Federalism and power in Trump 2.0

Chris Beam (0:06)

From the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University, I'm Chris Bean.

Candace Watt-Smith (0:11)

I'm Candace Watt-Smith.

Jenna Spinelli (0:12)

I'm Jenna Spinelli, and welcome to Democracy Works. This week, we are thrilled to welcome back Jake Grumbach, who is an associate professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, and author of the book Laboratories Against Democracy.

We had Jake on the show when that book came out back in 2022 It's hard to believe it's been four years, but time flies when you're having fun. But there's, I think, a lot to talk about within that book and how it's resonating these days, and a newer paper that Jake has about the effects of DEI policies at companies in the wake of a Trump administration executive order. We also talk about democracy in the midterm, so lots to unpack with Jake in this conversation.

Candace Watt-Smith (1:01)

Jake describes himself as a quant, and he is. His work is incredibly quantitative. There's lots of stats in that book, but it's also beautifully written and it makes the evidence easy to follow.

That book was about federalism, and we know that federalism is not only a system of allocating power and responsibility across levels of governance, but also it's a kind of theory of governance, which ostensibly federalism allows states to experiment with policies. It allows people to vote with their feet, right? So if each state is a little bit different and it creates policies that speak to local culture and needs and preferences, then if you don't like the way your place is, you could move to another place. And then also I think the kind of bigger one of the other major theories around federalism is that the states get to learn from each other and the federal government also gets to learn from the states. And then this other states can adopt or adapt good ideas and toss bad ones. Then we also know that federalism as it's worked in the United States is always changing. When Jake was writing Laboratories Against Democracy, trends in federalism were being heavily influenced by the nationalization of political parties and the parties were also polarizing and are polarizing. And as a result of those dynamics, states were like red and magenta and like lavender and arbergine.

But states seemed to be coming like redder and bluer. And part of that was because policies were adopted top down from national parties and intrascripts to state legislators rather than the other way around as we typically would expect it. And we saw that more states were becoming less democratic, and we saw more democratic backsliding in the states, and hence the title of the book.

Okay. I say all of that because that was three years ago. And what a difference a few years makes. I would argue that we're seeing another turn in the shape of federalism. And we're almost, I think, like an upside down federalism, where the national government, particularly the executive branch, which is not being checked by the other two branches, is really pulling out its big guns. It's running roughshod over democratic norms. It's pressuring states to do all sorts of things, and it's doing it through incentives and also through punishment.

Chris Beam (3:53)

I just, you know, every example is a good one that you mentioned. I just want to make the distinction because he kind of makes it too. And actually, its core to this paper is he's not talking about the, in this paper, he's not talking about the relationship between executive branch and state government, so much as he's talking about the relationship between government, executive branch, and corporations. And he talks about corporations as being an example of civil society. And I just want to give a 50 cent definition.

Civil society movement was big in the 90s. I wrote a book on it. And it is true, Jenna says in the interview, that a lot of people don't look at corporations as being part of civil society. But, and you could stretch the definition however you want. But basically, civil society are those parts of society that are organized and are pursuing a common interest, but are doing it independent of the government, right? And so, that can be anything from a family to a congregation to a Boy Scout troop, a little league team, whatever.

But it can also be something as huge as GE, right? It can be something as big as that. And you could argue, and I think a lot of people back in the 90s did, that we need to be more concerned with these face-to-face little organizations because those are really the schools of democracy. A boardroom, not really a democracy, right? And if you're on the union floor, it's even less. But it is also true that corporations are independent and they do create a little society. And it wasn't that long ago when corporations was one of the, and I think it's probably still true, where corporations was one of the few places where you'd have the opportunity to meet and develop a relationship with somebody who was very different from you, right? Someone who was a different race, different color, different sexual orientation, different religion, and you came to interact with them as people and for a long-term relationship. And in that regard, it was extremely important. In fact, it was probably more important than many of these other organizations that civil society advocates would routinely mention because those were often very segregated by class or whatever.