The Politics of Territorial Resistance to Federal Authority: A Rejoinder to Hartery and Sigalet

Federalism’s contours and its dynamics have recently been at the center of politics in both Canada and the United States in ways perhaps clearer than before. Our recent article in Publius (Lecours, Gagnon, and Béland 2026) delved into some of the tensions within these two federations. Subsequent to the reply by Jesse Hartery and Geoffery Sigalet (henceforth HS), we offer this brief rejoinder to make a few things clear. First, HS have it wrong when they say that “LC&B’s project is to bring attention to why non-judicial actors offer their views of the constitution, also known as “extrajudicial constitutional interpretation”” (Hartery and Sigalet 2026: PAGE NUMBER TK). Of that we can be completely sure because, as authors of the article, we know exactly what our objective was, and that objective was not to see what nonjudicial actors think of the constitution. Not at all. We were, instead, looking to explain the existence of Alberta’s Sovereignty Act and Texas’ Operation Lone Star. As stated clearly in our article: “This article addresses the puzzle of these recent escalations [Alberta’s Sovereignty Act and Texas’ Operation Lone Star] in the politics of territorial resistance to federal authority through a framework that considers the historical and long-standing sense of distinctiveness and unfair treatment in both Texas and Alberta as well as processes of outbidding and radicalization within the dominant party in contexts of partisan differences across levels of government” (Lecours, Gagnon, and Béland 2026: 2). HS present their reply as a “disagreement with LC&B’s understanding of ‘federal jurisdiction’ and the extent of its relevance to their analysis” (Hartery and Sigalet 2026: PAGE NUMBER TK). Yet, we do not propose a specific understanding of “federal jurisdiction,” nor do conceptualizations of such jurisdictions have any bearing on our causal argument. HS erroneously identifying our argument makes their reply a separate contribution that does not challenge or even touch our main argument.