Our Federalism(s)

Formal Theory and Federalism

The recent onrush of formal models of federalism was prompted by political science s renewed interest in the operation of federal systems. Formal theory is a microfoundational approach to comparative theoretical research, where political phenomena are explained in terms of strategic agents responding to an incentive environment. When appropriately written, formal (mathematical) structure lays b...

The Economic Effects of Federalism and Decentralization – A Cross-Country Assessment

This paper explores the idea that institutional details matter and that attempts to estimate the economic effects of federalism by employing a simple dummy variable neglect potentially important institutional details. Based on a principal component analysis, seven aspects of both federalism and decentralization are used as variables for explaining differences in (1) fiscal policy, (2) governmen...

Toward A Second-Generation Theory of Fiscal Federalism

Drawing on a wide range of literature and ideas, a new “second-generation theory of fiscal federalism” is emerging that provides new insights into the structure and working of federal systems. After a restatement and review of the first-generation theory, this paper surveys this new body of work and offers some thoughts on the ways in which it is extending our understanding of fiscal federalism...

The Real World of Immigration Federalism 110514

Writing about immigration federalism has, like much federalism scholarship, long been stuck with an outdated model of federal-state relations. Under that old model, states wield power principally by possessing regulatory autonomy. But the reality today is quite different: as a number of writers have begun to document, state and local governments today are often empowered not by their autonomy, ...

Cost-benefit federalism: reconciling collective action federalism and libertarian federalism in the Obamacare litigation and beyond.