From Cooperative to Coercive Federalism

Cooperative federalism, the reigning conception of American federalism from about 1954 to 1978, was a political response to the policy challenges of market failure, postwar affluence, racism, urban poverty, environmentalism, and individual rights. Having social equity as its primary objective, cooperative federalism significantly transformed American society, but when the conditions underlying cooperation changed during the 1970s, the pressure to expand national power inherent in cooperative federalism gave rise to coercive federalism, in which the federal government reduced its reliance on fiscal tools to stimulate intergovernmental policy cooperation and increased its reliance on regulatory tools to ensure the supremacy of federal policy. The erosion of federal fiscal power and of constitutional and political limits on federal regulatory power in the 1970s and 1980s has produced a more coercive system of federal preemptions of state and local authority and unfunded mandates on state and local governments. This system undermines governmental responsibility and public accountability; yet state and local governments may not possess sufficient constitutional or political leverage to alter the system. Thus cooperative federalism has not been replaced by a new consensus on federalism. In light of contemporary conditions, a new consensus may have to be forged from elements of cooperative equity, competitive efficiency, and dual accountability.