Subnational Units Of Government Research Articles

Whiteness, Scapegoating, and Scarcity: Medicalizing ‘the US Opioid Crisis’

This paper characterizes the successful civil lawsuits brought by sub-national units of government in the US against multinational pharmaceutical companies to recover the costs of public expenditures (goods and services) incurred as they attempt to manage the ‘opioid crisis,’ as a scapegoating strategy whose function is to deflect attention from the governance failures that allow corporate colonization of the public sphere and rescue the moribund privileges of whiteness enjoyed by the ‘blue collar aristocracy’ until neoliberal globalization rendered them obsolete. Recent drops in white life expectancy, which are associated with chronic diseases and non-medical opioid use, map onto high unemployment and under-employment rates in formerly prosperous communities, now fodder for populist political campaigns. Criminalizing the pharmaceutical companies and executives for peddling prescription medicines to inadequately trained (in the treatment of pain) physicians — some of whom prescribed opioids inappropriately to (majority white) patients/consumers, some of whom developed addictions, and/or poisoning following non-medical use or consumption with alcohol or illicit substances —medicalizes the white opioid crisis and identifies consumers as victims. This distinguishes them from the Americans of color whose ‘drug use’ has been criminalized, who have been disproportionately arrested, and sentenced to long periods of incarceration that entail the loss of civil and political rights, including the right to vote. White elites staked out the ‘color line’ before the Founding, perpetuating it through various scapegoating and ‘shapeshifting’ strategies to the present day. The lawsuits are only the most recent iteration of a morally bankrupt carceral state.

LTSS IS LOCAL, EVEN IN COUNTRIES WITH NATIONAL LTSS PROGRAMS

This study reports the results of a cross-national qualitative assessment of how different countries structure their provision of long term services and supports (LTSS). It emphasizes the universality of the local role, even in countries that offer some form of universal coverage for LTSS. At minimum, countries devolve the responsibility for administration and eligibility determination to sub-national units, variously called provinces, départements, Länder, or other terms. However, many countries do much more than that: subnational units can be responsible for the safety net welfare programs that pick up the costs that the universal programs do not cover. They may also run other programs that affect the ability of people with LTSS needs to live good lives, such as housing and health programs; again, the role of sub-national governments often focuses on those least able to pay. In addition, in some countries, local governments have a role in helping to finance the national program as well. Differing abilities to support these responsibilities across regions can result in geographic disparities in access to care – so, too, can differences in administration and eligibility determination, resulting in many of the same issues that we in the US confront regarding access to LTSS through the Medicaid program. Thus, even countries with strong national programs for LTSS experience many of the same tensions between national and sub-national units of government that we in the US do.

"Mal-Adaptive" Federalism: Addressing the Structural Barriers to Interstate Coordination of Sustainability Initiatives

While the federal government has been slow to address problems such as climate change, many states have adopted innovative approaches to address the climate impact of using natural resources to produce energy, including aggressive approaches to regulating carbon emissions and renewable and clean energy standards. This Article identifies an emerging challenge that subnational regulation faces in the energy and environmental context -- what I will call “maladaptive” federalism -- and argues that federalism discussions need to account for its possibility. Part I highlights adaptive regulation as a form of federalism, echoing a vision for subnational regulation many federalism scholars and policymakers have endorsed over the past two decades. Part II argues that policy choices by subnational units of government that fail to account for or consider these coordination benefits should not be celebrated as a form of adaptive federalism merely because they are state policy choices. I identify subnational recalcitrance (on inaction by states) and backlash (or reversing course) as two potential types of maladaptation, provides examples of each, and use these to illustrate the structural features of subnational governments that make maladaptation most likely. Part III argues in favor of pro-adaptation tools that federal agencies can use to address the enactment costs of states taking maladaptive approaches. In certain contexts, focusing on enactment costs associated with the structure of state governments will superior to federal policies that preempt subnational units of government altogether by making the policy choice for them. Such tools not only make maladaptation less likely; they also help to ensure that when a state does opt for an maladaptive policy path that it does so because it is making explicit tradeoffs in ways that are more likely to be welfare-enhancing and politically accountable.

Fiscal Devolution in East Asia

Fiscal Devolution in East Asia

Devolution, Fiscal Federalism, and Changing Patterns of Municipal Revenues: The Mismatch between Theory and Reality

Devolution, Fiscal Federalism, and Changing Patterns of Municipal Revenues: The Mismatch between Theory and Reality

Economic and Fiscal Implications of Aging for Subnational American Governments

This article begins with a brief review of the extensive literature dealing with the macroeconomic consequences of population aging in industrialized societies and places the question in the context of the political and economic framework of the United States. Next, we move to the fiscal ramifications of population aging for subnational units of government. The varying demographic sources of aging are then introduced and their economic implications are reviewed. The role of population aging within the context of subnational fiscal impacts is first examined by reviewing patterns of change in demand for state-government-provided public goods and services associated with an older population. These include primarily health care and income security. These considerations on the expenditure side are then extended to substate government, where primary and secondary educations are easily the largest component of public budgets. Finally, the implications of demographic change on the revenue side of state and local public finances are considered, including potential impacts on sales, property, and income tax receipts.

Superficiality and Bias: The (Mis)Treatment of Native Americans in U. S. Government Textbooks

Many of the problems facing Americans today stem from bias, stereotype, and basic misunderstanding on the part of non-Indians. As racist tendencies and generalizations begin at an early age, education and proper treatment in textbooks is essential in remedying the problem. However, education and learning do not end in one's teen years. Perceptions (both positive and negative) can be molded, reshaped, or solidified in later years. Thus, while adequate and accurate coverage of the role of Americans in the governmental system should be standard fare in college textbooks, it is not. In this paper we analyze the way in which issues are addressed in some of the leading government and democracy textbooks being used at the college level. Our examination considers the texts on two levels. First, we look at the amount of space devoted to Americans relative to other minority groups and between the federal government and other subnational units of government. An examination of index references and a simple word count should reveal where the priorities of various authors lie. (We assume that areas given greater weight by an author will be written upon more extensively.) Second, we examine the texts for any bias or the fostering of misunderstanding. For example, simply lumping Americans into a section on minority politics is inherently misinforming if the separate legal status of nations as well as individuals living in Country is not specified.' (By admission, our word count analysis appears to lean toward the same style of categorization but it is unavoidable since Americans are among the many ethnic minority groups in the United States; however, the term Indian or Native American also connotes a particular political or legal status). Other possible areas of bias include the discussion of tribes with regard to

A Constitution of Democratic Experimentalism

In this Article, Professors Dorf and Sabel identify a new form of government, democratic experimentalism, in which power is decentralized to enable citizens and other actors to utilize their local knowledge to fit solutions to their individual circumstances, but in which regional and national coordinating bodies require actors to share their knowledge with others facing similar problems. This information pooling, informed by the example of novel kinds of coordination within and among private firms, both increases the efficiency of public administration by encouraging mutual learning among its parts and heightens its accountability through participation of citizens in the decisions that affect them.In democratic experimentalism, subnational units of government are broadly free to set goals and to choose the means to attain them. Regulatory agencies set and ensure compliance with national objectives by means of bestpractice performance standards based on information that regulated entities provide in return for the freedom to experiment with solutions they prefer. The authors argue that this type of self-government is currently emerging in settings as diverse as the regulation of nuclear power plants, community policing, procurement of sophisticated military hardware, environmental regulation, and child-protective services.The Article claims further that a shift towards democratic experimentalism holds out the promise of reducing the distance between, on the one hand, the Madisonian ideal of a limited government assured by a complex division of powers and, on the other hand, the governmental reality characteristic of the New Deal synthesis, in which an all-powerful Congress delegates much of its authority to expert agencies that are checked by the courts when they infringe individual rights, but are otherwise assumed to act in the public interest. Professors Dorf and Sabel argue that the combination of decentralization and mutual monitoring intrinsic to democratic experimentalism better protects the constitutional ideal than do doctrines offederalism and the separation of powers, so at odds with current circumstances, that courts recognize the futility of applying them consistently in practice by limiting themselves to fitful declarations of their validity in principle.

Tax Progressivity and State Economic Performance

Principles offiscal federalism suggest that subnational units of government should rely on benefits-received financing, implying regressivity in state and local taxes. Empirically, however, states and their localities vary enormously in the degree of progressivity of their tax systems. This article investigates the effect of tax progressivity on economic growth. Using a pooled cross-section model from 1977 to 1993, the author found that the degree of progressivity has no effect on the rate of growth of state personal income per capita. Measuring growth rates over the entire period, the author found that progressivity has a significant negative effect on economic growth. The long-period result is driven by the high growth rates of a small number of northeastern states, who benefited from strong regional growth and their tax haven status adjacent to more progressive states. The weak progressivity effect suggests that there is considerable scope for differences in tax incidence across states.

Ocean management policy development in subnational units of government: examples from the United States

Changes in law and policy over the last decade within the US have resulted in greater state-level influence over ocean use policy. At the same time there has been initiative at the state level of government to increase capacity for ocean management through policy development, and in a few cases, policy implementation. It is suggested that this trend of state involvement will continue because the vehicles for state participation in ocean affairs are institutionalized.

Beyond the NIMBY Syndrome in Hazardous Waste Facility Siting: The Albertan Breakthrough and the Prospects For Cooperation in Canada and the United States

The prospects for agreements in the siting of hazardous waste facilities in Canada and the United States would appear bleak given the repeated failures of the past decade. A variety of provincial and state siting approaches have been attempted, only to be thwarted regularly by local opposition. The most far–reaching exceptional case involves the siting of a comprehensive hazardous waste disposal facility in Alberta, Canada in the mid‐1980s. The Alberta approach to siting differed markedly from those of other provinces and states and in many respects met the conditions necessary for policy cooperation specified by the maturing institutionalist and game theoretic literatures on this topic. The Alberta siting agreement has already demonstrated shortcomings in the implementation phase and may not be easily transplanted to other subnational units of government. Nonetheless, it suggests that the Not‐In‐My‐Back‐Yard Syndrome so familiar in hazardous waste facility siting need not be an inevitability and that careful attention to key aspects of siting policy may facilitate cooperation.

FISCAL FEDERALISM IN THE UK

be known as a result of Its association with the analysis of fiscal relations between central and local (state) governments in federal states such as Australia, Canada and the U.S. As an expositional device I will focus on the issue of whether it would be possible to introduce a decentralised system of local and regional finance which embodies the ideas of fiscal federalism as they have been developed in such federal countries. The history of constitutional development in the United Kingdom suggests that the prospects for such a radical reform are slight. However, some form of fiscal federalism is the logical consequence of the arguments for Scottish and Welsh devolution - perhaps accompanied by regional devolution within England - and of the case for greater local government autonomy so eloquently argued in the report of the Layfield Committee (1976). An analysis of the feasibility should thus provide useful insights concerning the consequences and success of less drastic moves in the direction of fiscal decentralisation. Much of the literature on fiscal federalism is concerned with issues related to what one might term the 'fiscal constitution', i.e. the allocation of responsibility for public expenditure and taxation between national and sub-national units of government - which may be states, cantons, municipalities and a variety of other local government units. Since the literature can be applied equally to regional government units - i.e. states, provinces, cantons, Lander - and to local (in the conventional sense) government units - i.e. counties, municipalities, communes, districts -1 shall use the term local government to refer inclusively to all sub-national units of government. The

The Impact of Intergovernmental Revenue on City Expenditures: An Analysis Over Time

T HE INCREASING DEPENDENCE of state and local governments on intergovernmental revenue is now widely recognized. The effects of such aid on subnational units of government is far less well understood, however. Of particular interest is the question of whether or not aid may merely be used as a substitute for funds that otherwise might be raised locally. That is, does intergovernmental revenue (IGR) stimulate recipient governments to spend more from their own sources, or is this aid largely substitutive?1 The following multivariate analysis over three time periods evaluates the