A cost of federalism

Sandy Levinson

There is much to be said in favor of federalism--its promotion of diversity and the ability of states to serve as fabled 'little laboratories of experimentation." there is also the attraction of the principle of "subsidiarity," by which decisions should be made at the lowest level possible, not least becasue of the opportunity it will give to people to participate in actual decisionmaking in a way that is functionally impossible in a national government ostensibly representing 300,000,000 people. But, even putting such ominous modes of "diversity" as chattel slavery and subsequent segregation to one side, there is another obvious problem with federalism: States, like individuals, have no particular incentive to take the "national interest" into account when trying to maximize their own interests. This obvious fact is the principal defense of a post-New Deal strong national government, which exists, under this perspective, in substantial part to serve as a co-ordination mechanism designed to overcome the well-known "prisoner's dilemma" problems that come from fragmented decisionmaking by entities with competing interests.

So this is a long (and perhaps long-winded) introduction into a story in today's NYTimes by Adam Nagourney on the havoc being created, with regard to the 2008 presidential campaign, by the decisions of big states to move up their primaries, in order to try to play a greater part in the process of selection. Thus he writes

As many as four big states — California, Florida, Illinois and New Jersey — are likely to move up their 2008 presidential primaries to early next February, further upending an already unsettled nominating process and forcing candidates of both parties to rethink their campaign strategies, party officials said Wednesday.

The changes, which seem all but certain to be enacted by state legislatures, mean that the presidential candidates face the prospect of going immediately from an ordered series of early contests in relatively small states in January to a single-day, coast-to-coast battlefield in February, encompassing some of the most expensive advertising markets in the nation.

The changes would appear to benefit well-financed and already familiar candidates and diminish the prospects of those with less money and name recognition going into such a highly compressed series of contests early next year.

It seems clear beyond doubt that this is not good news for the country at large. We would be far better off if the campaign could procede in some reasonable order, over several months, so that voters could actually learn more about the candidates' strengths and weaknesses, not to mention the problems with limiting the effective race to the extremely monied. But, of course, none of the four states in question has any incentive to be selfless. This is precisely why we need centralized co-ordinating authority.

For once, I don't blame George W. Bush for this most unfortunate development, though I do blame the blind faith in either "the market" or "federalism" and its tendency to overlook weaknesses in its single-minded emphasis on the strengths. In any case, it's unclear that anything can be done. It might even raise constitutional problems if Congress argued that it had power to regulate the primary schedules of ostensibly "private" political parties. And, clearly, the national parties themselves do not have the power to act, which would mean, among other things, cracking down on New Hampshire's obsession with keeping its privileged position regardless of "desert." So, once again, structures are central to outcomes.

In any event, it appears that we will know within thirteen months whether it will indeed be Hillary or Barack (or, my own favorite at this moment, Al), unless, of course, they split the vote and then we can look forward to a six-month hiatus waiting for the Convention.

Posted 12:06 PM by Sandy Levinson [link]