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In a campaign for state or local office these days, you’re as likely today to hear accusations that an opponent advanced Obamacare or supported Donald Trump as you are to hear about issues affecting the state or local community. This is because American political behavior has become substantially more nationalized. American voters are far more engaged with and knowledgeable about what’s happening in Washington, DC, than in similar messages whether they are in the South, the Northeast, or the Midwest. Gone are the days when all politics was local. With The Increasingly United States, Daniel J. Hopkins explores this trend and its implications for the American political system. The change is significant in part because it works against a key rationale of America’s federalist system, which was built on the assumption that citizens would be more strongly attached to their states and localities. It also has profound implications for how voters are represented. If voters are well informed about state politics, for example, the governor has an incentive to deliver what voters—or at least a pivotal segment of them—want. But if voters are likely to back the same party in gubernatorial as in presidential elections irrespective of the governor’s actions in office, governors may instead come to see their ambitions as tethered more closely to their status in the national party.
Understanding federalism - the form of political organization that unites separate polities within an overarching political system so that all maintain their political integrity - is central to the study of democratic government in the United States. Yet, many political scientists treat federalism as a set of abstract principles or a maze of budgetary transfers with little connection to real political life. This concise and engaging book boils the discussion down to its essence: federalism is about power, specifically the tug for power among and within the various levels of government. Author Larry N. Gerston examines the historical and philosophical underpinnings of federalism; the various "change events" that have been involved in defining America's unique set of federal principles over time; and the vertical, horizontal, and international dimensions of federalism in the United States today. The result is a book examining the ways in which institutional political power is both diffused and concentrated in the United States.
The balance between state and federal health care financing for low-income people has been a matter of considerable debate for the last 40 years. Some argue for a greater federal role, others for more devolution of responsibility to the states. Medicaid, the backbone of the system, has been plagued by an array of problems that have made it unpopular and difficult to use to extend health care coverage. In recent years, waivers have given the states the flexibility to change many features of their Medicaid programs; moreover, the states have considerable flexibility to in establishing State Children's Health Insurance Programs. This book examines the record on the changing health safety net. How well have states done in providing acute and long-term care services to low-income populations? How have they responded to financial incentives and federal regulatory requirements? How innovative have they been? Contributing authors include Donald J. Boyd, Randall R. Bovbjerg, Teresa A. Coughlin, Ian Hill, Michael Housman, Robert E. Hurley, Marilyn Moon, Mary Beth Pohl, Jane Tilly, and Stephen Zuckerman.
The American federal system as we know it today was not planned. We did not adopt a Constitution at the time of Independence or at any time thereafter establishing the structure of a federal system and allocating power between the federal government and the states. Rather the structure of the American federal system has evolved over a period of time as a result of the Supreme Court's interpretation of the provisions of the Constitution dealing with federal and state power and the Court's development of constitutional policy with respect to the nature and operation of the American federal system. The American federal system consists of four components: (1) state sovereignty and constitutional limitations on state power; (2) the powers of the federal government; (3) the relationship between the federal government and the states; and (4) the relationship between the states. In this writing, I will set forth the constitutional doctrine applicable to each of these four components. It is my hope that in so doing, I will succeed in explaining the structure of the American federal system. I will also demonstrate that, for the most part, constitutional doctrine relating to state and federal power and to the relationship between the federal and state governments and between the states themselves is fairly well-settled, and such change, as may be occurring, is mostly around the edges. The essential nature of the American federal system, as it has evolved from many years of constitutional interpretation by the Supreme Court, remains unchanged. There are three basic propositions underlying the American federal system. First is the matter of state sovereignty. The American federal system, as it now exists, began with the states. In American constitutional theory, upon Independence, the newly-formed states succeeded to the power over domestic matters formerly exercised by the British Crown, and as each new state was admitted to the Union, it automatically became entitled to exercise this power. Thus, state sovereignty is a “given” in the American constitutional system, and the states do not depend on the federal Constitution for the source of their sovereignty. The states exercise full sovereignty over domestic matters except to the extent that a particular exercise of such sovereignty is prohibited or restricted by the Constitution. In terms of allocation of power, the Constitution restricts state sovereignty over domestic matters in essentially three ways. First, it provides that certain powers, very few in number, are exclusively federal powers, in the sense that they cannot be exercised by the states at all, such as the power to enter into a treaty or the power to coin money, or can only be exercised by the states with the consent of Congress, such as the power to impose a duty of tonnage or to the power to enter into a compact with another state or foreign government. Second, under the Supremacy Clause there is federal supremacy in the event of a conflict between federal and state power. Congress then has the power to preempt state regulation over particular issues or over particular areas of activity. Federal preemption is very important in practice, and preemption cases come before the Court with considerable frequency. It is with respect to preemption that the matter of “states rights” is most starkly presented, and we will see that in the area of preemption, both Congress and the Court have tried to strike a balance between the principle of federal supremacy and the principle of state sovereignty. Third, the Court has held that the affirmative grant of the commerce power to Congress has a negative or dormant implication, and we will see that the negative aspect of the Commerce Clause imposes some important, but precisely defined, limitations on the power of the states to regulate and tax interstate and foreign commerce. Subject only to these limitations, the American states have plenary power over all activity that takes place within their boundaries. The second proposition is that the dominant feature of the American federal system as regards domestic matters is concurrent power. While in constitutional theory the powers of the federal government are only those enumerated in the Constitution, we know that those powers, particularly the power of Congress over interstate and foreign commerce, have been construed very broadly by the Court, so that with few exceptions, today virtually any activity is subject to congressional regulation. The expansive interpretation of federal power interacts with state sovereignty, with the result that to a large extent, both the states and Congress have enormous regulatory power and both can usually regulate the same activity. Thus, it can be said that the dominant feature of the American federal system as regards domestic matters is concurrent power. And for the most part, the reach of federal and state power and the resolution of conflicts between federal and state power is essentially settled by existing constitutional doctrine. The third proposition is that the states form a national union. It cannot be disputed that a primary motivating force behind the calling of the constitutional convention in 1787 and the resulting new Constitution was to transform the loose confederation of sovereign states into one nation, an “indestructible union composed of indestructible states” and to “constitute the citizens of the United States as one people.” The provisions of Article IV, Section 1, dealing with Full Faith and Credit to judgments and public acts of sister states, and Article IV, Section 2, dealing with Privileges and Immunities of the citizens of sister states and interstate rendition, are specifically directed toward this end. We will discuss both provisions in our discussion of the relationship between the states themselves. In addition, precisely because the United States is a federal union, there is a generic right of citizens to travel from one state to another. Finally, the Constitution requires that Congress admit new states to the Union on an “equal footing” with the same attributes of sovereignty as were possessed by the original thirteen states, and that the United States guarantee to each state “a republican form of government,” and to protect the states against invasion or domestic violence. For the last decade or so, there has been considerable academic debate on the subject of federal and state power, revolving around the contention that the Supreme Court should curtail the range of federal power and to that extent avoid possible interference with the exercise of state power. On the Court itself, particularly under the leadership of former Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, there have been expressions of concern about the expansion of federal power operating to diminish traditional areas of state authority. As we will see, there have been two cases, one in 1995, and one in 2000, where the Court has ruled against the exercise of federal power under the Commerce Clause. However, these were very narrow decisions that did not undercut the line of growth of decisions expanding the range of federal power. And in the Court's most recent decision dealing with the exercise of federal power, it appeared that the Court was coming down even more strongly on the side of federal power when it held that so long as the class of activities that Congress was regulating came within the reach of federal power, it was not necessary to show that Congress could independently regulate the local activity that came within that class of activities. In my opinion, the academic debate on the subject of federal and state power is truly academic, and I have no interest in participating in it. Again, my purpose in this writing is to explain the structure of the American federal system and to demonstrate that the essential nature of the American federal system, as it has evolved from many years of constitutional interpretation by the Supreme Court, has not changed and is not likely to do so.
Federalism is regarded as one of the signal American contributions to modern politics. Its origins are typically traced to the drafting of the Constitution, but the story began decades before the delegates met in Philadelphia. In this groundbreaking book, Alison LaCroix traces the history of American federal thought from its colonial beginnings in scattered provincial responses to British assertions of authority, to its emergence in the late eighteenth century as a normative theory of multilayered government. The core of this new federal ideology was a belief that multiple independent levels of government could legitimately exist within a single polity, and that such an arrangement was not a defect but a virtue. This belief became a foundational principle and aspiration of the American political enterprise. LaCroix thus challenges the traditional account of republican ideology as the single dominant framework for eighteenth-century American political thought. Understanding the emerging federal ideology returns constitutional thought to the central place that it occupied for the founders. Federalism was not a necessary adaptation to make an already designed system work; it was the system. Connecting the colonial, revolutionary, founding, and early national periods in one story reveals the fundamental reconfigurations of legal and political power that accompanied the formation of the United States. The emergence of American federalism should be understood as a critical ideological development of the period, and this book is essential reading for everyone interested in the American story.