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Disunited states 
GAVIN O’TOOLE explores how US federalism has been exploited by Republicans, but remains the best arena for progressive solutions
Charlottesville ‘Unite the Right’ rally enters Emancipation Park in August 2017 [Anthony Crider/flickr/CC]

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. 

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