Federalism

Does agreement with the specific electoral procedures used affect whether voters trust election outcomes? Using public opinion data from 2008–2024 and a large pre-2024 election survey experiment, the author examines whether procedural agreement explains variation in confidence beyond the well-known effects of partisan control and whether a voter’s preferred candidate won. The study focuses on procedural polarization in state election laws and assesses observational and experimental evidence about how voters respond when results are produced under procedures they oppose.

This study asks whether preferences about who should decide abortion policy — the federal government or individual states — changed the way Americans translated support for reproductive health care into votes in the 2024 US presidential election. Using a novel set of survey questions about abortion generally, access to the abortion pill (mifepristone), and locus-of-authority preferences, the authors test whether those locus preferences conditioned vote choice for Donald Trump. They report only partial support for the expectation that state-versus-federal authority preferences meaningfully alter electoral responses on reproductive issues.

States have long been treated as “laboratories of democracy,” where learning and competition spread policy innovations. Building on policy feedback scholarship, this article develops a new framework of policy interdependence showing that state policies do more than teach or compete—they reshape interest-group politics across state lines.

This study investigates how political violence interacts with federal-state relations across the American West.

Did the gender of delegates' children influence their votes at the 1787 Constitutional Convention? This study leverages a natural experiment to examine how child gender affected founders' voting preferences. We hypothesize that fathers with sons favored stronger national government, envisioning opportunities for their boys in America's future expansion.

How do state-level bills resisting national policies fare in legislative outcomes?

American unions experienced significant decline from 1983 to 2014, spreading geographically despite state-level political leanings. This study shows union weakness in one state is associated with neighboring states' unions weakening during this period.

This study challenges the common belief that welfare policies strictly intensify with rising African American caseloads. By extending Soss, Fording, and Schram's Racial Classification Model to account for federal funding constraints and state legislators' racial biases alongside their ideological aims, we examine TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) work requirements, sanctions, time limits, and exemptions.

Federal systems incentivize strategic polluter placement. US data reveals major facilities are disproportionately located downwind of state borders, a pattern especially strong for toxic emitters.

This article explains how judicial review shapes political relations between national and subnational governments in Brazil, Colombia, and Spain. The analysis centers on two core questions: how supreme courts become pivotal arbiters of vertical intergovernmental disputes, and how national and subnational politicians deploy judicial review to advance their own interests.