Laboratories Against Democracy: How National Parties Transformed State Politics
by Jacob M Grumbach, Princeton, £25

A reflex apparent in US political science after Reagan saw a reinvigorated federalism as a source of innovation in economics, education, and social policy.

The states, so the argument went, were emerging as “laboratories of democracy” in which creative governors experimenting with ideas that went beyond traditional party politics were harbingers of a new “Progressive Era”.

How times change. 

In an almost dialectical antithesis, federalism today is often seen as the weak underbelly of American politics, thrust to the front line of rancorous polarisation and hence, even posing a threat to democratic norms. States are becoming, in Jacob Grumbach’s words, laboratories “against” democracy.

Bitter divisions between jurisdictions reflecting national partisan conflict are there for all to see, over issues from the use of cannabis to gun control. 

Take the starkly different responses to the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v Wade which has led some states to outlaw abortion and criminalise those who support it, while other states act to shore up abortion laws. 

Intensifying discord over immigration have seen the governors of Florida and Texas bussing migrants from the southern border to northern states containing so-called “sanctuary cities” in a broadside against federal policy.

Grumbach runs with this phenomenon, going beyond the threats to national safeguards and the creeping authoritarianism under Trump with which we are familiar, to identify states as the key arena of democratic backsliding in the country.

He argues that the concentration on national politics by the broad coalitions that comprise both Democratic and Republican parties — the “nationalisation” of party politics — has greatly increased the weight of state-level policymaking within US federalism.

As state outcomes become more heavily determined by what happens at the federal centre, and are  driven by national groups with national concerns, this has upended their role as laboratories of democracy which in an ideal world customise policy based on local conditions. 

At the state level, where budgets are constrained and voters have less information, it is far easier for business and the rich to corrupt democracy by flooding politics with money and eroding institutional prerogatives.

Based on empirical evidence that brings together a sophisticated array of indicators between 2000 and 2018, Grumbach seeks to identify both how and why the performance of subnational governments has changed. 

He concludes: “In the contemporary period… the results are overwhelmingly clear — and concerning. The results of this analysis point to the Republican Party as the anti-democracy coalition in American politics, and state governments as a key venue in which they are pursuing their goals.”

While some states are clearly making progress in areas such as climate and health policy, this does not detract from the broader implication that the state level overall is becoming less advantageous for groups seeking changes on behalf of those marginalised by race and class.

The stakes are high, but Grumbach does not give up on the states. While the US federal centre remains so polarised and hostile to the interests of the excluded, the states nonetheless remain the best arena for progressive solutions to pressing social and economic problems.