roles and responsibilities and develop more formal protocols for interaction and communication (Saunders 2021). In Mexico, the federal government was quiescent while states began to tackle the health care crisis. When the federal government did declare a health emergency, there was no binding legislation to be enforced by states who continued to adopt their own provisions, some with outright opposition to federal policies. In September 2021, ten governors left the National Conference of Governors to reflect their dissatisfaction with national policies responding to the pandemic (Flamand, Naine and Olmeda 2021). Belgium and Brazil also saw different levels of government pursing their own policies to manage the crisis. In Ethiopia, the deterioration of relations between the federal government and one of its states led to armed confrontation and a humanitarian crisis (Chattopadhyay and Knupling 2021). Unclear division of power, lack of coordination, uneven capacity, dominance of political/party interests, and corruption sometimes caused problems (Steytler 2021a). Federal countries also saw an increase in executive powers in both presidential and parliamentary systems. Quick and decisive action was mandatory, and this fell to the presidents and governors. However, the implementation of these measures was left to states, especially early in the pandemic (Steytler 2021a). In a number of countries including Australia, Brazil, India, and Spain, executive actions around the imposition of COVID-19 restrictions were challenged in court. In most cases, courts found in favor of decisions made by executives at the federal and constituent unit levels (Chattopadhyay and Knupling 2021).

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Role of Local Governments Local governments played a valuable role in the pandemic response of most federations, even those that are highly centralized. While that role was largely a supportive one—testing, contract tracing, public education, food distribution and enforcement of restrictions, and assisting vulnerable citizens—localities were able to meet their communities’ needs. Their targeted actions help countries avoid blanket lockdowns. Chattopadhyay and Knupling (2021) found that federal and regional governments in Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Mexico, India, Italy, and Spain relied on local government to be proactive in implementing more stringent measures than those mandated by higher-order governments when local conditions demanded more stringent policies. However, sometimes the national government stepped in when local governments refused to act, particularly at the beginning of the pandemic as when the Austrian government forced a ski area to quarantine visitors (Steytler 2021a). Cross-country Findings One conclusion from a study of 18 federations during COVID was that intergovernmental relations cannot be overly top down (Saunders 2021). Central leadership is useful and may be necessary, Saunders said, but it should be understood as central leadership in a federation. Saunders also concluded that relationships don’t have to be firm to be effective and that capacity is key. Transparency and accountability are also important to intergovernmental relations—citizens and officials need to know who does what—sometimes obfuscated in joint decision-making from intergovernmental councils. Bennouna et al. (2021) found that political factors—political parties, presidential power, and governors’ coalitions—were drivers of state-level variations in COVID social distancing policies in three presidential federations. Cameron (2021) concluded that it was leadership and good governance that were more important than the structure of government in determining the success of the countries’ responses in OCED countries. In a study of 24 federal countries, Chattopadhyay and Knupling (2021) concluded that having robust mechanisms for intergovernmental coordination and cooperation was key to successful management of the pandemic. Capacity was an important factor determining whether the federation’s efforts were successful or not (defined as percentage of deaths). As in the U.S., states and especially local governments often lacked money, staffing, and experience to act quickly and responsibly. Osoro (2021) found that even though Kenya had an elaborate system of horizontal and vertical intergovern-

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mental councils, the lack of resources at the county level undercut the success of governmental response. The challenges presented by the lack of capacity at subnational levels of government in responding to the pandemic were also experienced in South Africa, Nigeria, and Italy (Saunders 2021). Partisan polarization also played a role in the implementation of COVID-19 policies—and in deaths from the disease. In Bolivia, a weakened right-wing national government initially instituted strict policy but then delegated much of the containment policy to local governments. Velasco-Guachalla et al. (2022) found that partisan dynamics then played a role in the subnational response. In departments (the largest subnational unit in Bolivian government, similar to states) that opposed the Bolivian president, policies were more likely to deviate from national policies and deaths increased. Citizens too responded politically, with citizens in departments aligned with the president complying with policy more fully than those in departments that opposed the president. Even in unitary countries, a variety of governments played a role in fighting the 2020–21 pandemic. But as Cameron (2021) found, whether that government was formally a federation was not a predictor of successful outcomes. Some federal countries such as Australia, Canada, and Germany could be judged to be successful in terms of cases and death rates. Others, such as Switzerland, the United States, and Belgium, saw very high numbers of cases and deaths, even controlling for population size. In his analysis of 35 OCED countries, Cameron concluded that strong political leadership and good government were the key predictors of successful pandemic performance, whatever the form of government.

WHAT WAS LEARNED? We can answer this question two ways—are governments learning from their mistakes so that any future disasters might be more effectively handled? And what did we learn as scholars from research conducted on governmental actions to COVID-19? First, will the responses to the pandemic provide the impetus for institutional change? The short answer is: probably not. In the U.S. there seems to be no interest in increasing the capacity of local governments or in clarifying governmental roles. Public health remains underfunded and largely ignored. In the 2022 midterm (non-presidential) elections, COVID-19 responses or public health were not evident in campaign ads and interviews and inflation, government leadership (i.e. President Biden or former President Trump), the economy, and abortion were the most important problems cited by respondents to the Gallup Organization in early August 2022 (Newport 2022). More damning perhaps is that in a survey asking voters what health issues motivated them to vote, abortion access and the cost of prescription drugs were the issues

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voters cited—not public health or dealing with a future pandemic (Lopez et al. 2022). In other federations, there have been some calls for more local fiscal independence following COVID-19, but to date there are no major reforms reported (Steytler 2021a). Vampa (2021) found that there was little evidence in the five countries he analyzed of any shifts in increased cooperation and coordination following the pandemic. Braun and Trein (2013, p. 360) similarly found that there were no “spectacular turnarounds” in 11 federal states confronted with economic crisis in 2007–8. For scholars, the pandemic led to dozens of articles, special issues, and books on the governmental responses of federal (and nonfederal) countries. They found that governance and political leadership, partisanship, cooperation, and resources were predictors of policy effectiveness (cases and death rates for cross-country comparisons and perceived effectiveness in single-state case studies). There were fewer comparisons of federal and nonfederal countries. What was not analyzed? How prevalent and how successful was blame-casting during COVID-19? We know this was an issue in earlier emergencies such as Hurricane Katrina in the U.S. It would be enlightening to examine blame-casting in federations during a global pandemic. Was it used and how successfully did the public buy the arguments? Public opinion about governmental actions during the pandemic is another area of potential research. Apart from blame-casting, which governments did citizens hold accountable and how accountable? Some U.S. evidence indicates that there was little accountability but more systematic study would be helpful. More analysis of local governmental roles in the pandemic would also be a worthy effort. When were localities effective and why?

4. Intergovernmental relations: the hidden dimension of government While federalism in the U.S. is featured in the U.S. Constitution, intergovernmental relations (IGR) emerged much later, flowing from the federal government’s massive efforts to deal with the economic and social upheavals in the 1930s. The federal government handed down unprecedented federal dollars to states and localities in ways that political scientists began to recognize as important. And what was especially important were the activities and interactions occurring between governmental units of all types and levels within the (U.S.) federal system (Anderson 1960). By 1940, a special issue of a major political science journal featured 25 articles on a variety of these interactions between federal/state, federal/local, states, regions, and local governments (Wright 1982). Agranoff (2004) defines intergovernmental relations as transactional activities and interactions between government units and with the nongovernmental sector of all types and levels. Poirier and Saunders (2015a) define intergovernmental relations as what plays out under federal structures and rules. Intergovernmental relationships are integral to and a significant part of every federal system. Collaboration and conflict are important in intergovernmental relations, as are institutions, political parties, interest groups, and administrative relations. Intergovernmental relations have also long been associated with executive officials or executive federalism. Bureaucrats in states and localities work closely with their counterparts in Washington and capitals in other countries in what has been dubbed “picket-fence federalism” (Sanford 1967) or referring to Germany, the “brotherhood of technocrats” (Poirier and Saunders 2015b, p. 462). The importance of these interactions seems obvious; what was less obvious was how to study these relationships that Senator Ed Muskie (1962) dubbed the hidden dimension of government. Wright (1982) provided six phases of IGR (from 1930s to the 1980s) but modeling the interactions among the large variety of actors proved difficult. Also included in modern intergovernmental activities are the citizens, nonprofit entities, the private and intergovernmental agencies—just to name a few. Poirier and Saunders (2015b) think that there 44

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is a trend toward more involvement in intergovernmental relations of local authorities, indigenous representatives, and the people in a variety of guises. Bolleyer (2009) posits that intergovernmental research can deal with the exchanges of participants, patterns of their interaction, and the structures in which they operate. Much of the research on intergovernmental relations is policy-related—looking at activities that take place within a particular policy. Less well studied are the systematic interactions across policies and time. In this chapter, I will consider these components of intergovernmental relations—sometimes called cooperative relations in other countries—that seem most important to scholars in the U.S. and abroad: federal–state relations, state–local relations, and interstate relations. Of special interest will be local governments—the often-forgotten governments that toil in the policy fields in areas ranging from COVID-19 and global warming to solid waste management and local parks. Trends and challenges will be highlighted in these areas, ending with a discussion of issues for future research.

THE IMPORTANCE OF INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS Intergovernmental relations are formal and informal, vertical and horizontal, conflictual and cooperative. Studies of intergovernmental relations have traditionally focused on vertical relations; although in recent years, scholars have recognized and examined networks of actors engaged in vertical and horizontal intergovernmental activities. While initial work focused on federal, state, and local officials, we now recognize there are a wide variety of actors, including nonprofits, interest groups and associations, private entities, universities, and citizens. Networks of these groups enhance decision-making, information sharing, implementation, and resource allocation. Networks can be formally established in law or cooperative agreements, or can be informal in nature. Agranoff and Radin (2015) conclude that networks are an essential component of intergovernmental relations and help sort out the “seeming mess” of overlapping authority. Intergovernmental relations are predominantly conducted behind closed doors, limiting the involvement of other branches of government and the public in decision-making. The secrecy and complexity of IGR tend to blur lines of responsibility. Even where legislatures have a formal intergovernmental role, they rarely exercise it against the will of executives (Poirier and Saunders 2015b). Posner (2018) notes that state and local governments in the United States employ nine times as many employees as the federal government. The federal government has constrained the growth of the federal workplace, preferring to use state and local governments and private entities as the shadow work-

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force implementing new federal initiatives. This is especially clear in the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which places states at the center of the expansion of health insurance through an enriched Medicaid program and new health exchanges along with augmented powers states can exercise to control insurance rates. When the federal government responds to economic crisis as it did in 2009 and 2021, states and local governments are the key means to implement the economic stimulus programs. The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment inspired remarkable levels of collaboration among elected officials and their representatives from all three governmental levels (Posner 2018). OMB and state and local association representatives had weekly conference calls to resolve administrative questions and expedite program implementation. In the more partisan 2021 version, there seemed to be less cooperation—especially among Republican governors who often used the $350 billion stimulus dollars targeted to states to rebuild prisons, renovate airports, or shore up border patrols. The money was designed for housing, education, health care and nutrition assistance to states and localities slammed with unexpected COVID-19 costs. However, the funding’s only restrictions were that the money could not be used to offset public pension losses or finance new tax cuts that local officials otherwise could not afford (Romm 2022). Several states filed lawsuits arguing that the “no tax cut” provision violated their sovereignty and other states found workarounds and enacted tax cuts with the help of the funding (Rappeport 2022). Posner (2018) notes that many OECD nations have strong intergovernmental traditions of fiscal collaboration and joint stewardship, reflected in fiscal targets for deficits and debt and expenditure limits shared by national and subnational governments. In the U.S. these institutions and traditions of fiscal collaboration are weak, if not nonexistent. With no institutional focal points, federal and state governments are on their own to craft deficit reduction strategies, often working at cross purposes. Federal tax policy is an area where most states adopt federal tax base definitions in their own income taxes but where federal officials make tax decisions with no real involvement by state and local officials. In one special blow to localities, in 2017, the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act capped state and local tax deductions to the federal income tax at $10,000—covering property taxes and state income or sales taxes but not both. The limit hits high-tax, often Democratic, states disproportionately. New York and three other states argued in court that the policy was an unconstitutional infringement of their sovereignty. The U.S. Court of Appeals was unpersuaded and upheld the provision. The U.S. Supreme Court later declined to hear the case (Shanahan 2022). Most U.S. scholars recognize that the allocation of powers between federal and state governments is necessary, but not sufficient, in understanding

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intergovernmental relations (Wright 1982; Agranoff 2004). As Elazar (1962, p. 452) put it, we should be “thinking about the how of power rather than the where.” But studying that “how” has proven difficult and led to research that some scholars have criticized as largely descriptive. As Feeley and Rubin (2008, p. 189) bluntly described intergovernmental scholarship, “the theoretically barren but immensely practical literature on intergovernmental relations.” IGR Councils One of the areas where research has been focused, albeit it primarily descriptively, is intergovernmental councils where federal, state, and sometimes local governments meet to work on strategies, approaches, and often program details. These councils provide the opportunity for repeated interactions among federal and state actors working through joint problems and sometimes reaching formal agreements. These interactions can develop procedural and reciprocal norms as actors learn to share responsibility for a policy field (Schertzer, McDougall and Skogstad 2018). These organizations are especially important when different political parties are in power in different governments (Watts 2005). Switzerland and Germany have strong intergovernmental councils that develop and adopt major reforms. Australia until recently had the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), where the prime minister and state premiers met to work out policies and sign intergovernmental agreements. Under COAG, there were other horizontal meetings of officials including elected ministers who headed agencies such as health and transportation and other meetings of the administrative heads of those agencies, meetings also attended by their counterparts in Canberra (Weissert 2017). In 2020 COAG was replaced with the National Federation Reform Council which also included state treasurers. In Argentina in 2015 there were 40 ministerial committees and working groups dealing with areas such as social security, employment, industries, fisheries, housing, and the environment (Carnota 2015). Canada’s First Ministers’ Conferences have a long history but in recent years were downgraded to First Ministers’ Meetings and have produced only a few major agreements. South Africa has an extended national cabinet that includes the provincial premiers and representatives of local government in addition to the regular federal cabinet. It meets in January to determine the national comprehensive program of action for the year and then in July to review its progress (Powell 2015). Sometimes informal councils evolve out of the formal ones. In India, for example, there are two formal executive bodies, but a recent chief ministers’

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conference has emerged that appears to be more effective at dealing with center–state relations (Singh and Saxena 2015). Similarly, formal and informal meetings between the German chancellor and the heads of state executives have been added to the long-standing formal Bundesrat as intergovernmental coordination mechanisms (Lhotta and von Blumenthal 2015). Bolleyer (2009) examined what she called intergovernmental arrangements (IGAs) of subnational units in three federations. She analyzed their institutionalization and their integration, finding that both the institutional issue of power-sharing and actors’ assessment of their benefits of participation are important to effectiveness in intergovernmental problem-solving. She also examined the incentives of intergovernmental actors to invest in IGAs. She found that actors invest in cooperation when costs at home are sufficiently low and outside gains can be expected to reimburse an initial investment; they will not engage in intergovernmental cooperation if they expect electoral defeat. While Bolleyer’s work is an important step in understanding the importance and potential of intergovernmental groups in federations, it fails to recognize external forces such as party makeup of members, groups with political agendas, and changes over time. Intergovernmental councils were especially important in the recent COVID-19 response. As Saunders (2021) put it, federations without intergovernmental forums or weak ones had no obvious vehicle to bring together the heads of government. Federations with well-established forums—Australia, South Africa, and Switzerland—used those venues during the pandemic. The primary intergovernmental council in the U.S. was terminated in 1996. Set up in statute in 1959, the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR) had an advisory board made up of elected and appointed state and local officials and the private sector. Over its 37 years of operation, it authored dozens of reports and made hundreds of recommendations for improving the federal grant system, federal mandates, regional governments, and state–local relations. It was eliminated in a cost-cutting effort to reduce the number of federal agencies without substantial pushback from state and local governments. In addition, the federal Office of Management and Budget eliminated its grants office, Congress abolished its federalism subcommittee, and the Academy for State and Local Governments was ended around the same time (Posner 2018). While there have been calls to revive the ACIR or a similar entity over the years, there has been little interest in the Congress to do so. This lack of interest might well have led Hueglin and Fenna (2015) to conclude that intergovernmental relations in the United States do not constitute an important part of the politics of federalism as is the case elsewhere. They argue that intergovernmental collaboration is largely absent, and what cooperation there is largely tied to the program delivery of federal grants—what they call policy, not politics.

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Overall, according to Poirier and Saunders (2015b), there is a trend toward more formalized IGR with the U.S. as an outlier. Horizontal Intergovernmental Arrangements In Canada, a horizontal intergovernmental forum, the Council of the Federation, has developed into a meaningful presence in Canadian federalism (Hueglin and Fenna 2015). The U.S., in contrast, has a number of intergovernmental groups representing various state interests that do not coordinate or meet formally to solve problems together. However, these groups do serve another important function in the United States—a political one. They form an intergovernmental lobby that works to persuade the Congress to enact desired policy and refrain from enacting harmful provisions. The problem is that members of the intergovernmental lobby do not speak with one voice. Some represent broad policy interests, such as the Council of State Governments and the National Governors Association (NGA), and some more narrower interests such as the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. These groups take policy positions, monitor Congressional and executive activities, and lobby for funding and programs they desire. While at some point, they were viewed as influential, in recent years state and local interest groups were weakened by rampant partisan polarization and the increasing importance of party-based groups (Dinan 2011; Jensen 2016). For example, the NGA could not take a position or lobby for welfare reform in 1996 or the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2009—both highly intergovernmental programs—due to partisanship. The Democratic and Republican Governors Association are now much stronger than they were in the 1990s. The Republican governors refused to support a proposal in the ACA to advance state fiscal interests put together by NGA staff when national Congressional Republicans decided to oppose the proposal. This is an example of where decisions are made to promote national political interests regardless of the consequences for states and localities or balance of power between and among governments (Posner 2018). Bargaining Martha Derthick (1987, p. 69) noted that in the U.S. “bargaining and negotiation, not command and obedience, appear to characterize the practice of intergovernmental programs now as in the past.” The importance of bargaining is not unique to the United States. Painter (1998) highlighted the importance of negotiation in Australia, a federation with institutionalized schemes of policy and administration where states and the commonwealth bargain to seek and achieve cooperation. Filippov, Ordeshook and Shvetsova (2004) state that

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bargaining is a central feature of federal relations and that rules of the game structure the bargaining. Thus, the principal challenge of federal design is institutionalizing bargaining in a way that minimizes conflict. Negotiation can be bilateral or multilateral. Bilateral is when a federal official is working with a state official on an issue. In this case, the party with the most leverage is best positioned to secure its preferred terms assuming the leverage is effectively deployed. According to Ryan (2012), federal officials are more likely to hold negative leverage which is power that one side holds that the other side does not want them to use (such as withholding federal funds). States, on the other hand, are more likely to have positive leverage, which is power or resources the other side wants to use (such as staffing and expertise to implement the policy). In the comparative federalism context, the bargaining literature is dominated by an actor-centric approach. We know that political games are played (Filippov, Ordeshook and Shvetsova 2004; Samuels and Mainwaring 2004), a situation made more intense by incomplete contracts (Rodden 2003). Politics is also key in intergovernmental bargaining (Wibbels 2005). Coglianese and Nicolaidis (2001) conceptualize each governmental level as a unitary actor and note that lower levels don’t always agree with each other in negotiations. Heisenberg (2005) found that long-standing negotiation ties among actors in the European Union led to a norm of consensus in the European Parliament. Weissert (2017) suggested three components of negotiation that can be used to look comparatively: the nature of negative or positive leverage and which government has it; the governmental unit’s capacity; and party congruence. Petersohn, Behnke and Rhode (2015) specify three sources of negotiation: the in-power party’s strength in the electoral and parliamentary area; whether the party is a member of the governing coalition; and the congruence or incongruence in governing coalitions across levels of government. Congruence increases the number of access points and offers the opportunity to coordinate strategies across levels of government. In contrast, incongruence leads to blame-shifting and policy stalemate. Petersohn, Behnke and Rhode (2015) find that congruence was especially important in bilateral negotiations. But in multilateral negotiations, the party holding government is key. Ideological congruence is also important. Government actors know which dynamics will be subject to scrutiny at home and this helps them decide whether to cooperate in federal politics. Bargaining also occurs between national and state political parties, a game complicated by the accompanying need to build negotiating alliances within their own party (Trench 2005). One output of negotiations is intergovernmental agreements which coordinate policy action by different levels of governments, most commonly vertical agreements between national and state governments, although Poirier and

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Saunders (2015b) note that horizontal arrangements appear to be increasing. A number of countries, including Brazil, use intergovernmental agreements to transfer funding from one governmental level to another for services provided. Spain employs bilateral agreements between the central government and the autonomous communities to outline the activities and financial contribution to be carried out in a policy area (Morales and Marin 2015). Australia’s system of taxation and fiscal transfers was restructured through an intergovernmental agreement in 1999. Parker (2015) examined intergovernmental agreements in six countries. He found that the number of subnational governments and the presence of a lasting forum for intergovernmental relations were the best predictors of the number of IGAs the countries issued. Overall, the study of bargaining and negotiation is well established in comparative federalism, often focusing on actor-centered approaches. The U.S. literature is more descriptive and focuses on what Bednar (2009) calls the opportunistic response of state governments to the federal government. Game theory is one way of focusing on intergovernmental decisions but is not widely used in U.S. federalism scholarship (but see Hill and Weissert 1995; Volden 2005, 2007).

FEDERAL–STATE FUNDING RELATIONS Fiscal federalism is one of the best-studied areas of federalism scholarship. It has spawned theoretical approaches and serves as a source of empirical work in comparative and U.S. federalism research. Fiscal federalism is more fully examined in Chapter 6. But it is important to note that federal grants and the programs they engender are the primary focus of intergovernmental relations (Hueglin and Fenna 2015). U.S. Grants Beginning with the Morrill Act or Land-Grant College Act of 1862, the federal government provided funding to states to achieve a national purpose (in the case of Morrill this was grants of land to set up colleges in agriculture and the mechanical arts). Over the next 160 years, these federal grants expanded to include health, environment, arts, transportation, human resources, and much more. States and local governments were tasked with administering these grants—sometimes supplying a matching financial contribution and often making adjustments to meet the needs of individual states. The administration of these grants necessitated federal and state cooperation and collaboration— especially among federal and state bureaucrats.

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This collaboration was long known as picket-fence federalism where vertical relationships were carried out in individual subject matter areas. For example, State Department of Transportation staff work closely and often with staff from the U.S. Department of Transportation. These relationships are often outside elected officials’ purview and are generally not coordinated across substantive areas. The term “iron triangle” was coined to reflect the close working relationships among federal and state policy experts in the bureaucracy and their counterparts in Congress (specialized interest groups make up the third part of the triangle); however, this characterization no longer seems relevant in today’s more complex network environment of specialists and generalists, elected and appointed officials, and other groups. Through grants, federal law can and often does include provisions preempting states and localities from acting in their desired ways—or even acting at all in given areas. Since the 1970s, preemption has become a central feature of the U.S. system (Zimmerman 1992) and coercive, regulatory federalism has been a signature development of the American intergovernmental system (Conlan and Posner 2016). Over the past 20 years, the federal government has preempted state actions in areas including air pollution, contaminated food, internet spam, banking, medical warning, product liability, and state tort claims (Conlan and Posner 2016). Courts have generally supported these preemptions. Borut (2018) says the intergovernmental system began to “unravel” beginning in the early 1990s when federal mandates and preemption of local authority were prevalent. This has occurred in response to special interests that are unable to prevail locally or at the state level and seek support and redress through federal legislation. Examples are the Religious Land Use and Institutional Persons Act (RLUIPA) which preempted local zoning regulations and the Internet Tax Freedom Act which prevents state and local governments from taxing internet access. President Clinton signed an executive order on federalism in 1998 without consultation with representatives of state and local government. Although both political parties utilize preemption, they do so in different ways. Democrats tend to use floor preemptions where states can offer higher levels of regulation if they wish; Republicans tend to prefer preemptions that set ceilings that curtail state authority (SoRelle and Walker 2016). Delegation/Centralization U.S. scholars have applied delegation theory to understand what policies are devolved to states and localities and why (McCann 2016). Krause and Bowman (2005) note that such delegation will occur when there is partisan congruence. McCann (2015) extended the linkage by examining the ideologi-

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cal distance between members of Congress, the national executive branch, and their governors. As members of Congress move away from the ideology of their governors, fewer provisions are delegated to states. Although rhetoric from Washington in the 1980s and 1990s often highlighted decentralization and delegation of power to states and local governments, the reality told a different story. Under both Republican and Democratic leadership, federal preemption steadily increased, giving more regulatory power to the federal government. As Conlan (1986, p. 45) described the situation under President (and former Governor) Ronald Reagan, “when truly difficult decisions were on the line, the overall thrust of policy by this administration seemed to bear little resemblance to the president’s rhetoric on intergovernmental reform.” When it comes to a choice between federalism theory and political gain, federalism generally loses. Borut (2018, p. 251) says that members of Congress don’t understand or care much about intergovernmental relations and the direct and unintended consequences of their decisions on states and localities. He notes that “Federalism does not appear to be a lens through which legislation is considered.” He argues this situation flows from three things: the exponential increase in the number of special lobbyists; the importance of political contributions; and the polarization along partisan ideological lines. Occasionally there is Congressional recognition of federalism, but it is often short-lived. Borut (2018) noted that in 2017 Speaker Paul Ryan, with the help of his Democratic counterpart, Nancy Pelosi, created the speaker’s task force on intergovernmental affairs. According to Ryan, the task force would study ways to restore the proper balance of power between the federal government and states, tribal and local governments, and eliminate unnecessary regulatory burdens facing communities across the states. The task force held only five hearings and soon dissolved. Centralization is also evident in other federations where the federal governments either take over states’ policy area or force administrative changes on them (Australia) or gradually integrate provinces and local authorities under central leadership (South Africa). Poirier and Saunders (2015b) conclude that the states and provinces are not necessarily objecting to these trends, particularly if accompanied by funding.

LOCAL GOVERNMENTS IN FEDERALISM AND INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS Strictly speaking in the United States, local governments are not part of the formal federal system. They are not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution which outlines federalism and are often designated as “creatures of the states” since their legal status is outlined—often in excruciating detail—in state consti-

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tutions. In some countries including Brazil, Nigeria, and South Africa, local governments are recognized in national constitutions (Poirier and Saunders 2015b). Nevertheless, they are important players in the delivery of a wide variety of services to citizens. However, even where local units have authority, fiscal dependence on national and state governments limits their ability to act independently. In the U.S., local government has grown not only in competency and in size through merging smaller municipalities into larger units, but also in political importance due to urbanization processes (Tatham 2021). Urban affairs is a burgeoning academic subfield—but importantly a subfield that is often ignored by federalism and intergovernmental relations scholars. One reason may be the lack of data. While data on 50 states is abundant and reliable, that on the 39,000 cities, townships, and counties has, until recently, been more difficult to obtain. However, this may be changing. For example, Ladner, Keuffer and Baldersheim (2016) have measured local autonomy in 39 countries over 25 years. They measured policy scope and found that there has been gradual empowerment over time in most cities. They also note an increase in negotiated relationships between central and local governments. Other scholars have measured the within-country variation in the performance of democratic institutions including territorial self-governance, subnational democracy, transparency, and quality of government (Tatham 2021). There are also new measures of local policies, political parties, and interest groups. With the new measures and new data, inclusion of local governments in federalism scholarship seems more likely and is certainly a welcome reflection of their role in intergovernmental relations. Empowerment of Local Governments Local governments were often the first to act when the 2020 pandemic hit; then as its scale became evident the central governments intervened. A study of 26 federal countries found that only in five (Australia, Malaysia, Nepal, Nigeria, and Pakistan) were local governments not an indispensable part of national strategies to deal with COVID-19. Local governments played a pivotal role in implementation including enforcing local restrictions, organizing testing and tracing, and often delivering COVID relief (Chattopadhyay and Knupling 2021). However, the capacity of local governments to fulfill their tasks was an issue highlighted in a study of 18 federations (Steytler 2021b). In the U.S., public health has been underfunded for many years. Although the U.S. spends more on health than any other country, only 5 percent of the $4 trillion goes to public health. The Trust for America’s Health (2022) documented the lack of funding

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in core public health programs during COVID-19, a deficit especially evident in low-income communities, communities of color, and older Americans. Localities—particularly urban areas that were hit early and hard by the 2020 virus—often implemented more stringent measures than those mandated by higher-level governments to deal with their communities’ needs. This differentiated approach, which worked well in some places, caused political problems in other jurisdictions, particularly where officials were of opposite political parties. Sometimes the court played a role as in Brazil and Argentina when it overruled local actions at closing municipal borders. In South Africa the court upheld the federal government efforts to stop municipalities from putting in place compulsory quarantines in official buildings (Steytler 2021b). State Preemption of Local Government Riverstone-Newell (2012) argues that the intergovernmental system is based on interdependence but without the fairness, concern, and consideration that cooperative partners typically afford each other. Because of their subordination to two governmental levels, local governments tend to bear the brunt of the worst treatment. State preemption of localities has been in place for many years; however, recent preemptions have been more intrusive (Riverstone-Newell 2017; Hicks and Weissert 2018). States have a long history of striking down local regulations in gun control, smoking, minimum wage, and environmental policies such as banning plastic products and anti-discrimination protections (Fisk 2022). In recent years, state preemption has proliferated in the areas of police (defund cities that defund police), education (we will not let local government shut down schools), and health (mask requirements and vaccine mandates). The newer preemptions not only overrule local measures but also punish localities and their officials if they persist. They can also alter the ability of local governments to contest state preemption (Weissert et al. 2021). One of the most troubling examples is a recent Arizona law that allows state legislators to challenge any local ordinance they think violates state law; if the Arizona attorney general agrees that it violates state law, the local government has 30 days to either change or withdraw the local ordinance. If they do not do so, they can lose all state funding. Phillips (2017) argues that such preemptions inhibit local innovation and threaten the ability of representatives to respond to local concerns. A 2018 survey found that 70 percent of local health officials and 60 percent of mayors had abandoned or delayed policies due to the threat of state preemption (Rutkow et al. 2019). A 2018 study of state preemption laws between 2001 and 2016 found that the number had tripled, from fewer than five a year to over 15 in a typical year (Swindell, Svara and Stenberg 2018).

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COVID-19 precipitated a plethora of local preemptions, often highly political in nature. Governors’ executive orders dealing with the pandemic generally preempted local authority and centralized the authority of the state rather than empowering local governments to deal with local problems (Weissert et al. 2021). Republican governors and, to a lesser extent, legislatures targeted Democratically controlled cities by prohibiting their adoption of masks and business and school restrictions, sometimes with corresponding punishment. For example, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis blocked mask mandates for schools and local governments, and school districts that did not comply had funding withheld from the state education department. Similarly local governments and schools were fined if they enacted proof of vaccination for their employees (Weissert et al. 2021). A number of these preemptions ended up in court. For example, local school districts in Florida and Virginia argued that governors’ executive orders in those states violated their state constitutions that gave decision-making power over schools to school boards. “The issue at heart is about local control,” said one Virginia school board member. “Can we make policies for our school system or does the governor get to come and do that for us?” (Natanson and Asbury 2022). In Florida, the state commissioner of education withheld pay from school board members in districts that opposed the governor’s masking order. Fisk (2022) notes that states almost always win in court. Ironically the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an organization dedicated to the principles of limited government, free markets, and federalism, proposed a number of these preemptions. The preemptions were primarily enacted by Republican legislatures, often in efforts to limit the power of Democratic city officials. But their actions affected localities more broadly. Texas Governor Greg Abbott put it this way in defending his heavy-handed approach during COVID-19, “I think a broad-based law by the state of Texas that says ‘across the board the state is going to preempt local regulations’ is a superior approach” (Swartz 2022). While most research has focused on state legislative and gubernatorial preemption, Konisky and Nolette (2022) point out that state attorneys general have also become more aggressive in pushing back on local policy discretion. They have brought suits against cities on mask mandates, sanctuary city immigration policies, paid sick leave, homeless public camping, and traffic ticketing practices. However, it is important to note that Bowman and Kearney (2018) found that the aggregate pattern in state legislation enacted in 2011–12 was not primarily burdensome or restrictive but rather it is slightly more empowering of local government. States continue to dominate the local government landscape but maybe not as bad as we might think.

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MULTI-LEVEL GOVERNANCE While U.S. scholars continue to focus on intergovernmental relations, European scholars, in part due to the quasi-federalism structure of the European Union, have developed the notion of multi-level governance (MLG). This might be defined as a structural collection of state and/or non-state actors who interact in informal and formal ways to achieve common goals (Benz, Broschek and Lederer 2021). Benz et al. argue that MLG differs from intergovernmental relations since the latter deals with governments or executives and administrators. Although IGR scholars would differ—noting it also includes nonprofits, lobbyists, and the private sector—MLG deals with institutions, actors, and issues (as does IGR). Hooghe and Marks (2021) developed a measure of MLG using two federalism constructs: self-rule and shared-rule. They have applied this to governments over time in a way that allows the analysis of trends longitudinally (both the measurement and longitudinal nature are both problems in federalism and no real IGR measures have been developed). Hooghe and Marks (2021) note that the growth in responsibilities of governments within countries since World War II amounts to a quiet revolution.

ATTENTION TO ELECTIONS: A CASE IN POINT The U.S. is distinctive in its decentralization of elections. Approximately 8,000 different jurisdictions administer American elections (Selin 2020). The 2020 elections highlighted the importance of state policy and local administration of elections. The controversy fomented in 2020 by the defeated president of the United States—Donald Trump—led a highly successful effort to undermine the electoral process in the U.S. It actually started before the election when then-president Trump expressed concern that the election would be “rigged.” After the certification of electors and the inauguration of the new president, he continued to urge his supporters to contest the election results. The state and local elections officials resisted, and recounts found no difference in votes; but the president’s supporters continued to fight. State legislatures controlled by Republicans entered the intergovernmental fray during the 2021 legislative sessions when 19 states enacted laws making it more difficult for citizens to vote and nine states enacted laws that interfere with election operations through setting up units or providing funding for prosecuting election crimes, putting in place new criminal penalties for election officials, and creating new local election boards appointed by partisan commissioners. In addition to the laws, state and local election officials were harassed

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and threatened by citizens and inundated with organized information-request efforts. The Brennan Center for Justice (2022a) found that one in six election officials experienced threats after January 6, 2021. State legislators in many states see themselves as the key decision-makers— not local officials. For example, a 2021 Texas law enhances protections for partisan poll watchers, who will now be given free rein at polling places. If they are not, or feel that they are not, they can sue poll workers (Greenblatt 2021). Four states passed laws setting forth new criminal penalties for elected officials. In Arizona, for example, it is now a felony for election officials to inadvertently accept a noncitizen’s voter registration (Brennan Center for Justice 2022b). Florida’s new state election police can receive and investigate possible voting problems. Interestingly, the first 20 cases (out of 11 million who voted) involved former felons who voted after they successfully registered, including being processed by state officials. In 2023 the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case based on a newly devised theory of the independent state legislatures which holds that only state legislatures—not governors or courts—can set the rules regarding federal elections. At issue is a North Carolina case involving Congressional districts drawn by the legislature that were held as unconstitutional by the state supreme court (Greenblatt 2022). If the court decides that state courts cannot interpret the state constitutions and state legislative actions prevail, American elections could be upended as there would be no check on a legislature determined to overhaul elections and perhaps determine their outcome.

THE STUDY OF INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS Poirier and Saunders (2015a) called intergovernmental processes the lifeblood of federalism in practice. But they note that intergovernmental relations are generally opaque and often under-studied. The importance of intergovernmental relations in its broadest sense—not just federal–state relations but also interstate, state–local and among various players at the local level—is evident. But studying those relationships has been difficult, in part because of the interstate variation in the structure of state–local relations and in part because of difficulty in measuring key variables across the thousands of local governments (not counting the non-governmental actors). But new data are now becoming available and there is clearly better recognition among scholars of the importance of and need for top-notch scholarship. Among the questions under-studied include: a better understanding of centralization of state–local relationships and how these trends relate to increased polarization; analysis of the centralization (and partisan) trends as they affect elections; more study of the impact of new actors in the IGR networks including nonprofits and sometimes the private sector; the increasing dominance of

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the executive branch and how that may challenge political accountability; and the changing patterns of informal and formalized IGR including more study of leverage and negotiation among federal and state officials and state and local officials. In the United States, the possibility of the independent state legislature is key, especially if endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court. It has the potential to upend election operations and more and drastically rewrite and undercut judicial oversight and undermine state constitutions. Also important to further research is consideration of the various intergovernmental formal and informal mechanisms for cooperation. Intergovernmental councils, intergovernmental agreements, and intergovernmental arrangements have been studied largely in case studies. Given the importance of these mechanisms in bargaining and negotiation of public policy, they should be more systematically examined and theorized about. Comparative federalism scholars have taken the lead on this subfield. Finally, networks have been recognized as key to intergovernmental relations but to date have not engendered theoretically based scholarship that elucidates their important and emerging role in intergovernmental relations.

5. Federalism and public policy Understanding public policy in a federal country means understanding federalism. Policies affecting our lives range from speed limits to safe cars, from water purity to benefits for the needy. These policies are adopted by the hundreds (or in the U.S. thousands) of governments—often working together. These policies are typically jointly pursued by governments. Federalism defines public policy and is defined by it. In federations, federal and state governments are responsible for the design and implementation of public policy. Just how they do it varies from country to country and over time. In this chapter we examine research on how public policy is shaped by federalism—first in understanding the role of federal and state governments in shaping and implementing public policies and then in a more aggregate look comparing policies of federations and unitary systems. As Anton (1989) put it, rationalism has been the dominant mode of thinking about public policy in the United States for most of the twentieth century; we might add into the twenty-first century. Using a systems approach, public policy scholars note the cyclical phases of public policy making—identification of the problem, agenda setting, policy development, implementation, evaluation, then revisiting the problem. This process is going on at the various levels of government independently, but states play a role in each of the stages, particularly policy development and the implementation of federal policies. Local governments play similar roles with state policies. We will consider intergovernmental policy development and implementation in this chapter along with the politics that play an inevitable role. We will also talk about how states learn from each other and from Washington. And we will discuss the increasingly important role that partisan polarization plays in public policy development and implementation. Bulman-Pozen (2014) argues that partisan federalism now defines much of governmental actions and responses in the U.S. Certainly the experiences of the past few years support that view. Do federal countries produce different types of policies than nonfederal ones? What are the roles of federal and state governments in designing and implementing public policies? How are these roles changing? How do substate governments learn from each other? These are the key questions of this chapter. 60

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PARTICIPATION IN FEDERAL POLICY MAKING There are two aspects of intergovernmental policy making: policy development and implementation. The second is generally the most significant area of state and local governmental impact because they are the institutions that interpret, put in place, and evaluate federal policies. Their role in policy development is often as advocates and (sometimes) experts (Esterling 2009). State and local governments in the U.S. promote and oppose federal policies primarily through the intergovernmental lobby—the national groups representing state and local governments including the National Governors Association, National Conference of State Legislatures, National League of Cities, National Association of Counties, and the International City Management Association. The heyday of these groups was likely in the 1970s and 1980s when federalism was a high salience issue in Washington, and federal grants to states and localities were increasing regularly. It was also a time when the officials often put aside their own party politics to adopt positions that benefited states. In the 1980s, for example, the National Governors Association (NGA) took strong stands against federal deficits in a bipartisan approach—a stand which was largely ignored but may have been among the last times of strong bipartisanship in the NGA. Since that time the partisan groups representing governors, legislators, and other state officials have become much stronger and provide both policy advice (which the NGA and related groups do) and financial support (which they do not). Now, even on issues which seemingly involve state institutional roles relative to Washington, there is little agreement in the National Governors Association (Dinan 2011). Nevertheless, when the states do work together they can be a powerful force in national politics (Karch and Rose 2019). Apart from politics, the policy expertise of the states and localities should enhance their participation in federal policy development. After all, they are the officials who put in place policies enacted in Washington. And there are examples where state officials can and do shape federal policies. For example, state attorneys general and banking officials helped design national financial regulation to safeguard state prerogatives for consumer protection and bank regulation in the 2010 Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Conlan and Posner 2016). State insurance officials played a similar role in the development of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) which created national standards to protect sensitive patient health information from being disclosed without the patient’s consent or knowledge. However, it is important to realize that state and localities are outnumbered and sometimes undercut by lobbyists from the private sector and ideological

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groups. Esterling (2009) found that state officials’ expertise was not valued in Congressional hearings on Medicaid—a health care program for the poor that states administer, help design, and experiment with regularly. Rather, the testimonies of witnesses for think tanks and lobbyists from industry and trade associations were valued more by Members of Congress than those of state Medicaid officials. States can also participate in developing the rules of a program, in shaping presidential executive orders, and in negotiating state plans (Nugent 2009). But often, as in Congressional hearings, they are one of many voices, including powerful interests and think tanks. Compliance/Implementation The state (and local) contributions to policy implementation are considerably greater than those of policy development. At this stage, states refine the key definitions of program eligibility, interpret key terms, determine how funds are distributed, provide oversight, and experiment with new approaches and techniques. The term intergovernmental management (IGM) has been used to underscore that effective implementation of programs requires skill in managing the various actors involved and navigating through complex intergovernmental and intersectoral relationships. The term is frequently used to encompass the roles of nonelected agency heads and street-level bureaucrats in the implementation and management of public policies (Hamilton and Stenberg 2018). There are structural reasons why states have leverage over the federal government in implementing public policy. States implement most federal domestic programs because the federal government simply doesn’t have the staff to launch and administer these programs. States have expertise in these and related programs, and states reflect the popular will of citizens in their states regarding their preferences of program design and implementation. While some scholars have referred to the relationship as a principal–agent one—with the states as agents to the national government as the principal— this seems to fall short of recognizing the discretion of states which extends beyond what one might think of as simply an agent. Rather, it seems more like an exchange relationship where the federal government must bargain with states and make side payments to win their cooperation (Nugent 2009). Unlike a dominant principal, the federal government is unlikely to punish states’ noncompliance by reducing or cutting off funding for the program since to do so would harm the recipients of the program. Even in cases of partial preemption where the federal government hands off responsibility for implementation with the understanding the federal government can step in and reassume control, the federal government rarely reassumes program control (Nugent 2009).

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Conlan and Posner (2016) note that the federal government has recently been more willing to utilize opt-out or opt-in provisions in federal programs such as the Affordable Care Act where states can opt-in to expanded Medicaid programs or state implementation of private health insurance exchanges. The opt-in was sweetened with generous federal support for the expansion. Even so, 12 states continued to opt-out a dozen years after its passage. Opt-in provisions were also adopted in 2009 in federal education legislation that provided voluntary grants rather than mandates. When the Congress legislates in an area where state law already exists, it can make provision for exempting states from the law’s requirements through a waiver process set out in the federal statute. Welfare and Medicaid are the most common state program waivers, but they exist in other areas as well. In both welfare and Medicaid, states have used the waiver process to try out policies that would otherwise not be allowed under the law. These policies are then carefully evaluated for possible adoption by other states. While innovation is a laudable goal, the result is a program with numerous variations across the states—leading to inequities for the recipients—what Conlan and Posner (2016) call variable speed federalism. Nevertheless, waivers do offer states a way to tailor federal policies to their own circumstances and avoid a one-size-fits all policy that is not well suited to the needs of all states (Nugent 2009). While the national government can provide incentives for state actions, there is little they can do to assure that states act as Washington desires. As DiIulio and Kettl (1995, p. 18) put it: “Washington has had, and continues to have, tremendous difficulty in executing even relatively straightforward policies precisely because state and local governments enjoy such wide latitude in deciding how best to translate federal policies into action, or whether, in fact, to follow federal policies at all.” One recent example was during the COVID-19 pandemic when Arizona used federal pandemic money to provide funding for schools that did not require masks and to provide vouchers to families leaving school districts that required face coverings or other COVID-related constraints. The U.S. Treasury Department threatened to recoup funds if the state programs were not redesigned and then warned it might not release the second installment of the state and local fiscal recovery funds. Arizona moved ahead with the program and sued the Biden administration for any efforts to recover the funding. The Biden administration backed off its threats and sent the second installment (Rappeport 2022).

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State Pushback Due to their expertise and their autonomy, states can push back against federal action—and do so fairly frequently. In what Bulman-Pozen and Gerken (2009) call uncooperative federalism, states can challenge key elements of the policy they are administering, they can refuse federal dollars, or they can refuse to implement a policy. Karch and Rose (2019) note that in recent years, disputes between the national government and the states have cut across a wide variety of policy areas including education, immigration, gun control, climate change, and marijuana. States can refuse federal dollars: what Nicholson-Crotty (2012) calls leaving money on the table. In recent years, the choice to refuse federal dollars has been largely partisan. Nicholson-Crotty found that between 2009 and 2011, over 40 percent of Republican governors publicly rejected or refused to apply for funds offered by the Democratic Obama administration. Republican governors turned down stimulus money designed to extend unemployment benefits, high-speed rail funding, and education support. Nicholson-Crotty documents that refusal of federal dollars is not a new phenomenon; Southern states in the 1960s turned down federal housing grants. But the instances of states refusing federal dollars have increased in number, and especially visibility. A dozen states still refuse to participate in the expansion of Medicaid that included a 100 percent federal match initially and still offers a healthy 90 percent match (a 2021 sweetener increasing the match to 95 percent for two years for those states engendered no takers). Similarly, a number of states turned down parts of federal stimulus and COVID-19 grants. Florida and Mississippi decided against applying for money for low-income mothers of young children. Four states opted not to extend a program to provide grocery money to low-income families with school-age children during the summer. Two states turned down federal money for COVID-19 testing in schools and New Hampshire rejected money for vaccinations. According to Sullivan (2021), the Republican legislators cited concerns about local control, requirements for receiving the aid, and the rising national debt. States can also stall the implementation of federal programs. Hill and Weissert (1995) found that states stalled implementation of the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act of 1982 while also actively encouraging Congress to alter the law. The REAL ID law of 2005 is an even more successful example of stalling. The law, passed following the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center to make state drivers’ licenses more uniform and part of a national database, had a novel punishment. Instead of cutting state grants for noncompliance, the law said citizens of noncompliant states would be unable to use their drivers’ licenses to board airplanes or enter federal buildings.

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Fifteen states passed laws prohibiting compliance with what they considered an unfunded mandate and encroachment of their authority over state licenses. Implementation was delayed and has yet to be fully implemented by all states. The deadline is now 2025—two decades after the law was passed (Kamin 2022). States can also refuse to act. Bulman-Pozen and Gerken (2009) give the example of the USA Patriot Act of 2001 where five states passed resolutions declaring they would not participate in enforcing provisions of the law they felt were an assault on civil liberties. States also refused to perform disability eligibility reviews for Social Security and resisted full implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act. Finally, states can simply ignore federal law as have the majority of states that now have laws allowing medical or recreational marijuana in spite of the fact that the use, sales, and possession of marijuana is a violation of federal law. Going to court has been a popular course of pushback action for states. This approach is probably best illustrated by then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who said in 2013, “I go into the office. I sue the federal government and I go home.” He filed around 30 suits against the federal government, spending millions in legal fees (Swartz 2022). The federal government can also sue the states. In November 2021, two suits were filed the same day—the U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit over Texas’ new voting restrictions; Texas, Florida and a few other states filed a legal challenge to a new federal mandate that businesses with more than 100 employees had to put in place vaccination or COVID test requirements. A few months later, Texas sued the Biden administration over federal rules that require abortions be provided in medical emergencies to save the life of the mother. Some might argue that such resistance is not good for federalism and good public policy—particularly due to its blatantly partisan nature (Conlan and Posner 2016, for example). At its best, it encourages differentiation in state policy which leads to inequities in services to citizens. However, Nugent (2009) sees it differently. He argues that defiant and strong states can provide the checks and balances Madison first described and produces a federation reflecting the views of citizens of many various states in ways that are not shaped from the same cookie-cutter. Karch and Rose (2019) challenge scholars to study when states will push back and when they will reinforce federal efforts. They believe that policy design, timing, and their interaction help explain whether and how state officials respond to federal laws.

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A Case Study: Attorneys General Taking the Feds to Court While governors often garner press attention suing the federal government, the primary actors doing so are the state attorneys general. In the 1980s, attorneys general became more active in suing federal agencies for statutory noncompliance—particularly related to environmental protection. They also sought authority to enforce federal standards where they thought the federal executive branch would not do so. Clayton (1994) also cites attorneys general of this era increasing their activity in their own legislatures—often attempting to secure federal standards in their own state—what he calls mirror statutes. These allow them to enforce standards without relying on the federal agencies to act. They also signed on to amicus briefs to challenge presidential policies on issues such as the interpretation of federal civil rights statutes (Nassau v. Arline 1987)—a pattern they followed for the next four decades. With the increased visibility and influence came more political politization. The Republican Attorneys General Association and the Democratic Attorneys General Association became more active and partisan. In the 2000s, Democratic attorneys general filed suits against perceived federal inaction in areas such as climate change, prescription drug regulation, and consumer protection (Nolette 2017). With the arrival of a Democratic president in 2007, it was Republican attorneys general who sought to curb federal regulatory expansions and who filed a case against the Affordable Care Act of 2010 within an hour of its signing. Democratic attorneys general organized to defend the law. One example of politics trumping policy was in 2021 when the Republican Attorneys General Association paid for robocalls touting a march to “Call on Congress to Stop the Steal” on January 6 (Stanley-Becker and Reinhard 2022). In 2022 Republican attorneys general joined with conservative legal activists and those who fund them, in a renewed effort to fight the Biden administration’s effort to tackle global warming. A new angle is that several of the suits in federal court are challenging regulations or policies that do not yet exist (Davenport 2022). Two other changes are important to federalism and the public policy it engenders. First, the cases brought by the states often do not address constitutional issues but seem more focused on the results, not the means (Merriman 2019). Nolette (2017, p. 362) calls this a “creative use of their executive power … to achieve national public policy goals.” Downey and Myers (2020) point out that when states want to carry out a federal law differently than the federal executive, the legal argument is that the federal executive branch’s execution of policy is inconsistent with the statutory meaning of the law, not a federal preemption argument. Second, in their effort to achieve desired policy, the

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attorneys general have formed alliances with like-minded outside groups. For Democrats this is environmental groups; for the Republicans, it is industry or ideological groups. As Nolette (2017) notes, there are still areas where state attorneys general work together such as settlements with pharmaceutical companies, and they work with federal officials on multiagency task forces and working groups. In 2021, a bipartisan group of attorneys general scored a public policy coup with a national opioid agreement with three major pharmaceutical distributors totaling $26 billion. However, it is the political and partisan efforts that are more typical of the role of attorneys general in today’s public policy development and implementation.

POLICY DIFFUSION One of the richest veins of horizontal federalism research in the U.S. has been testing the notion of states as laboratories of democracy. Do states really learn from other states? The answer is yes, but the primary issues relate to why and how. U.S. scholarship tells us that some states imitate policy action in states that are similar to them in political, demographic, or economic characteristics; some states adopt policies due to interstate competition from other states; some states emulate policies of other states that they feel are successful. The process is facilitated through a variety of factors such as policy entrepreneurs, national associations, advocacy groups, and partisan associations (Berry and Berry 1990; Volden 2006; Karch 2007; Nicholson-Crotty 2009; Karch 2014). Partisanship and ideology clearly play an important role. Grumbach (2022a) calls horizontal diffusion “partisan laboratories of democracy,” where states learn only from states led by those of the same political party. Grossback, Nicholson-Crotty and Peterson (2004) documented that states are more likely to learn from states that are ideologically similar. In an innovative experiment with local government officials, Butler et al. (2017) documented the importance of ideological predisposition and specifically partisan bias in the willingness of officials to learn from the experiences of other officials of a different political party. It has become increasingly popular for interest groups to sponsor model state legislation and urge legislatures of similar persuasion to adopt them. A case in point is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative policy organization with strong ties to corporate and business interests which writes model state legislation that is widely introduced and adopted in the U.S states (Jackman 2013). Hertel-Fernandez (2019) documents the impact of ALEC and its sister groups, the State Policy Network and Americans for Prosperity, in undermining public unions, assuring business-oriented

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legislation, and in recent years taking on more salient issues such as stand-your-ground laws and gay rights. These groups and other engaged activists are the likely reasons why Republican legislatures pass abortion bills, gun bills, and others that seem to fly in the face of the preferences of their own constituents. The success of these groups seems to undercut the simple state learning-from-other-states model; instead, state diffusion seems primarily to reflect polarized content promoted by national interest groups. Also important is vertical diffusion where the federal government learns from the states. The rationale is the same as horizontal innovation—if the federal government wants to enact policy in an area it can learn from states which have put programs in place in those areas. Here, there is considerably less research, and it is less positive. While there are clear examples where the federal government emulated state action—most notably the Affordable Care Act of 2010 which was based on a Massachusetts law—there is less empirical work to document vertical diffusion. And what there is indicates that the federal government rarely learns from states’ experience in crafting federal legislation (Mossberger 1999; Rabe 2007; Thompson and Burke 2007). For example, in a study of national health policy between 1993 and 2006, Weissert and Scheller (2008) found that federal actions in this highly intergovernmental area show little recognition of state experiences and in one case (controlling drug prices) federal legislation preempted states in an area where they had been actively engaged. Beland, Medrano and Rocco (2018) highlight vertical diffusion in three countries—the United States, Mexico, and Canada. They find that diffusion in federal countries is more likely where policy competence is shared between national and state government, where there are strong, intergovernmental policy networks, and in presidential systems. Of course, states can also learn from the federal government. McCann, Shipan and Volden (2015) find that policy ideas diffuse from the national government to the states. They looked at hearings and the introduction of bills in the U.S. Congress that influenced state-level adoptions. They found that diffusion did occur, but only for states with professionalized legislatures and strong policy advocates. Finally, there is diffusion from local governmental policy to states. While there is arguably less overlap between activities of state and local governments than between state and federal governments, Shipan and Volden (2006) examined how one area—antismoking policies—diffused from the bottom up. They found interest groups were important conduits of policy information from local policies to state ones—illustrating the importance of interest groups in diffusion at all levels.

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FILLING THE POLICY GAP States also act when the federal Congress is too gridlocked to adopt legislation. For example, in the mid-1990s, 40 state attorneys general sued the five major tobacco companies to recover Medicaid costs incurred by the state from smokers. The result was a 1997 agreement totaling over $368 billion. (Five states had separate suits against the major tobacco companies.) Apart from the money, the suit was important as a recognition that states can initiate remedial action to solve a national problem when the Congress refuses to act (Zimmerman 1998). Fast forward to 2022 when sweeping federal child-care legislation was stalled in Congress and dozens of states stepped in to address what many view as a major domestic problem—finding child-care services that are available and affordable (Goldstein 2022). As expected, state responses to filling the policy gap are different and predicted primarily by party ideology. When the federal government failed to deal with concerns about disinformation on social media, states stepped forward with state laws differing whether they were Democratic or Republican. Democratic states pursued legislation to make social media companies divulge their process for removing false, hateful, or extremist material from their platforms. In contrast, Florida and Texas passed laws banning or fining the largest social media companies from removing posts because of political views. The laws are being contested in court as violations of First Amendment rights of free speech (Myers and Kang 2022). Finally, states moved on election reforms while federal legislation stalled in Congress. Again, there was a Red and Blue bias clearly evident. Sixteen states controlled by Democrats expanded the ability of people to vote while a roughly equal number of Republican states limited use of popular drop boxes and absentee ballots, reduced voting hours, constrained the ability of election workers to stop harassment by poll watchers, and even criminalized passing out water to voters standing in line to vote. Six states enacted laws in 2022 to permit partisan actors to interfere with election operations or overturn election results, direct new recourses toward prosecuting election crimes, and threaten election officials with criminal penalties (Brennan Center for Justice 2022b).

PARTISAN FEDERALISM Clearly partisanship permeates the politics and policy of federalism in the U.S. Partisanship is a strong predictor of whether states adopt policies from other states, even surpassing policy effectiveness. It determines how states will respond to federal laws, and it leads to policy agendas supported by interest groups rather than constituents.

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While most commentators bemoan this partisanship, Bulman-Pozen (2014, p. 1118) argues that partisan federalism is a type of safeguard. “When one’s party is out of party at the national level, federalism offers an institutional framework for partisan identification.” She posits that the uptick in partisan federalism flows from two things: (1) the two major parties have grown ideologically cohesive and polarized; and (2) states and the federal government increasingly regulate in overlapping areas rather than separate spheres. Others are less hopeful. For example, Adler (2022) believes that “(s)tates are celebrated and given voice so long as they stay on the right team.” Republican members of Congress—traditionally supportive of federalism— are a case in point. In Fall 2022, Republicans introduced national legislation banning abortion after 15 weeks (reversing their traditional support of states’ policies); putting in place voting restrictions including prohibiting state policies on drop boxes, counting ballots, and same-day and automatic voter registration; federalizing restrictions on how teachers can talk about race; barring discussion of sexually oriented material in any program funded by the federal government; and requiring every state to accept a concealed-carry gun permit issued in another state (Brownstein 2022). At one time, Republicans might have argued that these issues are more naturally dealt with by the states.

COMPARATIVE WORK While U.S. scholars are analyzing trends in state resistance, there is less work in the comparative federalism literature. However, Tillin and Pereira (2017) report that Brazilian states run by governors opposed to the president had lower enrollment in the national income support programs because they could make it difficult for the federal government to access databases of potential beneficiaries and/or run their own competing programs. Comparative research is more robust on federalism as an independent variable such as what difference does having a federation make in terms of fiscal stability, economic development, welfare spending, and government growth. We might expect that federal countries will have increased economic development because the substate units will compete for businesses and thus over-achieve. However, federal countries might have lower government growth and be less generous with social welfare programs in part because of competition between substate units, the increase in the number of institutional veto points, and the race to the bottom. (Although Obinger, Castles and Leibfried 2005 argue that the same levers that restrain the adoption of the welfare state also hinder retrenchment initiatives in mature welfare states.) But these linkages between federalism and economic growth, welfare spending, and fiscal stability differ based on characteristics of the federal countries including their degree of fiscal

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decentralization, division of power among the governments, partisan competition, and level of consensus required for policy change. Public policy is notoriously difficult to analyze empirically—too many variables, too much variation among the countries and what Weaver (2020) calls the absence of appropriate counterfactuals. In other words, we don’t know what would have happened to a federal country if it were instead to be unified. And, of course, the complexity of federalism makes it also hard to analyze. So put them together—and it is doubly difficult. One way to deal with it is through paired comparisons: Canada/US; Canada/ Belgium; Canada/Quebec; and Spain/Catalonia are popular, but as Fenna (2018) notes, the universe of federal systems is not rich enough in sufficiently similar cases. And are Canada and the U.S. really similar? More common is the use of a number of cases; for example, six cases in Obinger, Leibfried and Castles (2005) and Dardanelli et al. (2019); seven in Benz and Sonnicksen (2021); and 11 in Detterbeck, Renzsch and Kincaid (2015). In these and other examples, there is often a template and then the chapters descriptively follow the outline. A concluding chapter summarizes the findings. Sometimes a single author will describe the cases (four in Bolleyer 2009; six in Parker 2015). These provide rich information but are more limited in testing hypotheses. Large n studies can test hypotheses but sometimes sacrifice obvious differences among, for example, federal and nonfederal countries. Comparative work in fiscal federalism, described in Chapter 6, often uses large n studies to examine federalism’s effect on economic performance and redistribution.

TRENDS AND CHALLENGES Clearly, the relationships between federalism and public policy are complicated and difficult to assess. This doesn’t mean that the researchers should give up, however. With improved data and more nuanced models, the quest continues for a better understanding. Although policy research on federalism tends to focus on economic issues (governmental growth, welfare state) or individual policies (education, health, income subsidies), Weaver (2020) examined instead policy dynamics or change and how we understand it. Thus, he is not concerned with specific policies per se but rather in understanding the process of achieving policies in federal systems. He identifies 12 federal policy dynamics from the federalism literature from well-studied innovation (laboratories of democracy) and the race to the bottom to the less-known race to the top and collective benchmarking. For each, he discusses the causal mechanisms and mediating factors. He provides examples for most from mature federations. While the categorization

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is interesting, it does not help in simplifying or developing models to understand policy choices in a federal system. Comparative work on the impact of federal systems on public policy has been, and continues to be, difficult to test hypotheses. Riker (1975) predicted that such efforts would be difficult given the many kinds of societies in many stages of economic development and many levels of political life. Indeed, the number of variables reflecting the variation in federations have proven difficult in large n studies. Nevertheless, the macro-level work is important and likely to be more meaningful as data becomes more available across countries and over time. Research focusing on a single country, matched countries, or a sample of countries provides useful descriptive information but is not helpful in testing hypotheses. Also important are the relationships among federal and state (and local) officials in policy development and implementation. In the U.S these relationships are strained with hyper-partisanship which often seems to trump any rational sorting out of what governments should be delivering policies. In the U.S. as well, the inability of the federal government to act (due to this same hyper-partisanship) and a tendency of the U.S. Supreme Court to defer to states on important decisions such as abortion has led to more differentiation in public policies and thus illustrates the price of federalism. Thus, one important trend in the U.S with the increased role of states in high-visibility public policies has been inequities—where citizens in different states are treated very differently. This has occurred in both policy design (abortion, gun control) and implementation (coverage of the near-poor in Medicaid flowing from the Affordable Care Act). Future questions in the public policy area include: is partisan federalism evident in other federal countries and how is this playing out; can we compare established and new federations? Is the use of the courts in the U.S. to sort out policy making evident in other countries? Can we develop and use measures to test hypotheses definitively? What are the mechanisms related to intergovernmental interest group success in states and are there factors that limit their impact?

6. Fiscal federalism It isn’t often that federalism has a brush with pop culture. But fiscal federalism does in the musical Hamilton. Federalism scholar George Break (1980) reminds us that the decision captured in the song from the musical, “The Room Where It Happened,” set the course for fiscal federalism when Alexander Hamilton achieved his goal of federal assumption of the debts of the states in exchange for reimbursing states for any debts they had repaid and support for the site of the new capital. As Break put it, “This was an important bargain, for it was a major step toward centering fiscal authority in the federal government—a principle by no means unequivocally sanctioned by the constitution” (1980, p. 40). The trend that Hamilton started in the debt assumption act in that room largely determined the course that fiscal federalism was to follow through the succeeding two centuries. Hamilton’s decision set real-world fiscal federalism in place, but it took another 170 years for scholars to introduce the term (Musgrave 1959) and popularize it (Oates 1972). Fiscal federalism can be defined as an economic framework for understanding the relationship among federal, state, and local governments that focuses on the division of spending and taxing powers among these governments (Kenyon 2005). The field was established by economists but more recently has been populated with political scientists, policy scholars, and others since the importance of institutions and context has become recognized. Two schools of fiscal federalism have emerged: The First Generation, dominated by economists, was highly normative and dealt with assignment of functions and intergovernmental grants; The Second Generation is much more discipline eclectic and highlights the importance of institutions and especially politics on intergovernmental economic outcomes. Branching away from intergovernmental grants, it emphasizes incentives, competition, and local taxation. The popularity of fiscal federalism scholarship initially flowed from the real-world trends of fiscal decentralization in the 1970s and 1980s and then from problems that emerged especially in developing countries (Ter-Minassian 1997). Developments in the European Union also contributed to interest in fiscal federalism (Jha 2015). This chapter describes both first and second generation fiscal federalism, traces the federal grant system in the U.S., summarizes research on the impact of decentralization on economic development, size of government and corrup73

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tion, and highlights the difficulties of fiscal federalism in developing countries. It concludes with recommendations for future research.

FIRST GENERATION FISCAL FEDERALISM Richard Musgrave, one of the founders of fiscal federalism and what later became known as the First Generation of Fiscal Federalism (FGFF), was concerned with the allocation of government functions. Overall, he felt that there should be a fiscal structure where local goods are provided locally, regional goods regionally, and national goods nationally, what he called the principle of reciprocity (1971). He is probably best known for specifying the three policy responsibilities of government: meeting allocation, stabilization, and redistributive needs. Oates (1999) was also concerned about the aligning of responsibilities and fiscal instruments with the proper levels of government. Determining which functions and instruments are best centralized and which are best placed in the sphere of decentralized levels of government is what he called “the subject matter of fiscal federalism” (p. 1120). Fiscal federalism explores, “both in normative and positive terms, the roles of the different levels of government and the ways in which they relate to one another through such instruments as intergovernmental grants” (p. 1120). In addition to the assignment of functions to levels of government, Oates was concerned with the welfare gains from fiscal decentralization. Fiscal Decentralization Fiscal decentralization is the presumption that the provision of public services should be located at the lowest level of government. Oates (1999) calls it the Decentralization Theorem (p. 1122). The rationale is economic efficiency. When these preferences are spatially heterogeneous, local governments are thought to be well informed about the local costs and benefits of policies and in a better position than more distant central governments to tailor policies to fit local circumstances. The local officials are less likely to line their own pockets when they are accountable to local constituents who are able to detect corruption. It is also called the subsidiarity principle, adopted by the European Union in allocating functional responsibilities of the supragovernment and existing states. Yet accountability has its problems as well since voters often award spending and punish taxation—a fiscal illusion—that often results in deficit-financed spending. When the link between taxes and benefits is distorted or broken as it is with intergovernmental grants, voters are less likely to sanction overspending politicians. Spillover effects are also problematic—local public goods

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would provide benefits to residents of other jurisdictions. FGFF scholars dealt with this by arguing that the central government should provide subsidies (matching grants) to local governments to deal with these spillovers. They also recognized that decentralized governments had limited capacity to influence local levels of employment and prices and thus the stabilization function belongs to the central governments. Similarly, the mobility of households and firms limited the redistributive functions of decentralized governments so the central government must assure the equitable output of national public goods through equalization grants. The national government also has the responsibility of providing some degree of fiscal equalization among poor and rich communities. Prior to World War II, most grants were intended to distribute funds among the states according to the amount of service needed in each state. But after the war, the grant structure was modified to recognize varying state fiscal capacity (Commission on Intergovernmental Relations 1955)—although fiscal equalization in the U.S. is much less utilized than in federations such as Australia, Canada, and Germany (Oates 1999). The central government should also provide certain public goods like national defense that provide services to the entire country. FGFF scholars also dealt with the tax-assignment problem by arguing that decentralized governments should primarily collect benefit taxes such as property taxes and user fees and the central government should deal with progressive income taxes as part of a broader program on the redistribution of income (Oates 1999). Fiscal Instruments According to early fiscal federalism scholars, intergovernmental grants serve three purposes: internalizing the spillover benefits to other jurisdictions; fiscal equalization across jurisdictions; and an improved overall tax system (Oates 1999). Conditional grants, typically those with a match, should be employed when the provision of local services generates benefits for residents of other jurisdictions. Earmarked matching grants can be used to encourage local provision by reducing the cost of a certain service to a community. Unconditional grants serve the purpose of equalization. Fiscal federalism scholars like Musgrave (1997) and Oates (1999) argue for a grant system with both matching and unconditional grants. Assuring minimum performance levels for services can best be dealt with by block grants. As Musgrave (1971) put it, “The design of federalism, as I see it, should permit constructive cooperation among regions within the nation, retaining freedom of local action where it is feasible and providing joint policies where they are called for” (p. 12).

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The fiscal federalism scholarship launched by Musgrave and Oates is largely normative and assumes rational, even benevolent, governments. Another criticism of the FGFF was that it does not address many problems facing developing countries.

FEDERAL GRANTS An important element of fiscal federalism from the beginning has been recognition of the need for federal grants to close the state–local revenue gap and provide services that cannot or can only with great difficulty be provided by subnational governments. It is important to note that this is not simply a U.S. issue: a common pattern across countries is for one level of government to be involved in delivery of a service while other levels finance and regulate it (Bird 1999). The level and form of that financing and regulation has long been a primary concern of fiscal federalism scholars. Most countries (other than the U.S.) use unconditional transfers to help equalize the fiscal capacity of the lower-level governments (Bird 1999). Interestingly, the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR) developed the notion of a representative tax system (RTS) to deal with intergovernmental fiscal disparities that was adopted in Canada and other federal countries but not the U.S. (Bird 1999). The RTS evaluates states’ tax capacity by estimating the per capita yields that a hypothetical, uniform tax rate would produce in each state. This provides a measure of the capability of that governmental entity to finance its public services. Also important is to compare the tax capacity with the actual tax effort in the states (ACIR 1962). The ACIR regularly issued reports providing the tax capacity and tax effort numbers from 1962 through 1988. It also recommended the use of a fiscal capacity index such as the RTS for use in equalization grants. Other measures, such as one measuring Total Taxable Resources, have been developed and used to compare states annually (Mikesell 2007). But to date, these efforts are largely academic and have not been incorporated into federal grant policy. A Brief History In addition to the federal debt takeover, President Jefferson again extended the scope of the federal government by making funds available to states from the sale of land with the proceeds targeted to education. As Break (1980) put it, the expansive acreage of the public domain was to serve as the principal instrument of fiscal federalism, with land grants performing the same function in the nineteenth century as money grants in the twentieth century. While initially provided only to new states, with the Morrill Act in 1862, all states received

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land grant subsidies for the support of agricultural colleges. Interestingly, the first Congressionally passed Morrill Act was vetoed by President James Buchanan since he felt it “would be an actual consolidation of the federal and state governments so far as the great taxing and money power is concerned and constitute a sort of partnership between the two in the Treasury of the United States, equally ruinous to both” (cited in Break 1980, p. 43). By the end of the nineteenth century, money grants-in-aid to achieve national objectives with conditions for the use of funding had become accepted. In 1911 the first matching grant was enacted. With the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913 the national government had more funding to send along to states and localities. Break (1980) notes that the new amendment also created a new link between each taxpayer and Washington which had previously only collected indirect taxes. Now, he concludes, the federal government had a direct stake in the economic well-being of the citizenry. During and following President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, the federal government saw itself as ultimately responsible for the physical, social, and economic well-being of the entire populace. Break thinks that the intertwined nature of intergovernmental relations was forged during this period which saw federal aid to states and localities increase enormously. Also important to fiscal federalism during this time was the popularity of direct grants and loans to cities for a variety of programs including unemployment relief, public works, and housing. During the Eisenhower administration, the low match in intergovernmental grants was launched with the generous 90/10 match of the interstate highway system, along with several national commissions to examine the nation’s complex multi-level system of taxing and spending. President Eisenhower established the Commission on Intergovernmental Relations in 1953 to conduct a broad-ranging review of federal, state, and local relationships—the first such review since the founding of the country. There was overall angst that the federal government had become too dominant, and states and localities were reduced to administrative provinces (Commission on Intergovernmental Relations 1955). As is typical in what became known as First Generation Fiscal Federalism, the Commission tackled the functional question of what governments should do what. The Commission report issued in 1955 made a series of recommendations to separate tax sources, sort out functions, and make sense of an already complex and confusing system. It examined 12 policy areas from agriculture to welfare, providing guidance concerning which government should shoulder the primary responsibilities. The commission also developed general principles for dividing up responsibilities: Leave to private initiative all the functions that citizens can perform privately; use the level of government closest to the community for all public functions it can

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handle; utilize cooperative intergovernmental arrangements where appropriate to attain economical performance and popular approval; reserve national actions for residual participation where state and local governments are not fully adequate, and for the continuing responsibilities that only the national government can undertake. (p. 6)

The Johnson administration’s Great Society created an elaborate network of recipient agencies for a great outpouring of federal grants. The administration sought to specify national objectives and to implement them with categorical grants—a lot of categorical grants. In 1962, federal categorical grants totaled 160; only five years later, the number had jumped to 379 (Bamberger 2006). To curtail this inflexible, categorized system—with each category spawning its own supportive Congressional constituency irrespective of state priorities—the Nixon administration launched a replacement: general revenue sharing (GRS) and block grants—a system that greatly enhanced state discretion but that did not survive or make the long-term changes intended in fiscal federalism. General revenue sharing (GRS) was important to fiscal federalism since it was devised by economist Walter Heller who argued that state and local governments were bearing fiscal pressures from a growing country whose citizens were demanding more services and should be helped with a program of unrestricted grants that could be used for almost any purpose. GRS would serve the dual purpose of assisting needy states and localities and stimulating the economy (Break 1980). The State and Local Fiscal Assistance Act establishing revenue sharing was passed in 1972 with one-third of the funding going to states and two-thirds to localities. By 1980, the states were removed from the program; by 1986 GRS was eliminated. The presidency of Ronald Reagan saw the curtailing of both the number of grants and their total outlays for the first time since World War II (Congressional Research Service 2019). He was less successful in his push for block grants. Specifically, his administration sought to consolidate 77 federal grant programs into nine block grants—notably with funding significantly below the aggregate level of the categorial grants they replaced. Few block grants emerged. The concept has persisted, however. A number of congressional efforts to block grant Medicaid, the open-ended federal-state program providing health care to the poor, have been introduced in Congress and failed—beginning in 1981 and ending most recently with a proposal by President Trump (Kincaid 2017). In a 1980 conference on the future of federalism sponsored by the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, participants expressed concern about the overweening federal role—especially in fiscal federalism. Of particular concern was the “fundamental mismatch” between federal and

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state governments in terms of revenues (Weissert 1980). However Political Scientist Aaron Wildavsky was more positive about the increasing national role, noting it was not simply greed, but rather there are more problems that are interstate, that cross city boundaries and county boundaries than there used to be. The result of this has been an increasing recognition that in order to capture those effects within a decision, the responsibilities for those decisions have had to be moved to a higher level. Other panelists were concerned with regional inequities, for example with states rich in natural resources (Weissert 1980).

SECOND GENERATION FISCAL FEDERALISM In the 1990s, a group of economists began to question some of the assumptions of the FGFF scholars, notably that governmental actions were benevolent and that intergovernmental grants were the primary means to make intergovernmental fiscal adjustments. They argued that incentives, competition, and institutions were key elements of the real world of fiscal federalism. Calling themselves second generation fiscal federalism (SGFF) scholars, they noted that political and institutional constraints play an important role in intergovernmental economics. Understanding the incentives of politicians is key. Instead of improving the world, these politicians may well be more concerned about winning the next election. Inman (1988) was among the first to add politics to economic modeling of the grant system. He noted that state and local officials were not necessarily acting as economists might predict. For example, they treated federal grant dollars differently than their own taxes—something economists call the flypaper effect where state and local spending is much more responsive to increases in intergovernmental receipts than to the community’s private income. Not surprisingly, money in hand (from grants) is viewed differently than money that must be raised from taxation of often grumpy constituents. Inman and Rubinfeld (1997) argued that rethinking (fiscal) federalism means rethinking institutions such as the number of lower-tier governments, their representation to the central legislature, and the assignment of policy responsibilities between the center and lower tiers. These decisions will have important implications for economic efficiency, but also for political participation and the protection of rights. Rodden (2006) highlights the role of constitutions and notes that federal constitutions are important not because they solve the assignment problem, but because they structure the ongoing intergovernmental contracting process. Weingast (2009) is squarely in the second generation with his focus on market-preserving federalism which highlights incentives for government officials and emphasizes decentralization as a mechanism to control an expansive public sector and support private market activity.

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Key to this new approach was the idea that competition among local governments forces governments to represent citizen interests and preserve markets (Qian and Weingast 1997). Competition hardens the budget constraints of local government and changes the incentives of local politicians. Competition is important to SGFF, but competition among jurisdictions can also result in distorted levels of economic activity. SGFF emphasizes the critical importance of local government revenue generation which is both economically and politically relevant. It increases the incentives to provide citizens with market-enhancing goods, but it also makes local governments more responsive to citizens and reduces corruption (Weingast 2009). One economist who bridged first and second generation fiscal federalism is Alice Rivlin (1992) whose book Reviving the American Dream called for a sorting out of policy responsibilities and new revenues for states. She urged the elimination of federal programs in education, job training, community development, transportation, and social services. States would take on those responsibilities to be financed in part by common shared taxes across the states. She also proposed the federal takeover of Medicaid. Although she was the head of the Office of Management and Budget during the Clinton administration, like other bold federalism proposals, her plan was not seriously considered by the Congress.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN FGFF AND SGFF While SGFF clearly builds on its predecessor, there are important differences in the approaches. The FGFF highlights intergovernmental transfers; the SGFF places greater emphasis on the importance of revenue generation by subnational governments and incentives generated by local tax generation for fostering local economic prosperity. FGFF focuses on what should be done; the SGFF on what are the conditions under which decentralization can yield positive results. FGFF highlights efficiency and equity; SGFF deals with discipline on self-serving politicians and government and the excessive growth of the public sector (Jha 2015). Compared to FGFF, SGFF scholars tend to examine fiscal breakdowns that can result from perverse incentives (Oates 2005). Some perverse incentives flow from the intergovernmental fiscal systems—especially whether the subnational units have soft budget constraints where they look to the national government to rescue them from fiscal distress. In this case they have an incentive to underperform and make imprudent financial decisions. In contrast, hard budget constraints such as a strong local system of taxation, balanced budget constraints, and limitations on debt can provide incentives for responsible fiscal behavior.

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Importantly, and what Weingast (2014) calls the hallmark of second generation models, is that they trace the implications of the incentives created by political and fiscal institutions. The normative component of SGFF models studies how to devise political and fiscal institutions to align the incentives of political officials with citizens. SGFF scholars recognize that political, economic, and cultural institutions and history are important in modeling fiscal federalism; in other words, one federalism blueprint does not fit every country. SGFF has led to more interdisciplinary work, particularly with political scientists. The FGFF—what Oates calls the traditional theory of fiscal federalism—was primarily economists. While economists clearly still dominate fiscal federalism, some well-cited and pivotal research flows from political scientists including Barry Weingast, Jonathan Rodden, and Eric Wibbels. Rodden notes that political scientists have been concerned about federalism’s perils while economists have focused on its promises—this is ironic given economics’ frequent characterization as the “dismal science” (Carden 2022). The scope of SGFF is wide. Scholars study differences among federal systems and the impact of these differences on economic development, government growth, stability, and corruption. They examine how the tax system affects political officials’ incentives. They examine hard budget constraints vs. soft budget leniency (McKinnon 1997; Poterba and Rueben 1997; Wibbels 2003). Many SGFF scholars look at fiscal decentralization which is clearly different from federalism but entails important aspects that can be measured. Often used is a measure by the International Monetary Fund called “fiscal decentralization” which is the subcentral governments’ spending divided by total government spending. Others have used subcentral governments’ revenues divided by total government revenues (Rodden 2003; Stegarescu 2005; Fiva 2006; Thornton 2007; Lessmann 2009). Interestingly, given the importance of institutions in SGFF, they are not reflected in many fiscal decentralization measures. Sorens (2011) offers a measure that does reflect institutions that entails policy scope, fiscal autonomy, and representation. He finds that fiscal federalism reduces government spending—especially when the number of subnational governments is higher.

EMPIRICAL ANALYSES OF FISCAL DECENTRALIZATION SGFF has spawned both single-country and multi-country research. Using both approaches, scholars seek to understand the effect of decentralization on the size of government, economic growth, corruption, and democracy.

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Size of Public Sector Research is mixed on the linkage between the size of the public sector and fiscal decentralization (Oates 1999). While single-state studies have found that fiscal centralization is linked to lower government spending (Marlow 1988; Grossman 1989; Feld, Kirchgassner and Schaltegger 2010), multi-state analysis has been much more mixed (Martinez-Vazquez and Yao 2009). Rodden (2003) found that decentralization is conditioned by the nature of fiscal federalism. Where state and local government have wide-ranging authority to set the tax base and rates, decentralization is associated with smaller government (as measured by total government expenditures as a percentage of GDP). However, where intergovernmental transfers replace local taxation, governments grow faster. In reviewing the literature on decentralization and growth of the public sector, Martinez-Vazquez, Lago-Penas and Sacchi (2017) concluded that decentralization was likely to lead to increases in the public payroll, but this does not to have to mean a less efficient public sector. Economic Growth Federalism may preserve the efficient properties of market economics from the threat of over-regulation and rent seeking. Decentralized provision of services can increase growth by encouraging innovation and reform. However, decentralization can also increase government efficiency and encourage corruption, thus diminishing economic growth. Which effect is correct depends on a nation’s institutional framework and its quality (Baskaran, Feld and Schnellenbach 2016). Also important is the definition of decentralization. Does it measure spending or revenues? Does it account for fiscal transfers? In these studies economic growth is often measured as growth or real GDP per capita. While a formal theory approach finds support for federalism and tax policy that maximizes economic growth (Hatfield 2006), empirical research is decidedly more mixed. Ozkok and Cutcu (2022) surveyed single-state analyses of the impact of fiscal federalism on economic growth in seven countries and found mixed results, although more studies found a positive impact of fiscal decentralization on economic growth than found a negative impact or no relationship. Davoodi and Zou (1997) found a negative relationship between economic growth and fiscal decentralization (although Hatfield 2006 notes that they do not distinguish states where national revenues are doled out to local governments and those where revenues are raised locally). Baskaran, Feld and Schnellenbach (2016) compared the results of 15 empirical cross-country studies and found ambiguous results. However, they

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noted that there were differences in whether decentralization was measured as spending or revenue. Gemmel, Kneller and Sanz (2013) found that spending decentralization tended to reduce economic growth while revenue decentralization significantly increased growth. Both first and second generation fiscal federalism scholars emphasize the importance of revenue generation by subnational governments as a way to hold those governments accountable to citizens and to improve the efficiency of local governance and ultimately national economic development. Spending decentralization lacks these connections since they often reflect increasing transfers which can make local governments less accountable for their fiscal decisions and less likely to improve the efficiency of their operations. Clearly it is important to examine differing institutional designs that define the economic impacts of federalism. But even single-country studies find different results (Wallis 1999; Xie, Zou and Davoodi 1999; Akai and Sakata 2002). These studies, and others examined by Baskaran, Feld and Schnellenbach (2016) differed in their modeling and variable choices. They conclude that there needs to be more theoretical effort in determining the mechanisms through which decentralization affects economic growth which will improve the empirical specifications and perhaps lead to more convergence of findings. Uttermark (2020) posited that self-rule and shared-rule federalism would have differing effects on economic development: countries with self-rule federalism would experience greater levels of economic development; those with shared-rule would be associated with a deceleration in the rate of economic development. However, in a study of 71 countries over 40 years, he found no association between either self-rule or shared-rule and economic development, supporting the argument that the linkage is weak or even nonexistent. Corruption While there is an argument that decentralization should reduce the incidence of corruption, there is also a counter-argument that it should increase it. The negative relationship is expected due to the impact of competition on the likelihood of officials to extract rents in exchange for services. Increased accountability to citizens from lower-level officials also augurs for less corruption. However, some argue that local officials may be poorly trained and thus unable to realize the benefits from decentralization. The empirical results testing the impact of decentralization on corruption are mixed. Fisman and Gatti (2002a), de Mello and Barenstein (2001), Arikan (2004), and Dell’Anno and Teobaldelli (2015) found that decentralization is associated with lower levels of corruption. Goldsmith (1999), Treisman

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(2000), and Kunicova and Rose-Ackerman (2005) found that political decentralization was associated with greater corruption. Other important conditions that seem to affect the relationship are the level of political competition (Albornoz and Cabrales 2013), extent of federal transfers (Fisman and Gatti 2002b), number of governmental tiers, and larger subnational bureaucracies (Fan, Lin and Treisman 2009). Important in this literature is measurement. Some scholars examine fiscal decentralization and others political decentralization. One early study (which found a positive relationship with corruption) used a dichotomous variable for federalism (Treisman 2000). Within the fiscal decentralization literature, results differ whether it is revenue or expenditure decentralization. Measures of corruption vary enormously as well. Endogenity is also a concern (Martinez-Vazquez, Lago-Penas and Sacchi 2017). The situation is probably best expressed by Fan, Lin and Treisman (2009) when they concluded that given the complicated, interacting effects posited by theorists, it seems quite unlikely that there is a simple, general relationship between decentralization and corruption. Federalism and Democracy Federalism and democracy and the stability of federalism are also a focus of SGFF scholars. Fiscal decentralization enforces democracy since it lowers the stakes of national elections, making the democracy more stable, and enhances accountability (Weingast 2009). Weingast (2014) points to decentralization as a way to sustain democracy in divided societies such as Belgium, India, Spain, and South Africa. However, sometimes decentralization can exacerbate conflict as it did in Colombia when local groups had the authority and resources to fight. Finally, elections can be used by authoritarian national leaders to gain social control as in Mexico where the PRI threatened localities who supported the opposition party with loss of revenues. Thus, voters who voted against the PRI were voting for fewer services—an unappealing choice. Why do political officials honor the rules of federalism? Sometimes they don’t as in Mexico, a federal country that is highly centralized. Riker (1964) noted two threats to stability of federations: centralization and alternatively, free-riding and common pool problems at the local level. SGFF also examines the stability of federal systems. If central governments are too overweening so that differences in regional tastes cannot be accommodated, the units may resort to secession. Federations can be undermined from the top by central intrusion and the takeover of decentralized functions and, alternatively, the opportunistic efforts of decentralized governments to raid the

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fiscal commons and obtain local benefits at the expense of other jurisdictions (Oates 2005). To avoid these threats, the national level should be sufficiently strong to rein in regional and local governments when needed and yet have adequate constraints to keep the central government under control (Oates 2005). How to do this? Weingast (2014) argues what is needed is an integrated party system, coordination among units, and a constitutional court. These self-enforcing federations can interact with a market economic to provide what Qian and Weingast (1997) call market-preserving federalism. Key here is competition in both the private market and the public sector in which intensive and destructive behavior is discouraged by an effective set of penalties.

FEDERALISM IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES While the majority of federalism and fiscal federalism research has focused on developed countries, SGFF scholars have broken the mold by analyzing intergovernmental fiscal relationships in developing countries. In part this interest stems from the fact that developing countries have different institutional structures, but also even those with traditional federalism institutions operate quite differently from countries with long-standing federations. Subnational entities in developing countries often have weak bureaucracies, limited technical and administrative capacity, and poor mechanisms of political accountability (Bardhan 2006). They have few incentives to foster markets and often have very little independence (see Wiesner 2003 for a discussion of Bolivia). Also problematic in developing countries is monopolistic behavior on the part of political officials who exchange privileges and other rights for revenue and political support (Weingast 2009). Raising their own revenue is especially important for developing countries— and relatively rare. However, subnational governments that do raise a substantial portion of their own revenue tend to be more accountable to citizens, provide market-enhancing public goods, and are less corrupt (Weingast 2009). Alternatively, local governments that lack independent sources of revenue and rely on grants have less incentive to improve their efficiency and develop innovative methods of public service delivery (Bahl and Linn 1992). Developing countries also tend to be centralized. Weingast (2014) calls them predatory central governments. Even a well-designed federal system can be undermined by central governments that ignore or dominate other governments and have few constraints on their behavior. Also problematic is the lack of commitment in the government when central leaders are not bound to institutions and policies but can change them easily.

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U.S. FEDERAL GRANTS AND SECOND GENERATION FISCAL FEDERALISM Although SGFF does not focus on federal transfers as did FGFF, the development of grants in the U.S. continued—but along political lines that the SGFF scholars would recognize. In the 1980s and 1990s, there was a flurry of enthusiasm about devolution, sometimes called the devolution revolution (Soss et al. 2001; Cho and Wright 2004). The passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 was a major impetus for this rather optimistic pronouncement since it changed an open-ended welfare program to a block grant and extended the discretion of states in some areas (but not others). However, funding for the program has not kept up with inflation. The funding for the program (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) in 2022 is identical to its funding in 1996, a real value fall of 40 percent (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 2022). A 1995 law designed to curb Congress’s use of unfunded mandates on states and localities was similarly highlighted as an important shift away from federal overreach but proved largely ineffective as federal policy makers shifted from mandates to preemption, conditions, and rules to direct state and local actions (Congressional Research Service 2020). By 2000, the devolution era was recognized as delivering considerably less than promised (Bowman 2002) as preemption and mandates continued apace and coercive federalism seemed a more apt description (Kincaid 1990). There was a Republican administration in the White House but one that did not adhere to earlier Republican approaches of turning back responsibility to the states. In fact, President George W. Bush, a former governor, centralized policy through coercive grants and preemption as a way to achieve his own priorities. There were some 57 preemption votes in Congress between 2001 and 2006 on such issues as air pollution, contaminated food, and regulation of the internet. Federal agencies too preempted states in transportation, drugs, and consumer product safety (Conlan and Posner 2011). However, there were some counter-trends of decentralization taking place as well with 24 block grants (up from four in 1980) and an increasing use of waivers for Medicaid, child welfare assistance, and later education (Congressional Research Service 2019). Ironically, the following Democratic President, Barack Obama, espoused a “nationalist” agenda, but, nonetheless, substantially increased federal grants and offered states and localities unprecedented discretion in his signature programs (Conlan and Posner 2011). Federal aid increased from $461 billion in FY 2008 to $624 billion in FY 2011. As a percentage of total spending, federal aid in 2010 was 17.6 percent, one of the highest levels in history (Conlan

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and Posner 2011). The Obama administration safeguarded state discretion in a number of areas including bank regulation and consumer protection. His signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), contained a partial preemption provision giving states the ability to opt out of providing a marketplace where the near-poor could purchase low-cost insurance. In addition, the ACA either authorized or amended 71 federal categorical grants to state and local governments (Congressional Research Service 2019). Republican President Donald Trump attempted to refocus federal grants on high-priority areas, provide a greater role for state and local governments, slow the growth of grant spending over the 10-year budget window, and rein in the growth of Medicaid (Congressional Research Service 2019). However, he was unsuccessful in these efforts; in FY 2023, federal grants topped $1 trillion. Health grants made up over half of the total with Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor and aged making up 93 percent of that category (and around 51 percent of all federal grant spending) (Office of Management and Budget 2023). But most notable in the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama and continuing through the subsequent presidents was the states’ response to federal grants, preemptions, and other actions. Rather than bargain with federal officials, states began to refuse to participate in federal programs. For George W. Bush, it was Democratic states making difficult the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act and the Real ID Act. For Barack Obama, it was Republican states resisting the Affordable Care Act, and some federal stimulus programs. As Conlan and Posner (2011) note, intergovernmental bargaining has been replaced with state resistance to participation in new federal programs. Even with an extremely generous match, a number of states—including two of the three largest in the country—refused to expand Medicaid coverage as part of the ACA. Other states refused to participate in education programs, funding to enhance unemployment insurance, and launching high-speed rail. Clearly politics matters in ways that are still playing out.

FISCAL FEDERALISM ALIVE AND WELL Fiscal federalism scholarship is vibrant and far-reaching. It engages scholars of different disciplines and interests; it includes both normative and empirical work; and it reflects both theory and practice. It has answered some important questions and left others to be dealt with. A big issue, as in other federalism scholarship arenas, is measurement. Clearly federalism cannot be measured with a dichotomous variable. The default has been using a fiscal decentralization measure, although there is little agreement on which such measure is best. But this measure does not reflect institutional issues which are clearly important to current fiscal federalism

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scholars. New measures continue to be developed (see Sorens 2011) but until this measurement issue is resolved, mixed empirical results will likely continue. A second issue relates to developing countries and fiscal federalism. The models most used were applied to developed countries, and we have clear evidence that differences between the operationalization of federalism in developed and developing countries is so substantial as to call into play the need for a new model for these countries. Clearly, these models should reflect more careful theorizing to better understand what is going on. Finally, the recent trend of state resistance should be considered by fiscal federalism scholars. Neither first nor second generation fiscal federalism scholars have included the possibility of “exit” by states and localities in their theories or models. And it seems this resistance is not going away and is evident in the U.S. and other countries as well.

7. A look ahead for federalism scholarship As the earlier chapters have demonstrated, federalism is a vibrant and rich subfield of scholarship that is timely and highly relevant. The good news is that scholars are stepping up to develop new measures and to recognize new avenues of study. Gone is an over-reliance on descriptions and one-country analyses, highly dependent on history and institutions. Dynamism and change are dominant and promising. But there remains more to be done. Any future research agenda must reflect the relevance of federalism in today’s political world. Party polarization or extremism, increased intergovernmental conflict, distrust of government, external threats of global warming and fast-moving pandemics, and criticism of democratic performance are evident across a variety of countries, and federalism can both affect these trends and be affected by them. Also important are the changing role of actors including recognition of the importance of local governments and national, ideological interest groups.

TRENDS AND THREATS First, let’s consider the real world of federalism—both the trends and threats. Polarization and Extreme Partisanship While the states’ role as a counterbalance to federal actions has long been a strength of federalism, more recent hyper-partisanship leads to a more nuanced approach. What we’ve seen in recent years is that partisanship has become a dominant force in federal–state relations in the U.S. States are not only more likely to sue the federal government over actions they dislike, they are also more willing to refuse to act in the manner desired by Washington. This pushback is particularly evident when state governments are headed by members of the opposite party to the president. Partisanship—not what is best for states—is key to these actions. This has led to more differentiation among state policies falling along the Red State, Blue State lines. One example is state election laws. In 2021, 19 states passed restrictions on voting laws while 25 passed provisions expanding 89

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voter access. The states that restricted laws are generally the ones with already less accessible voting processes and those that expanded access added on to already accessible processes. The result, according to the Brennan Center for Justice (2021) is that “access to the right to vote increasingly depends on the state in which a voter happens to reside.” Also key to this partisanship is a change in key actors. Elected officials have often replaced state and local bureaucrats as key policy actors—thus highlighting the importance of ideology and partisanship and diminishing the role of information and expertise in intergovernmental relations. Rather than serving as a relief valve for national policy paralysis, states have now tended collectively to ratify and intensify these conflicts. Partisan polarization has also had another effect on federalism in the U.S.—it is now states, not Washington, that are defining domestic policy. Washington has difficulty reaching consensus on even the most seemingly benign issues, thus leaving policy space for states. States have stepped in to respond to the policy void in the highly salient areas of abortion, guns, and illegal immigrants which might once have been the domain of the federal government. States have also increased their level of activity in economic policy in a highly party-centric manner. For example, in 2022, California announced it would ban the sale of petrol-powered cars beginning in 2035. Also in 2022, West Virginia said it would stop doing business with five major banks which have been critical of coal usage (The Economist 2022). But as Konisky and Nolette (2022) argue, there is another factor giving states more policy leeway. They point out that Republican control over states and their successful efforts in the federal courts to limit the reach of the federal government (both agencies and the president) has also shifted the power to states, particularly state legislatures, to enact what for some are long-held conservative policy goals. It is important to note that extreme partisanship is not unique to the U.S. According to McCoy, Rahman and Somer (2018), governments across the globe are experiencing similar partisan polarization. Increasing Intergovernmental Conflict A truism of federalism scholarship is its dynamic nature. But less is known about how and why federal systems evolve and change (Eccleston, Krever and Smith 2017). Bednar (2011) argues that we need to develop a theory of the dynamics of federalism’s boundaries. Benz and Colino (2011) describe four types of change: reform; innovation; evolution; and adjustment. Change can also be formal or informal in nature. Change can come from within or through exogenous forces. Arnold, Mueller and Vatter (2021) compared fiscal decentralization in unitary and federal countries flowing from exogeneous

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shocks and deliberate state reforms. They found that exogenous shocks (the 2007–8 Great Recession) led to centralization in unitary governments while in federal states this shock affected neither expenditure nor revenue centralization or decentralization. State reforms led to expenditure decentralization. Chattopadhyay and Knupling (2021) note that in some countries—Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Malaysia—there seem to be strong calls for more decentralization of powers to substate governments following their response to COVID-19. One could argue that conflict is part and parcel of federalism, going back to James Madison’s famous ambition countering ambition notion. Thus, federal conflict is a fundamental protection of freedom (Riker 1987). However, conflict between states can be problematic for federalism. One example is the interest in some states in the U.S. to punish people out of state who aid and abet the abortions of their citizens. The federal government may be forced to get involved in these issues, much as it did in the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act which required escaped slaves in free states to be returned to their owners (The Economist 2022). This concern for conflict is illustrated by a recent survey of nearly 9,000 Americans that found that half of the respondents said there would be a civil war in America within the next few years (The Economist 2022). Federalism can be used to provide agency to different ethnic, racial, linguistic, or religious groups within a country and to maintain the country itself. But what institutional structure should that federation embrace, and does it mitigate conflict among the groups (Keil 2019)? Does peace-preserving federalism really work? Current empirical work is mixed, and more analysis is needed. Changing Roles of Actors The dynamic nature of federalism involves changes in institutions, policies, and the roles of intergovernmental actors. As discussed earlier, power has shifted to states in the U.S. because of a lack of federal action and a step-up in states’ resistance to federal actions and preferences. Particularly noteworthy is the power shift within states. Some literature supports the notion that executive federalism is on the rise; getting more visibility is a new judicial theory giving more power to legislatures. A more consistently acknowledged shift is more power to national interest groups that operate within states. Executive federalism Executives at both national and state levels took primary responsibility for pandemic responses in 2020 and 2021—diminishing the role of legislatures in Australia, the U.S., and other federations (Schnabel and Hegele 2021). In some sense, this flowed from the emergency nature of the event. Actions had to be

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taken quickly—not lending themselves to the more laborious policy-making process of state legislatures. But even before the pandemic, governors in the U.S. were stepping up as leaders in partisan times. As Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina put it, “Americans look at governors as someone who gets things done and who doesn’t just sit at a table and yell at each other like they do in Congress or state legislatures” (Glueck 2022). The Supreme Court seems to agree, turning over questions from guns to abortion rights to the states and their governors. State legislatures A new judicial doctrine called independent state legislature theory argues that it is the state legislatures in electoral matters that have sole power—not the governors or the courts who routinely rule in these areas based on state constitutions. The independent state legislatures theory, articulated by North Carolina in a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court redistricting case, argues that the U.S. Constitution’s Election Clause gives state legislatures the power to determine how Congressional elections are conducted without any checks and balances from state constitutions or state courts. If the Supreme Court endorses this sweeping and novel notion, it could be applied to partisan gerrymandering, election rules, and the selection of presidential electors, making state lawmakers, not courts, the judges in any election disputes (Wang 2022). It is also important to note that in the court cases pitting the governor against the legislative branch during COVID-19, state legislatures frequently prevailed. Local governments U.S. and comparative scholars agree that local government plays an essential role in intergovernmental relations and should be so recognized and more extensively studied. A lion’s share of the day-to-day operation of policies to deal with COVID-19 fell to local government. Also important were local policies that differed from their states’ when the differential effects of COVID played out with some areas of a state largely unscathed and others, often urban areas, hard-hit. But even before COVID, there were calls for constitutional recognition of local governments and more research on them. Research should also deal with problems of local governmental resources which came to light during COVID-19. Too often there was not enough staffing or funding for local employees to carry out their responsibilities. And, sadly, little seems to have changed when the pandemic abated. Any future pandemics or similar external shocks will continue to find under-resourced local government tasked with ways to deal with them. Partisanship might also be further studied following the experiences during the pandemic when local governments were often overruled (or steam-rollered) by governors and state

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legislatures, especially when state and local officials were of different parties (Weissert et al. 2021). Gerber and Hopkins (2011) found that the role of partisanship in mayoral decisions is important in areas where there is more local discretion but less evident in areas with strong federal or state involvement. Interest groups Interest groups are clearly important intergovernmental actors, but research on their actions and especially their impacts is difficult to find. Some scholars analyze interest group activities related to specific policies, often focusing on one level of government. But as Miller (2007) puts it, policy issues are federalized, meaning that issues often occupy the legislative agendas of all three levels of government simultaneously. The notion of venue shopping posits that policy advocates and interests can move from one level to another if they don’t get what they want; but as Miller points out issues of education, health, criminal justice, and the environment are often considered by federal and state government at the same time. Importantly Miller highlights the role of local government which is often ignored in interest group and policy research. Interest groups and partisan/ideological polarization are another important trend that lends itself to more research. Especially important are national interest groups who can venue shop to seek desired state action when their demands are unsuccessful in Washington. Miras and Rouse (2022) note that this “safety valve” role grows more valuable as polarization increases. These groups are often more extreme than the average voter who is not closely following state actions and thus not likely to punish officials for their hyper-responsiveness (Bawn et al. 2012). Public Opinion and Federalism Elazar (1987, p. 231) noted that the “degree of success or failure in the application of federal principles and arrangements to those ends depends not simply on the erection of federal structures but on the creation of appropriate publics as well.” Bednar (2011) cited public opinion as a safeguard of federalism, but one where empirical support was limited. Clearly public opinion is crucial to the validity and effectiveness of federalism as a political system. But it has been difficult, and frustrating, to study how well informed citizens are of their governments and how they trust or support federalism. First, do they know what federalism is—examined by whether they can assign responsibility for political outcomes to federal and state governments. Some research indicates largely that they cannot (Maestas et al. 2008; Johns 2011). But other research has found that citizens do have a meaningful and accurate understanding of governmental responsibilities (Schneider and

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Jacoby 2003; Schneider, Jacoby and Lewis 2011). Arceneaux (2005) coined the term intuitive federalism to mean that individuals are generally able to discuss and support governmental actions at the level at which that action is likely to take place. Schneider, Jacoby and Lewis (2011) concluded that the public has a reasonably clear picture of what they want different levels of government to do. Nevertheless, given the importance of public opinion to the functioning of federalism, more scholarship is needed. Second, do they value federalism, and if so, in what way? Here measurement issues rear their head again. Survey questions typically deal with trust of or confidence in (level of) government or support of policy devolution (Cole, Kincaid and Rodriguez 2004; Wlezien and Soroka 2011; Wolak 2016; Dinan and Heckelman 2020). Leland et al. (2021) argue that relative trust in state vs. federal government, rather than absolute trust, is key in predicting support for devolution. Partisanship and ideology have been recognized as important to citizens’ trust of different governments, support of devolution, and blame in the wake of government failure (Maestas et al. 2008; Malhotra and Kuo 2008; Wolak 2016; Morisi, Jost and Singh 2019; Dinan and Heckelman 2020). However, a recent study, using a new dataset measuring attitudes toward federalism found that citizens’ views are structured less by short-term political interests than by core preferences for the distribution of state authority (Rendleman and Rogowski 2022). Several scholars have examined the assignment of policy responsibility to actions during crises. For example, Maestas et al. (2008) found that citizens struggled to assign responsibility and blame for mistakes made in responding to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Indeed, politics made this harder since the chief elected officials of each level blamed their counterparts, often and loudly. Blame-casting was also evident in justifying the COVID-19 responses (Rodden 2021). Schildkraut, Berry and Glaser (2020) examined survey data about governmental responsibility for COVID-19 and found that it is partisanship, rather than ideological commitment to small or large government, that predicts which level of government can best deal with the pandemic. Pears and Sydnor (2022) also using survey data found that both partisanship and ideology played major roles in trust at both the national and state level. Munoz (2017) has identified the importance of trust in shaping political attitudes in a wide range of federalism contexts, and Munoz, Torcai and Bonet (2011) found that trust in one’s country is an important predictor of trust in the European Union—an interesting finding for U.S. scholars who have not linked specific state residents’ views of trust with national views. Given the importance of the relationship between federalism and trust in government and the disparate findings, more research is clearly needed. Perhaps Rendleman and Rogowski’s (2022) new measure will be used by

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other U.S. and comparative scholars to more fully understand these relationships. Also promising is experimental work using online surveys that allows researchers to explore various scenarios (see Malhotra and Kuo 2008; Kolcak and McCabe 2022). Democratic Performance and Representation The normative linkage between federalism and democratic performance is long-standing and strong (Elazar 1987; Hueglin 2021). Experience with elections helps build democratic skills, and federalism provides multiple political offices the public must fill (Bednar 2011). However, Wlezien and Soroka (2011) and Soroka and Wlezien (2010) conclude that federalism tends to substantially dampen public responsiveness and representation. And democratic performance in a federal system has been brought into question in the U.S. in recent years. Free and fair elections—which are run by states and local governments—are pillars of American democracy. But this depends on the public perceiving that voting is easy and accessible and that results are determined fairly and accurately. Recent polls have produced troublesome indications that a non-insubstantial number of citizens do not think elections are fair and unbiased. For example, a survey of Florida voters in 2022 found that some 40 percent of respondents believe that absentee ballots are stolen or thrown away at least some of the time and a similar percentage (37 percent) believes that at least some of the time, someone steals an absentee ballot, changes it and casts it (Atkeson et al. 2022). A national survey found that less than half—47 percent of the public—is confident the midterm votes would be counted accurately (AP/NORC 2022). Another troublesome finding from the Florida survey related to democratic performance was when respondents were asked which of the following was most important: ensuring that everyone who is eligible has the right to vote or protecting the voting system against fraud. Fewer than half (43 percent) of Florida voters indicated that ensuring that everyone who is eligible has the right to vote is more important while 55 percent indicated that protecting the system against fraud was a higher priority. Only 12 percent of Republicans believe it is more important to ensure that everyone who is eligible has the right to vote compared to 81 percent of Democrats. Another type of feedback is from participants. In her study of Medicaid, Michener (2018) explored federalism’s implication for democratic participation. She found that beneficiaries living in states offering a wide swath of services, fiscally equipped bureaucracies, and expanding Medicaid programs are significantly more likely to participate in politics. Those in states without

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services and staffing do not participate in politics. Thus, inequality—the cost of federalism—extends to the core of democracy—our political participation. Scholarship on federalism has also examined how it promotes representative democracy. Federalism can create a more informed and involved public and enhanced accountability. It allows residents of states to choose policies they prefer which may differ substantially from those of other states. This attribute leads to one of the important disadvantages—inequity in the treatment of citizens. Enhanced accountability is also far from evident. For example, Rogers (2017) found that state legislators do not face meaningful electoral consequences for their ideological representation, particularly where the legislators receive less media attention, have larger staff, and represent more partisan districts. There are a number of examples where voters through the initiative process enacted a law that the legislatures then largely ignored—seemingly with little negative response. In 2017, the South Dakota legislature repealed a voter-approved initiative that would have limited political contributions and created a state campaign ethics commission. Maine voters in 2016 approved four initiatives, two of which were repealed by the legislature. In 2015, Ohio voters passed an amendment to the state constitution requiring that state legislative districts be shaped so that the makeup of the legislature is proportional to the makeup of the state. However, in 2021 and 2022 the Republican legislature was unable to draw maps that met that standard in the eyes of the state Supreme Court. When the legislature did not have new maps in time for the 2022 election that could meet the standard, districts were drawn that did not meet the standard (Mayer 2022). How can the voters be ignored in South Dakota, Maine, Ohio, and elsewhere? Probably because the members run in safe seats as a result of partisan redistricting—that the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to overturn. Often, they run in uncontested seats—giving the voters even less of a voice in their statehouse response. Why is this important to federalism? The U.S. Supreme Court is increasingly willing to turn over important societal issues to states, and states are increasingly less representative of their constituents. There is also the intrastate issue of governors versus legislatures that is important to federalism policy. Representation and accountability are compromised in federations by polarization where politicians can work to mobilize their base and have few reasons to worry about being punished by their mistakes. Beramendi and Rodden (2022) note that a pandemic like COVID can create new opportunities for political parties to push their preexisting ideological agendas and exploit new ways to demonize the out-party.

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Future research in democratic performance and federalism may be enhanced by a new set of measures of subnational democratic performance developed in the United States. Grumbach (2022b) using a new State Democracy Index found that it was partisanship, not party competition, polarization, demographic change, or group interests, that predicted democratic performance; Republican control of state government dramatically reduced states’ democratic performance in the period from 2000 to 2018 (Grumbach 2022b). Other scholars have developed similar measures of the cost of voting and difficulty of registration that can also help examine factors that predict democratic performance in federal countries (Corasaniti and McCann 2022; Jansa, Motta and Herrick 2022).

HOW CAN SCHOLARS RESPOND? The trends discussed here in the United States are also found in other countries. The issue then is how do federalism scholars deal with these trends and threats? How can our research be more relevant and timely? In the political world, federalism has become recognized and valued. How can we as scholars take advantage of its relevance and bring our theories and research methods to bear on these and other long-standing issues? First, it is important to recognize that U.S. federalism and comparative federalism scholarship are different in their strengths and weaknesses in a manner that can be used to improve both. U.S federalism scholarship has long published excellent research on policy diffusion and states as laboratories of democracy. This work has expanded in both theoretical concerns and methodological approaches, particularly in interstate diffusion. Less studied or examined theoretically is vertical diffusion, where states learn from the feds and importantly where feds learn from the states. While policy adoption is an important measure, there are other possibilities including agenda setting that can be developed. Comparative work is less robust in this area although diffusion in the EU would be a worthwhile endeavor, particularly in terms of vertical diffusion. However, COVID-19 did provide examples in Australia, Germany, and India where actions in one state served as a template for others dealing with similar problems (Chattopadhyay and Knupling 2021). In India the national government copied the state of Kerala which was the first jurisdiction to advance an economic support package (Saxena 2020). Diffusion research can help chart the impacts of the IGR trends discussed earlier: partisan polarization; changing roles of actors; distrust of government; and concerns about democratic performance.

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Intergovernmental Conflict U.S. federalism scholarship is also robust in the area of state pushback from the federal government; however, the work is largely descriptive. While pushback is not new and has been well documented, partisan polarization in the U.S. has intensified the pushback in both numbers of instances and depth of the response. But what does this pushback tell us about federalism and public policy? What methods and what data can we use to answer these questions? One approach—a formal theoretical approach to what states will do in response to a federal action—has not been widely used in U.S. federalism scholarship (but see Hill and Weissert 1995; Volden 2007; Zuber 2011). Formal theory highlights actors, not institutions, an approach used more widely in comparative scholarship than U.S. federalism scholarship (Weissert and Fahey 2018). However, intergovernmental conflict can entail more than state pushback. It includes state–local relations and intragovernmental battles between executive and legislative branches and even the courts. Comparative scholars excel at studying asymmetric federalism which highlights federations where some states are treated differently from others based on ethnic, cultural, or linguistic distinctness. The most studied asymmetric federations are Canada, Spain, Belgium, and India (Swenden 2002; Tillin 2007). Although the U.S. is considered symmetric, not asymmetric, there are non-state units that are treated very differently including Native American nations, unincorporated territories, and the District of Columbia. These have not been a focus of federalism scholarship in the U.S. An extension of pushback—and an extreme form of intergovernmental conflict—is secession and nullification, which is practiced, if not widely studied (but see Levinson 2016). The differing approaches of U.S. and comparative federalism scholars toward conflict issues is instructive. Perhaps U.S. scholars can learn from the work on asymmetric (and even secession) scholarship and comparative scholars can examine evidence of pushback in federations, especially from the recent pandemic responses. Actor-Focused Research Comparative scholars have focused much more on actor-focused research than U.S. scholars who typically are concerned with institutions. However, possible shifts in actor responsibility in the U.S. outlined in this book augur for more attention to this area in scholarship. Interest groups are a topic where both U.S. and comparative scholars might engage. Apart from the increasing role national interest groups are playing in U.S. states, partisan interest groups of state elected officials are also possible

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targets of federalism scholars. When these groups choose to target national or individual state officials and how they do it (along with how successful they are) is important to understanding the process of federalism in the U.S. While comparative scholars have studied lobbyists at the EU and national levels more frequently, more empirical work can be developed to understand the determinants of both lobbying engagement and success. Similarly local governments as federalism players are under-studied in both U.S. and comparative federalism. Urban scholarship is robust but generally does not deal with localities as intergovernmental actors. Case studies during COVID-19 provided some evidence of the importance of local governments, and examples of state preemption of local governments highlight the dynamic nature of state–local relations in the U.S. New data on local governments in both the U.S. and other countries should facilitate the research agenda relating to local governments. Other actors, including nonprofits, private entities, and the media, play a role in how federations operate as well. Study of these important interactions can best be accomplished by network analysis—a technique not widely used in either U.S. or comparative scholarship. Public Opinion, Democratic Performance, and Representation Public opinion and federalism is an area where both U.S. and comparative scholarship could be more engaged. Such research can move beyond trust in individual governments and tests of citizen knowledge of governmental responsibilities and deal with issues of public support of federalism as a political institution and how successfully blame-casting can affect the public’s views on federalism as well as individual governments. Political parties have long been recognized as essential to successful federations but are surprisingly not well studied in either the U.S. or other countries. More work to clarify the relationship between the centralization of political parties and federalism is one avenue of potential research. The nexus between political parties and interest groups and how that affects federalism is also an area ripe for further research. The U.S. is not the only federation where the election systems are under scrutiny with widespread calls for change. Many of these changes get to the heart of federalism and need to be carefully studied. What difference does it make whether elections are decentralized as they are in the U.S. or centralized as they are in other countries? What components of elections are especially important for centralization or decentralization? Finally, the key area of accountability—one that clearly seems a positive aspect of federalism—is another area where more research is needed. If the public is not holding political officials accountable for their actions, as some

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research has documented, the advantages of making public policy closer to voters as they are in a federal system becomes less important. Constitutions have long played an important role in U.S. and comparative federalism and, will no doubt, continue to do so. In the U.S., state constitutions also play a pivotal role in defining federalism and enabling a variety of state responses. When the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the national right to abortions and handed it over to the states, state constitutions, particularly their “rights to privacy” provisions immediately came into play. States without these provisions scrambled to put that language or more specific language related to abortion in their constitutions. State constitutions also play a key role in defining governance and protecting rights (Dinan 2019). Bulman-Pozen and Seifter (2021) argue that state constitutions are part of the solution to current problems in the United States since state constitutions provide for more rights and give states more majoritarian influence than national level. State constitutions guarantee popular sovereignty, majority rule, and political equality that can counter the threat of state officials quietly changing election laws. State courts interpreting these constitutions are thus well situated to counter any possible election subversion (as long as the independent state legislature theory is not upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court). In one practical recognition of their importance to protection of rights, in 2022 the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) diverted several hundred million dollars away from the federal-level races to invest in state constitutional issues and state Supreme Court justice races (The Economist 2022). Systematic examination of existing and proposed state constitutional language on these and other issues would be a boon to federalism research. Also important would be an analysis of subnational constitutions in other federal countries, an area that Dinan (2019) feels has been less studied. He notes that examination of how these constitutions affect governance and how they protect rights more rigorously than the federal constitution would be especially valuable.

FINAL SUGGESTIONS Apart from these suggestions, there are a few more cross-cutting ideas for improved federalism scholarship. • More clarity and fewer federalism aphorisms. One of the oldest items on a federalism scholarship wish list is more theory-based research, less descriptive analysis, and many fewer federalism metaphors. On the latter point, it seems an opportunity few can resist. In recent years, the terms like tend-for-yourself federalism, rights-preserving federalism,

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peace-preserving federalism, polyphonic federalism, opportunistic federalism, intuitive federalism, variable speed federalism, partisan federalism, and uncooperative federalism have been coined and some picked up by other scholars. Development of more theory-based research, the emergence of new data discussed earlier, and the interest in comparative research with more sophisticated federalism measures are positive trends that may help. Also positive on the U.S. federalism side is the use of existing data to tease out vertical diffusion (Baumgartner, Gray and Lowery 2009) and efforts to develop more intrastate measures that apply across all 50 states. • Incorporating federalism scholarship (de/centralization) into political science research. Noted by Dardanelli (2019), among others, this too is a long-recognized problem. Too often federalism scholars appear to talk to each other and not to the broader political science audience who might well be content to capture federalism as a single dichotomous variable in their work. While Publius: The Journal of Federalism and Regional and Federal Studies are devoted to federalism research, the spread of this research needs to be more widely evident in other journals read by nonfederalism scholars. Again, the availability of data and a movement away from single cases and descriptive work will help in this endeavor. Key to expanding the reach of federalism scholarship might be to include more federalism literature in comparative politics graduate curriculum. A survey of political science department chairs in 2013 found that while American federalism was reflected in federalism courses, comparative federalism was not offered widely (Kincaid and Cole 2014). • More cross-fertilization of federalism scholarship. In 2011, I analyzed citations of comparative and U.S. scholars and found that the two groups of scholars were not citing each other (Weissert 2011). Comparative scholars are somewhat better at citing American federal scholars than American scholars are of citing comparative work—but the extent of cross-over in both groups was small. This needs to change. Publius: The Journal of Federalism has recently been publishing more comparative pieces which could be one promising step. But more can be done. • More examination of non-Western federalism models. U.S. federalism research clearly needs to be more inclusive of comparative work, but a larger question is, can Western models be applicable to non-Western societies and come-together federations? Wibbels (2005) talks of important differences between developing and developed countries. Chapter 6 clearly outlines the difficulties of using fiscal federalism models applicable to developed countries on developing countries. These differences need to be studied more systematically. What are the key commonalities and what are the important differences? More detailed study of these components might encourage more deep thinking about the nature of federalism and

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improve both traditional and nontraditional analysis of and theorizing about federalism. There is little doubt that federalism is relevant and timely; federalism scholarship is excellent in many areas but still lacks much appeal in political science or public administration. It is imperative that new scholars be attracted to the key federalism questions—not simply as an added variable in an equation comparing countries but in answering tough questions posed here. The good news is that new measures are being developed that will help the testing of hypotheses. And that there is widespread recognition that it is hypothesis testing of important research questions that will help elevate the subfield. There is plenty to do and good policy awaits the results.

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Index Belgium 14, 39–42, 71, 84, 98 Benz, Arthur 1–2, 57, 71, 90 Beramendi, Pablo 9, 96 Berry, Jeffrey M. 94 Beyers, Jan 23 Bibby, John F. 17 Biden, Joe 15, 21, 33–4, 42, 63, 66 Bishop, Bradford H. 20 blame-casting 28, 35, 38, 43, 94, 99 Blume, Lorenz 6 Bolivia 42 Bolleyer, Nicole 3, 45, 48 Bolsonaro, Jair 39 Bonet, Eduard 94 Borut, D.J. 52–3 Bowling, Cynthia 30 Bowman, Ann O’M. 52, 56 Braun, Dietmar 43 Brazil 4, 19, 37, 39–41, 51, 54–5, 70 Break, George 73, 76–7 Brennan Center for Justice 58, 90 Brett, Judith 37 Brown, Heath 22 Buchanan, James 77 Bulman-Pozen, Jessica 23–4, 60, 64–5, 70, 100 Bush, George W. 86–7 Butler, Daniel M. 67

Abbott, Greg 15, 33, 56, 65 abortion policy 1, 7–8, 12, 20, 23–4, 35, 42, 68, 72, 92 Abramowitz, Alan 24–5 actor-centered federalism 3, 51 Adams, John 16 Adler, Jonathan H. 70 Adolph, Christopher 31 Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations 76–9 Affordable Care Act 4, 7, 15, 46, 49, 66, 68, 72, 87 Agranoff, Robert 44–5 American Civil Liberties Union 100 American for Prosperity 67 American Legislative Exchange Council 30, 56, 67 Anton, Thomas 60 Arceneaux, Kevin 9, 94 Argentina 39–40, 47, 55 Arikan, G. Gulsun 83 Arizona 55, 58, 63 Arnold, Tobias 90–91 asymmetric federalism 14 Atkeson, Lonna 9 Australia 19, 29, 37, 39–40, 42, 47–9, 51, 53, 75, 91, 97 Austria 39, 41 autonomy 2, 11, 18, 81

California 36, 90 Cameron, David 29, 41–2 Canada 9, 13–14, 17, 19, 22, 29, 38–9, 41–2, 47, 49, 68, 71, 75–6, 98 cannabis policy 4, 65 Carothers, Thomas 24 Carsey, Thomas M. 9 Castles, Francis G. 71 Centers for Disease Control 27, 33, 35–6 centralization 1–2, 10–13, 52–3, 82, 101, see also decentralization definition of 11

Baldersheim, Harald 54 Balz, Dan 32 Barenstein, Matias 83 bargaining 49–51 Baskaran, Tushyanthan 82–3 Bast, William 12, 20 Baumer, Donald C. 14 Baumgartner, Frank R. 22, 25 Bednar, Jenna 10, 51, 90, 93 Behnke, Nathalie 50 Beland, Daniel 39, 68 126

Index

and political parties 17–19, 25 Chattopadhyay, Rupak 40–41, 91 Chhibber, Pradeep 17 Cigler, Beverly A. 34 Clayton, Cornell W. 66 climate change see environmental policy Clinton, Bill 52, 80 Coglianese, Cary 50 Colino, Cesar 90 Conlan, Timothy J. 14, 31, 53, 63, 87 Constantelos, John 22 Cooper, Roy 92 Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) funding 30 corruption 40, 74, 80–84 COVID-19 pandemic 1, 6–7, 9, 13–14, 22, 24, 27–43, 45–6, 48, 54–6, 63–5, 91–2, 94, 96, 98–9 in other federal countries 37–42, 48, 54–5, 91–2, 97 vaccination 14–15, 21, 29–30, 33–5, 55 criminal justice policy 21 crisis, times of 27–43 COVID-19 see COVID-19 pandemic global economic crisis 28, 46, 91 natural disasters 21, 27, 43, 94 Cutcu, Ibrahim 82 Daguerre, Anne 31 Dardanelli, Paolo 11, 71, 101 Davoodi, Hamid 82 de Mello, Luiz 83 decentralization 3, 5–6, 11, 13, 73, 91, 101, see also centralization of elections 57–8 fiscal 74–5, 81–5, 90–91 and political parties 18–19 Dell’Anno, Roberto 83 Democratic Party 17, 20, 28, 31, 52–3, 66–7, 69 Democratic states 7, 12, 35, 69, see also individual states Derthink, Martha 49 DeSantis, Ron 12, 15, 21, 27–8, 35, 56 Detterbeck, Klaus 71 developing countries 73–4, 76, 85, 88, 101 DiIulio, Jr., John J. 63

127

Dinan, John 13, 100 disasters see crisis, times of Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act 61 Downey, Davia Cox 66 economic growth 70, 81–3 education policy 4, 21 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 77 Elazar, Daniel 2–4, 16, 93 elections 6–7, 10, 12, 17–20, 23–5, 42, 57–9, 69, 79, 84, 89, 92, 95–6, 99–100 emergencies see crisis, times of environmental policy 23, 45, 51–2, 55, 89 Esterling, Kevin 62 Ethiopia 37, 40 European Parliament 50 European Union 3, 17, 23, 50, 57, 73–4, 94, 97, 99 executive federalism 91–2 extremism 89–90 Fan, C. Simon 84 Fauci, Anthony 27–8, 34 federal grants 86–7 federalism actor-centered 3, 51 challenges facing 10–15, see also centralization; polarization; trust definition of 2–3 executive 91–2 fiscal see fiscal federalism future of scholarship 89–102 and political parties 16–26 and public policy 60–72 relevance of research 1–15 safeguards of 10 strengths/weaknesses of 3–9 in times of crisis 27–43, see also COVID-19 pandemic federalism theory 5, 18, 53 Federalist Papers 9–10 Feeley, Malcolm M. 19, 47 Feld, Lars P. 82–3 Fenna, Alan 4, 48 Filippov, Mikkail 5, 16, 18, 49–50

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First Generation Fiscal Federalism 74–6, 80–81, 86 fiscal federalism 3, 5, 51–3, 71, 73–88 in developing countries 85 federal grants 76–9 First Generation 74–6, 80–81, 86 fiscal decentralization 74–5, 81–5, 90–91 Second Generation 73, 79–81, 84–7 Fisk, Jonathan M. 30, 56 Fisman, Raymond 83 Florida 6–7, 12, 15, 21, 27–9, 31, 33, 36–7, 56, 58, 64–5, 69, 95 Franklin, Benjamin 10 Fugitive Slave Act 91 game theory 5 Gatti, Roberta 83 gay rights see LGBTQ policy Gemmel, Norman 83 general revenue sharing 78 Georgia 32 Gerber, Elisabeth 93 Gerken, Heather K. 2, 64–5 Germany 29, 37–9, 41–2, 44, 47–8, 75, 97 Glaser, James M. 94 global economic crisis 28, 46, 91 global warming see environmental policy globalization 11 Gold, Howard J. 14 Goldsmith, Arthur A. 83–4 Goldstein, Daniel A.N. 35 Gordan, Sanford C. 4 grants 51–2, 76–9, 86–7 Gray, Virginia 22 Greer, Scott L. 39 Grodzins, Morton 16 Grossback, Lawrence J. 67 Grumbach, Jacob M. 6, 11, 20–21, 25, 67, 97 gun policy 12, 24, 55, 68, 70, 72, 92 Hamilton 73 Hamilton, Alexander 73 health care policy 4, 7, 21, 24, 51, 69 abortion policy 1, 7–8, 12, 20, 23–4, 35, 42, 68, 72, 92

Affordable Care Act 4, 7, 15, 46, 49, 66, 68, 72, 87 COVID-19 see COVID-19 pandemic Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act 61 Medicaid 7–8, 62–4, 69, 72, 78, 80, 86–7, 95 Medicare 30 vaccination 14–15, 21, 29–30, 33–5, 55 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act 61 Heckelman, Jac C. 13 Hegele, Yvonne 39 Heisenberg, Dorothee 50 Heller, Walter 78 Henig, Jeffrey R. 22 Hertel-Fernandez, Alex 67 Hill, Jeffrey 64 Hogan, Larry 30 Holyoke, Thomas T. 22 Hooghe, Liesbet 6, 57 Hopkins, Daniel J. 23, 93 Hueglin, Thomas O. 48 Hurricane Katrina 21, 27, 43, 94 hyper-partisanship 1, 72, 89 immigration policy 4, 15, 21, 24, 35 India 4, 6, 17, 39–41, 47–8, 84, 97–8 inequities 6–8, 12 Inman, Robert P. 79 interest groups 7, 11, 17, 44–5, 49, 52, 54, 67–9, 89, 91, 93, 98–9 and political parties 21–3, 25 intergovernmental relations 14–15, 18, 38–40, 44–59, 62, 89–91, 98 International City Management Association 61 International Monetary Fund 81 Internet Tax Freedom Act 52 intuitive federalism 94, 101 iron triangle 52 Italy 37, 39, 41–2 Jacobs, Nicholas 21 Jacoby, William G. 9, 94 Jefferson, Thomas 16, 76 Johns, Robert 9

Index

Johnson, Lyndon B. 78 Jones, Bryan D. 22, 25 Kam, Cindy 14 Karch, Andrew 64–5 Kearney, Richard C. 56 Kemp, Brian 32 Kenya 41–2 Kettl, Donald 27, 34, 63 Keuffer, Nicolas 54 Kincaid, John 34, 71 Kneller, Richard 83 Knupling, Felix 40–41, 91 Kollman, Ken 17 Konisky, David M. 56, 90 Krause, George A. 52 Kunicova, Jana 84 Ladner, Andreas 54 Lago-Penas, Santiago 82 Landa, Dimitri 4 Land-Grant College Act 51, 76–7 Leckrone, J. Wesley 34 Leibfriend, Stephan 71 Leland, Suzanne 94 Lewis, Daniel C. 9, 94 LGBTQ policy 4, 7, 23–4, 68, 70 Lin, Chen 84 Lineira, Robert 24 lobbyists 22–3, 53, 57, 61–2, 99 local governments 5–7, 12–15, 19, 23, 29, 31–2, 38, 40–48, 51–4, 58, 60–61, 63, 67–8, 73–5, 78, 80, 82–3, 85, 87, 92–3, 95, 99 empowerment of 54–5 state preemption of 55–6 Lowery, David 22 Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act 64 Madison, James 9–10, 12, 91 Maestas, Cherie D. 27, 94 Maine 96 Malhotra, Neil 21 market-preserving federalism 5 Marks, Gary 57 Martinez-Vazquez, Jorge 82 Massachusetts 35, 68 McCann, Pamela J. 52–3, 68

129

McCollum, Bill 15 McConnell, Mitch 30 McCoy, Jennifer 24–5, 90 McWhirter, Jack 13 measurement 6, 12 Medicaid 7–8, 62–4, 69, 72, 78, 80, 86–7, 95 Medicare 30 Medrano, Anahely 68 Mexico 37, 39–41, 68, 84 Michener, Jamila 8, 95 Michigan 27, 31 Mickey, Robert 7 Mikos, Robert A. 14 Mill, John Stuart 16 Miller, Lisa L. 7–8, 93 minimum wage 4, 55 Miras, Nicholas S. 93 Mississippi 64 Morrill Act 51, 76–7 Morris, John 30 Mueller, Sean 90–91 multi-level governance 57 Munoz, Jordi 94 Musgrave, Richard 74–6 Muskie, Ed 44 Myers, William M. 66 National Association of Counties 61 National Conference of State Legislatures 61 national emergencies see crisis, times of National Governors Association 61 National League of Cities 61 nationalization 2, 10, 12 of political parties 19–20, 25 natural disasters 27 Hurricane Katrina 21, 27, 43, 94 New Deal 77 New Hampshire 64 New York 7 Nicholson-Crotty, Sean 64, 67 Nicolaidis, Kalypso 50 Nigeria 16, 39, 42, 54 Nixon, Richard 78 No Child Left Behind Act 65, 87 Nolette, Paul 56, 66–7, 90 North Carolina 58, 92 Nugent, John D. 10, 65

130

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Oates, Wallace E. 74–6, 81 Obama, Barack 24, 64, 86–7 Obinger, Herbert 71 O’Donohue, Andrew 24 Ohio 96 Okpanachi, Eyene 16 Operation Warp Speed 33 opportunistic federalism 101 Ordeshook, Peter C. 5, 16, 18, 49–50 Osoro, Rose 41–2 Ozkok, Yildiz 82 Painter, Martin 49 Parker, Jeffrey 51 Partin, Randell 9 peace-preserving federalism 101 Pears, Emily 94 Pelosi, Nancy 53 Pereira, Anthony W. 19, 70 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act 86 Petersohn, Bettina 50 Peterson, David A. 67 Peterson, Paul 6 Phillips, Lauren E. 55 Poirier, Johanne 44–5, 49–51, 53, 58 polarization 6–7, 9–10, 12–14, 17, 20–21, 25, 89–90, 97–8 political parties 16–26, see also individual parties and de/centralization 18–19, 25 and interest groups 21–3, 25 nationalization of 19–20, 25 polarization of see polarization polyphonic federalism 101 Posner, Paul L. 14, 45–6, 63, 87 Pralle, Sarah B. 22 public opinion 13, 43, 93–5, 99–100 public policy 4, 60–72, see also individual policy areas public skepticism 1–2, 10, 13, 16, 29, 35 pushback 11, 15, 18, 37, 48, 64–5, 89, 98 Qian, Yingyi 85 Rabe, Barry 4, 7 racial issues 12, 24, 36, 70, 91 racist policies 7–8 Radin, Beryl 45

Rahman, T. 90 rational choice 3, 22 Reagan, Ronald 20, 53, 78 Real ID Act 64–5, 87 Religious Land Use and Institutional Persons Act 52 Rendleman, Hunter 14, 94–5 Renzsch, Wolfgang 71 representation 8–9, 99–100 Republican Party 2, 6, 17, 20, 25, 28, 31, 33–4, 52–3, 57, 64, 66–70, 86 Republican states 6–7, 12, 35, 69, see also individual states Rhode, Eva Marie 50 rights-preserving federalism 100 Riker, William H. 2–3, 5, 11–12, 16, 18–20, 25, 72, 84 Riverstone-Newell, Lori 55 Rivlin, Alice 80 Rocco, Philip 12–13, 68 Rodden, Jonathan 9, 16, 19, 28, 79, 81–2, 96 Rogers, Steven 12, 96 Rogowski, Jon C. 14, 94–5 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 77 Rose, Shanna 64–5 Rose-Ackerman, Susan 84 Rouse, Stella M. 93 Rozell, Mark J. 13, 29 Rubin, Edward L. 19, 47 Rubinfeld, Daniel L. 79 Russia 39 Ryan, Erin 50 Ryan, Paul 53 Sacchi, Agnese 82 safeguards of federalism 10 Sanz, Ismael 83 Saunders, Cheryl 41, 44–5, 48–9, 51, 53, 58 Scheller, Daniel 68 Schildkraut, Deborah J. 94 Schnabel, Johanna 39 Schneider, Saundra K. 9, 94 Schnellenbach, Jan 82–3 Scotland 9, see also United Kingdom Second Generation Fiscal Federalism 73, 79–81, 84–7 Seifter, Miriam 100 Shipan, Charles R. 68

Index

Shvetsova, Olga 5, 16, 18, 49–50 skepticism 1–2, 10, 13, 16, 29, 35 Skogstad, Grace 13 smoking policy 55, 68–9 social media 69 Social Security 65 Somer, M. 90 Sonnicksen, Jared 71 Sorens, Jason 81 Soroka, Stuart 95 South Africa 37–9, 42, 47–8, 53–5, 84 South Carolina 32 South Dakota 96 Spain 14, 24, 37–8, 40–41, 71, 84, 98 Stafford Act 30 stand-your-ground laws 68 State and Local Fiscal Assistance Act 78 State Policy Network 67 state preemption of local governments 55–6 state pushback see pushback Steytler, Nico 38–9 Sullivan, Andy 64 Switzerland 37, 42, 47–8 Sydnor, Emily 94 Tatham, Michael 23 Tausanovitch, Chris 24 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act 46 tend-for-yourself federalism 100 Teobaldelli, Désirée 83 Texas 7, 15, 29, 33, 56, 58, 65, 69 Thompson, Frank J. 7 Thorlakson, Lori 3, 18, 20 Tillin, Louise 19, 70 Torcai, Mariano 94 Trein, Phillipp 43 Treisman, Daniel 83–4 Trump, Donald 7, 20, 24–5, 28–30, 33–4, 42, 57, 78, 87 trust 13–14, 89, 94, 97 Trust for America’s Health 54–5 Turgeon, Luc 19

131

uncooperative federalism 101 unemployment policy 14 United Kingdom 9, 13, 17 U.S. Department of Transportation 52 U.S. Supreme Court 1, 3–4, 7–8, 46, 58–9, 72, 92, 96, 100 U.S. Treasury Department 63 Uttermark, Matthew 13, 83 vaccination 14–15, 21, 29–30, 33–5, 55 Vampa, Davide 43 variable speed federalism 101 Vatter, Adrian 90–91 Virginia 56 Voigt, Stefan 6 Volden, Craig 68 voting behavior 8–9, 16–17, 23–4 Wallner, Jennifer 19 Warshaw, Christopher 24 Washington, George 16 Weaver, R. Kent 71 Wechsler, Herbert 10 Weingast, Barry R. 5, 79, 81, 84–5 Weissert, Carol S. 50, 64, 68 West Virginia 90 Wheare, K.C. 2 Wibbels, Erik 16–17, 81, 101 Wiedemann, Johannes 35 Wilcox, Clyde 13, 29 Wildavsky, Aaron 79 Wisonsin 31 Wlezien, Christopher 95 Wolak, Jennifer 13 Wong, Kenneth K. 7 Wright, Deil 44 Wright, Gerald C. 9 Wyoming 35 Zahar, Marie-Joelle 13 Zou, Heng-fu 82