Federalism and Policy Responsiveness: The Clean Air Case

In this note I focus on the importance of institutional federalism to public policy outcomes. The vehicle of analysis is national and subnational implementation of the clean air acts. Using Box-Tiao impact assessment models, I compare political responses from state and local clean air enforcement programs with the responses reported in my earlier study of EPA enforcements. The results show that responsiveness to central democratic institutions differs substantially when implementation is through a federal rather than a purely national scheme.