Decentralization also implies that the central or higher-level entity can unilaterally recentralize authority. Devolution, which can be instituted constitutionally or legislatively, implies a transfer of substantial, or even complete, power and authority for a range of important governmental functions from a national or central government to subordinate regional governments e.
A key power in devolution crucial for self-government is the authority of a regional or local government to 1 adopt and collect its own sources of revenue e. A leading example of devolution was the delegation in and of substantial powers and authority in the United Kingdom to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
These examples indicate that devolution can be asymmetrical; that is, some regions or localities are granted, or entitled to receive, more powers than other regions. Usually, devolution, like decentralization, implies that the national or central government can unilaterally revoke acts of devolution and, thus, take back devolved powers. In some cases, however, there are constitutional guarantees of devolution that protect against revocation; in other cases, the political imperatives of devolution might be sufficient to prevent revocation.
The trick was figuring out who was lying the least. President Bush was responsible for this program; President Obama expanded it to offer grants to low-performing schools that promised to adopt specific education reforms laid out by his administration.
ESSA was premised on the observation that testing was necessary for accountability, but schools should be freer to decide how to improve their performance. ESSA was a step in the direction of devolution, but more could be done. Michael Petrilli and Chester Finn have proposed that the federal government be limited to four roles in K—12 education: 1 measuring schools with testing; 2 funding data and research to disseminate test results and best practices; 3 distributing federal funds by formula; and 4 protecting civil rights.
For the past 30 years, the most furious devolution debate has involved the federal welfare system. The reform—which replaced the open-ended Aid to Families with Dependent Children AFDC program with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families TANF block grants to states—exposed the radical differences between conservative and liberal approaches to poverty relief that make a case for state customization and experimentation based on local values.
AFDC was the first broad national welfare entitlement it was part of the Social Security Act ; replacing it was the first revocation of a major entitlement for low-income families. While TANF is only one piece of the federal welfare system, it was a major departure from the past and does inform the federalism debate: first, its existence was made possible by the example of welfare reforms undertaken in Wisconsin, Connecticut, and New York City in the early s, using federal AFDC waivers to impose work requirements and time limits, as well as require child school attendance;[ 60 ] and second, TANF displayed many of the promises and challenges of welfare devolution.
TANF replaced the open-ended AFDC cash entitlement for families with minor children earning below a certain income with a fixed-amount block grant that allowed states to create their replacement system—but one that must require work activities and include a five-year lifetime limit on benefits both with significant exemptions. Beyond that, states were given broad latitude to design their welfare systems as long as they met four federal goals that generally involved assisting needy families, promoting work and marriage, and reducing out-of-wedlock pregnancies.
On the positive side, TANF has shown that block grants can succeed if Washington sets broad goals and provides states with flexibility in program design.
Despite hysterical predictions of mass starvation, third-world poverty, and death,[ 62 ] TANF has exceeded even its most optimistic predictions.
Still, the TANF devolution was imperfect. States exploited loopholes in the law to exempt most families from work requirements and ignore the five-year time limit. The strongest criticisms of TANF have come from liberal states that object to the federal work requirements and time limits. These states prefer to put more resources into education and training or even return to open-ended assistance with no obligations for recipients and not be constrained by federal goals such as promoting marriage or reducing out-of-wedlock births.
To be sure, state and local customization is vital for a well-functioning welfare system. Every state and local community has unique poverty drivers and needs. Some communities may be plagued by high housing costs, extraordinarily expensive child care, or energy costs.
Moving welfare recipients into jobs may be more feasible in one local economy than another. Even within a community, each low-income family has its own story and poverty solution. Furthermore, liberal and conservative communities have their preferred poverty approaches based on local values. These considerations do not imply that the country or low-income Americans would be better off by returning to AFDC; they argue, instead, for better rationalization of the federal welfare system in the direction of greater devolution.
In any case, the federal welfare system is a bureaucratic mess with seemingly no one in charge. It consists of approximately 80 different federal means-tested programs spread across a half-dozen federal departments and dozens of federal agencies. Many federally funded welfare programs are overseen by different congressional committees and reauthorized in separate bills that are enacted years or decades apart from each other.
Lacking any consistent approach, these programs contain wildly divergent eligibilities, benefit formulas, and requirements from recipients—even the programs that interact with each other. Some programs block grant money to states, others rely on matching grants, and others bypass states entirely.
Countless state welfare programs have their own approaches, eligibilities, and benefit levels, as well. From the standpoint of devolution, the pertinent issue is what states could do with all federal antipoverty funds consolidated into one block grant that roughly matches how much each state is already receiving.
Each state could combine the federal block grant with its own funds to build a coordinated system of assistance to vulnerable families. Rather than navigate a maze of dozens of federal programs, families could visit one local welfare office and enroll in one coordinated system that is tailored to their needs.
These offices could also assist with education, job training, and job placement. Not all federal means-tested benefits can be part of this block grant. However, aggressively expanding EITC can push enough working families out of poverty so that fewer families would need to enroll in the new state fund. Some may suggest a separate fund for health-care benefits discussed below. This block grant concept is not new; yet it can address criticisms of past proposals. It can also include recession triggers for additional increases.
As with TANF, states can be required to continue contributing to this welfare system at their previous levels. And if states truly fear being cheated by Washington on the size of the grant, they can be given a frequent choice between the current system or accepting this grant.
Perhaps the most challenging issue is that of federal performance standards and goals. Federal work requirements have been successful in TANF, yet more liberal states have supported more of an education and training approach, with additional work exemptions. Liberal states have also preferred to focus more on reducing poverty by any means than encouraging work or reducing welfare caseloads.
This can all be negotiated while emphasizing that devolution means trusting states to experiment with new approaches that reflect their values. Relatedly, states that accept a federal block grant must accept basic accountability rules to ensure that funds are not misspent and that a minimum safety net is maintained.
The vast majority of states are clearly equipped to design and run their welfare system if they choose. Federal accountability standards can address any outlier states that may misspend funds or attempt to eviscerate their safety net. Some states may choose more education, training, and open-ended benefits, while other states more aggressively push work requirements.
Each state should reflect its own values and discover which approach works best. Health care is probably the most complicated policy to devolve. No other domestic policy has been as controversial and contentious over the past three decades.
Partisan wars over health care flipped control of Congress in and again between and Both laws barely made it through Congress; ACA set off three major Supreme Court decisions and a failed, seven-year battle for repeal and replacement. Perhaps there is more to be gained by declaring a truce on the federal level.
Large single-payer health-care movements have already emerged in Vermont, California, and Colorado—and have been proposed in 20 state legislatures Vermont enacted a law mandating the creation of this system in , before abandoning it in At the same time, states such as Indiana, that are pioneering consumer-based reform should do likewise. After all, much of the ACA had its roots in an earlier, creative Massachusetts reform. Yet ACA also shows the perils of federalization, as the crashing enrollment websites, unpopularity in several states, and repeated emergency and often illegal bailouts and last-minute changes to avert chaos showed that the federal version was not ready for prime time.
This creates an enormous incentive for states to raise their Medicaid spending to maximize their federal dollars. States consequently expand Medicaid during periods of budget surplus which expands their federal match and hesitate to cut Medicaid under budget deficits which would also reduce their federal matching dollars.
Additionally, nearly all 50 states have resorted to gimmicks that create the illusion of higher Medicaid spending to receive more federal dollars. This system also disadvantages relatively poor states. Madison changed the role of the judicial branch in the federal system. Although the Supreme Court continues to review the constitutionality of statutes, Congress and the states retain some power to influence what cases come before the Court.
The Supreme Court has historically acknowledged that its appellate jurisdiction is defined by Congress. Therefore, Congress may have power to make some legislative or executive actions non-reviewable. This is known as jurisdiction stripping. Assess the significance of various events for determining the boundary between federal and state authority. In , the issue of fair housing in California involved the boundary between state laws and federalism.
California Proposition 14 overturned the Rumsford Fair Housing Act and allowed discrimination in any type of home sale. Martin Luther King Jr. Actor Ronald Reagan gained popularity by supporting Proposition 14, and was later elected governor of California.
The U. Mulkay decision overturned Proposition 14 in in favor of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Conservative historians Thomas E. Woods, Jr. Separate but Equal—Again? Another concern is the fact that on more than one occasion, the federal government has threatened to withhold highway funds from states that did not pass certain articles of legislation.
Any state that lost highway funding for any extended period would face financial impoverishment, infrastructure collapse, or both. Although the first such action the enactment of a national speed limit was directly related to highways and done in the face of a fuel shortage, most subsequent actions have had little or nothing to do with highways and have not been done in the face of any compelling national crisis.
An example of this would be the federally mandated drinking age of Critics of such actions feel that when the federal government does this they upset the traditional balance between the states and the federal government.
After Pennsylvania won a federal lawsuit to block the deactivation of the th Fighter Wing of the Pennsylvania Air National Guard, defense and Congressional leaders chose to try to settle the remaining BRAC lawsuits out of court, reaching compromises with the plaintiff states. The latter is in violation of federal law.
In Gonzales v. Raich, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the federal government, permitting the Drug Enforcement Administration DEA to arrest medical marijuana patients and caregivers. Oregon, the Supreme Court ruled that the practice of physician-assisted suicide in Oregon is legal. Nonetheless, states are obligated, under all circumstances, to respect, defend and abide by the requirements of the Constitution, especially the due process of law.
And governors and state legislatures prefer to delegate key powers to many small, fragmented local units, rather than creating regional bodies that might compete with their own powers. Since every local official is legally responsible only to voters in his or her own community, they are all strongly motivated to take account only of the welfare of their own constituents, ignoring repercussions on everyone else.
So each local government designs its policies to capture as many benefits as possible, while shoving as many costs as possible onto surrounding jurisdictions. Thus, Prince William County would have retained almost all the property and sales tax benefits of the Disney project and adjacent new development, while a lot of traffic congestion and other costs would have fallen upon other counties.
If some type of tax-base sharing and regional land-use planning existed among these local governments, a much more rational pattern of land uses and of financing public services could be devised. Some localities have 10 to 15 times more assessed value per resident than others with central cities and inner-ring suburbs usually on the low end.
This creates immensely unequal opportunities in terms of the quality of public schools and other vital services provided within a single region. In general, the poorest residents get hurt the most. Congress could improve this situation almost overnight by requiring each metropolitan region to develop an overall plan for the use of federal funds of all types, before any government in that region could receive any federal money at all.
In , Congress adopted this approach concerning federal surface transportation funds. Now it should extend the same idea to all types of federal funding of local governments and services. That would affect federal welfare, housing, and health spending, among others.
Faced with this requirement, local governments in each region would have a powerful incentive to get together and form some type of regional planning alliance in order to get federal funds. Yet a devolution of power away from the national level would still take place but at a functionally far more effective level. Opponents criticize more regional governance for two reasons. Regional arrangements have proved very successful in both Portland, Oregon, and the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. In reality, both these objections are primarily motivated by the unwillingness of most local officials and many citizens to yield any of their existing powers, even though those powers are failing to solve many crucial social problems.
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