David Hedge - Governance and the Changing American States

David M. Hedge

University of Florida

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America is in the midst of a devolution revolution as increasing amounts of the responsibility for governing the nation are shifted to the American states. For many this is how it should be. The new conventional wisdom of American politics is that the states are much better suited to governing than their federal counterparts. Part of the rationale for that assertion is the apparent resurgence of state governments. On the demand side, more citizens now have more opportunities to influence the decisions of state policymakers. On the supply side, the states political institutions and those who serve in those institutions are more capable, enjoy more resources, and are more willing to use those resources to govern. Not everyone, however, accepts the new conventional wisdom. Over the past several years a more critical view of the American states has emerged, one in which state governments, for all their reforms, are viewed as suffering the same kinds of political pathologies that we encounter elsewhere in American politics, including gridlock, inordinate interest group influence, excessive partisanship, and political selfishness.

This book is an attempt to navigate between these competing views of the states and to address one of the more fundamental questions of governance in the years aheadcan the states govern and govern wisely in the new century? In the chapters that follow, I essentially do two things: (1) chronicle the kinds of changes that have occurred on the demand and supply sides of state government and (2) assess the consequences of those developments for the quality of statehouse democracy and the ability of state governments to govern responsibly and effectively.