Schragger: Localism and State/City Conflicts
In Localism All the Way Up: Federalism, State-City Conflict, and the Urban-Rural Divide, Richard C. Schragger (University of Virginia Law) asserts that, while state-city conflicts are often characterized as “baby federalism” or otherwise as less important than the state-federal relationship, in actuality state-city conflicts are more representative of the political cleavages that characterize U.S. federalism in the twenty-first century and drive electoral politics.
Schragger first dispenses the notion that preemption is solely a red state, blue city problem. While targets of state preemptive laws are generally the larger and more progressive cities in their respective states, this is not always the case. Even in states with Democratic legislatures, Schragger asserts, preemption is rampant. Schragger pulls examples straight from national headlines and discusses preemption related to COVID, police reform, voting rights, plastic bag bans, minimum wage requirements, gun restrictions, and anti-discrimination ordinances. Schragger suggests many of these preemption examples are not confined to policies that require uniformity and that they lack significant extraterritorial effects. Instead, Schragger suggests these local ordinances are mainly expressive. In other words, these ordinances emphasize a threat that is not actually imminent or signal legislators’ desire to defend the “right” values.
Schragger also identifies three features of state democratic practice that he suggests entrench the so-called urban-rural divide. The first he describes as a structural anti-urbanism and underrepresentation of urban interests in state legislatures. Drawing on work by Jonathan Rodden (Political Science, Stanford), Schragger argues that urban underrepresentation exists because of structural dynamics of single-member, winner-take-all districts and the geographic concentration of Democratic votes in cities.
The second feature of state democratic practice Schragger addresses is state legislative capture. Drawing on the work of Alexander Hertel-Fernandez (International and Public Affairs, Columbia), Schragger examines the influence of highly motivated and well-funded cross-state corporate interest groups on state politics.
Finally, with respect to a rural-urban divide, Schragger also analyzes a third feature: metropolitanization. Schragger points out that the one or two large, heavily populated counties that frequently account for most of a state’s economic activity are heterogeneous and fragmented. This makes coordination difficult and opens urban areas to state domination.
Localism All the Way Up explains why state-based federalism doctrines have failed to address these metropolitan-level divisions and examines how doctrines designed to be protective of local interests have instead, he asserts, undercut actual political decentralization. Schragger also addresses why intra-state home rule doctrines have not been successful in addressing these divisions and concludes by surveying some possible responses, including intra-state institutional reforms.
