Finding Fault and Success in an Ambiguous Federal System

By Tony Iallonardo
April 17, 2000

Federalism is seldom discussed overtly in modern public policy debates, though it permeates so many domestic policy questions. While it is true that intergovernmental precepts like sovereignty and home rule have entered the policy lexicon in the current debate over the application of state and local sales taxes on Internet purchases, more often, the question of sorting out the proper role and scope of power for the federal government goes unasked, whether the issue is education, housing, local law enforcement or something else.

While the subject remains largely unaddressed in mainstream policy discussions, federalism was foremost in the minds of our Founding Fathers when the Republic was born. The Founders were primarily loyal to their states after all, and deeply distrustful of overbearing centralized governments such as the one they had been forced to contend with in London.

In writing the Constitution, the Founders crafted a document that was staggeringly successful in separating powers among branches and balancing national interests while providing state and local control. But as a living document, the nation has strayed considerably from the intent of the Founders. They would certainly have been distrustful of a federal role in education, housing or local law enforcement, though today, even conservatives accept that this intrusion is here to stay.

The critical modern question seems to be: ‘Does the balance of power between the federal government and state and local governments serve the nation today as effectively as possible’? or phrased another way, ‘Can a system evolved so profoundly from the Founders intent still function well’? Perhaps no one alive today is better able to answer the question than David B. Walker, whose comprehensive book on our intergovernmental system, The Rebirth of Federalism, was recently published.

Walker has spent most of his professional career deeply involved in the study and the practice of intergovernmental relations. Early on in his career, the late-Senator from Maine Ed Muskie tasked him with studying and shaping some of the intergovernmental programs of the Great Society. Walker moved on to become an assistant director of research studies at the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR), where he oversaw many of ACIR’s studies on the growth of the federal grant system and the inability of successive administrations to impose any fiscal or managerial discipline on the system at all.

For the past 15 years or so Walker has been teaching intergovernmental relations at the University of Connecticut. During this time he has been in the forefront of scholars who have been analyzing the impact of the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations on the theory and practice of intergovernmental relations (IGR).

The bulk of Walker’s book is historical, tracing the scope of power of the colonies and colonial towns (IGR trivia: ‘colonies’ and ‘colonial towns’ were considered to be synonymous), the Articles of Confederation (which failed largely because they granted too much power to the state and locals), and the general trend toward centralization over the last 200 years (such as the Civil War affirming the primacy of the Union over the states, and the Great Depression’s effect of solidifying public support for presidential activism).

Mayors and local leaders will enjoy Walker’s crisp prose, and his determination to cover all angles: policy, electoral politics, social movements, economic fluctuations, etc. Local leaders who especially enjoy American history will appreciate what Walker accomplishes, a review of American history whose viewpoint emanates as much from the state house and city hall as it does from the Capitol and the White House.

Walker also makes the weighty subject matter both amusing and insightful. In recalling the early days of the Gingrich Republican Revolution, he says “the press, media, many political pundits, and much of the public were treating the Speaker as if he were a prime minister and as if Westminster had been transported to Washington, D.C. Senate Majority Leader Dole had become the leader of an impotent House of Lords and Bill Clinton had been transformed into a constitutional monarch. [Within a year however] the President discovered what he always had — namely a spine — and he penned his first veto and was prepared to use it again.”

Best of all is Walker’s take on the current state of affairs, as he grapples with reconciling 300 years of American history to assess the state of intergovernmental relations today.

A consummate social scientist, Walker sets up a three part constitutional test to evaluate how the current system functions within the Founders’ framework, which:

1. established a territorial division of power and functions between the national and sub-national governments,

2. provided for direct representation (until 1913 and indirect thereafter) of the constituent subnational governments in the very policymaking processes of the central government; and

3. stipulated an institutional arbiter of jurisdictional disputes between the governmental levels, the Supreme Court.

Walker posits, “when the dynamics of these three areas of federal-state-local interaction produce a systematically balanced condition, then the health of federalism is fine. When there are serious imbalances then an enfeebled federalism, incapable of effective functioning follows.”

Of the current state of affairs, he concludes that Americans need to end the ambiguities that the presently imbalanced system has generated in order to permit each of the levels to operate more effectively and accountably, to eliminate some of the system’s complexity that befuddles the electorate as well as many office holders, and to rediscover the vitality and resourcefulness that comes from the territorial division of labor that a functioning federalism nurtures.

Walker believes today’s imbalanced, conflicted and ambiguous IGR emerged because:

• Since the start of the Great Society period, the Supreme Court has increasingly granted power to the federal government, at the expense of state and locals,

• Federal regulatory enactments have pushed administrative duties onto state and locals, and most importantly,

• A nationalized political system emerged with strong party committees, a national media increasingly focused on Washington, and the proliferation of interest groups, PACs, pollsters and other beltway players.

All of these actors increasingly viewed the state and locals not as co-equals, but parties that would implement national prerogatives, and who are relegated to lobbying, just like every other interest group, through their respective associations (like the National Governors’ Association and the Conference of Mayors).

Regarding today’s players, Walker gives mostly favorable marks to President Clinton for intergovernmental initiatives undertaken in the National Performance Review, appointing state and local officials to senior federal posts, shrinking the federal workforce and repositioning his party in the political center. Walker faults the Congressional Republican majority for failing to deliver on their devolution rhetoric, but credits them for passing a limited unfunded mandates bill.

Walker wraps up with an ambitious prescription for reform that includes unburdening the federal government of matters the state and locals are perfectly capable of handling, unburdening state and locals of federal burdens like mandates and preemptions, and a “severe slashing” of the gridlock-inducing Washington lobbying community.

The Rebirth of Federalism was published this year by Chatham House and lists for $29.95 for softcover. It is available for purchase at amazon.com. and other booksellers. 

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