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Martha Derthick and The Influence of Federal Grants: Explaining Federalism

For me, the conventional notion of federalism was a somewhat interesting but not very engaging aspect of American politics, that is, until I read The Influence of Federal Grants by Martha Derthick. That book managed, as few do, to bring an entire realm of American politics to life. Every student of American politics at some time encounters a textbook definition of federalism. It is usually defined as “a political system with a division of labor between national and state governments with each level having separate and independent policy responsibilities.” Each level of government has autonomy from the other. Power is divided so the ability of one level to dominate other levels is diminished. As the twentieth century unfolded, this approach to defining federalism often conjured up situations of bureaucratic squabbling over who was responsible for what and whether or how much the national government could seek to impose norms upon state and local policy choices. This layer-cake sense of federalism has always seemed, to me at least, to provide only minimal enticement for students of politics to study federalism. As widespread as this definition is, it misses two fundamental matters. First, as several scholars have pointed out, there was no clear notion of federalism at the Founding. The above definition developed over time. Given this after-thefact definition, one might wonder if the definition and all its implications were entirely valid. Was dividing up policy the essence of federalism? Second, the Federalist Papers contain arguments about ambition countering ambition as a way to restrain power. Studying battles between bureaucrats over regulations and what constitutes conforming to federal standards seems only marginally to capture the idea of ambition versus ambition. The first definition did not suggest a nice tidy initial agreement in which some duties were assigned to states and localities and some to the national government. The second suggested something more fluid involving politicians and an altered division of labor if public views about who should do what changed. But the literature of federalism seemed to miss these two matters.