As
Rick correctly notes,
it’s a political ritual for those who lose the presidency to discover a love
for federalism. Rick wonders,
though, whether progressives have paid their “federalism insurance
premium.” He compares federalism to “an
insurance policy, protecting the risk averse against loss of national power”
and insists that “the protection comes at a price: One must pay the ‘premium’
of protecting subnational power when one controls the national government,
tolerating subnational experiments that one regards as more Frankenstein than
Brandeis.”
I
think Rick is both right and wrong. He’s
surely right that those who control national power can be more or less tolerant
of disagreement. I just don’t think this
phenomenon has much to do with federalism.
A handful of people – including Rick
and myself
– are committed to the notion that states and localities play a useful role in
a well-functioning democracy (though I take a nationalist’s
view as to what constitutes a
well-functioning democracy). Rick and I also agree that federalism and
localism allow for a distinctively American variant of a loyal
opposition. But as Rick himself observes, most
people – including most politicians – are fair-weather federalists. Issues, not institutional commitments, drive debates.
That’s why I don’t
think it matters that much whether one side or the other has paid up its
“federalism insurance premium.” Even if
progressives learn to love federalism, I don’t think blue states will be more
likely to win concessions from a conservative federal government. Nor do I think that conservatives – who have
often allied themselves with federalism – will hesitate to impose national
mandates where they can. This isn’t a
knock on conservatives; progressives would behave in exactly the same fashion were
the tables turned.
Rick’s
core point, though, is right – we should worry about a give-and-take between
liberals and conservatives. It’s just
that the give-and-take has more to do with politics than institutions. Put differently, it’s not federalism that
matters here, but pluralism. And a
pluralist system only flourishes when both sides are willing to live and let
live. Rick writes of the need to
“tolerat[e] subnational experiments that one regards as more Frankenstein than
Brandeis,” but the real problem is the underlying assumption that one’s
opponent is closer to Frankenstein rather than to Brandeis. Maybe skepticism of one’s political foes depends
on debates over decentralization, but I suspect it has a great deal more to do
with the forces that political scientists have identified as the sources of
polarization.
Federalism, after
all, is just one of many institutional and legal strategies we use to
instantiate pluralist politics. As Rick
notes in the close of his post, “through the exercise of self-control across
different political regimes, each Party can slowly confer on institutional
arrangements a permanence (sentimentalists would even say "sanctity")
that survives change of regimes, sending a signal to their opponents that their
self-control will be reciprocated when the tables are turned.” That includes not just federalism and the
filibuster (Rick’s example), but a range of institutional practices.
Unfortunately, we’re
seeing lots of evidence these days that our “pluralism premiums” are not paid
up; federalism is just part of that story. Progressives would point to the efforts of
North Carolina’s GOP-controlled legislature to disempower
their newly elected Democratic governor and the Senate’s
refusal to grant Merrick Garland a
hearing. Conservatives would point to
the efforts of the Obama administration post-election efforts to
protect his environmental policies from reversal
or the blue
states and cities
promising to resist the new administration’s policies before Trump has even set
foot in the White House. Perhaps the
best proof of pluralism’s decline is the fact that I have to provide separate
lists to make my case, precisely because conservatives and liberals agree on so
little these days. We are all watching the same story unfold
during Obama’s last days in office, but we have completely different views of
whether Trump is violating “sacred” norms . . . or Obama is. Is Obama merely “cement[ing]his
legacy” or “putting
up policy roadblocks”?
In sum, federalism is
like pretty much everything else in a well-functioning democracy; while it can
help politics works, it also depends on politics to work. Needless to say, reciprocity and trust are
hard to build but easy to dismantle in a system like our own. I take it that is Rick’s core concern, and on
that point we agree entirely.