Despite Daniel Elazar’s assurances that the US is thoroughly federalist,[1]
the intrusions of the central government into all aspects of life and the
resulting undermining of communal institutions[2] have
become prevailing aspects of the nation’s political system. And that reality undermines the nation’s
federalist character which places a premium on localism.
That will be the issue this posting addresses –
a lack of local government viability – as the next element of this blog’s
critique of the parochial federalist construct.
This account draws the conclusion that the parochial/traditional
federalist theory did not adequately address the potential – even perhaps the
likelihood – of the centralization of power in the federal government. It should be recalled that federalism is a non-centralized
system of governance, yet many would view the federal government as the central
element of this nation’s system.
Then again, some might think this claim is a
bit unfair in that the founding fathers could not have been expected to foresee
the conditions that led to the dominance of the federal government, i.e., the
global depression of the 1930s or the danger to the nation’s security posed by potential
enemies with nuclear weapons.
Both historical
developments occurred with a backdrop of the increasing dominance of national
corporations as they increasingly exerted their financial power over the
nation’s economy and through that advantage, the nation’s politics. A truly localized governance, given these
contextual realities, has been very difficult to sustain. The parochial federalist perspective was
basically overwhelmed by any attempt to re-establish this purer version of a
federalist view.
This blogger believes
that one key cause of this deficiency is that the initial perspective assumed
that the conditions of the compact drawn up by the founding generation would be
basically accepted by succeeding generations regardless of how the nation was
to evolve. If true, that, one must say,
was a lack of imagination, but this blogger should not be too critical; his entire
life has transpired in a time of enormous change.
Except for the provision for an amendment
process, which is basically expected to accommodate marginal changes and is
very cumbersome to employ, there is no provision for a generational affirmation
of the republican principles entailed in the nation’s constitution.
Just to demonstrate – and what follows is only
a demonstration – how resistant to change the original document was/is, the
nation was to encounter a civil war before a meaningful change was considered
and implemented. That would be the
ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment that this blogger has heard a
constitutional scholar characterize as a fundamental, transformational change
to the original constitution.[3]
This prevailing hereditary approach (or problem)
needs to be changed to one in which each generation makes a renewed commitment
to the nation’s constitutional principles with the ability to make the marginal
or significant changes for which the passing of time demands. That is, there must be the opportunity to
make constitutional changes more readily than now exists.
But even with that, this blogger has some
reservations. If such a provision were
added to the national constitution, what would happen to common law that is so
reliant on precedent? For example, a major
critique of overturning Roe v. Wade was how, by doing so, it undermined
the principle of precedent and with it the ability of law to be
predictable. Yet states have a much
easier process by which to change their constitutions and they seem to
accommodate those changes.
Every
state but Delaware requires voters to ratify proposed state constitutional
amendments – changes to a state’s constitution.
From 2006 through 2020, a total of 1,016 constitutional amendments were
proposed and put before voters. Of this
total, voters approved 733 proposed changes to state constitutions.[4]
And yet with this pace of change, state governments function and do not change
their basic, foundational elements of their governments or how those
governments govern their respective populations.
Such opportunity to change as the states accommodate
– perhaps to a much lesser frequency – needs to be made at the federal level so
that, while basic commitments to republican principles are protected against
the whims of popular opinion, structural, procedural, substantive, and
definitional elements can be altered. The
original plan underestimates how fundamentally the passage of time creates
demands that often call for corresponding changes in the basic rules of the
game.
For example, given the shifts in population to urban
areas and the ability of the rural population to secure representation in
Congress and state legislatures beyond their numbers – a condition allowed to
occur from gerrymandering and single-representative districts[5] –
the system is becoming less and less democratic.
This promises to be a condition that will prove
to be disruptive to a serious degree as this underrepresentation of urban
citizens becomes more and more obvious.
As it is, this blogger believes that this undemocratic trait is a prime
cause for the polarized politics this nation is presently experiencing.
But the immediate problem
this posting addresses is that the system has become too centralized in all aspects
of governance. Yet, due to the inflexibility
of the system to change its constitutional provisions, on which levels of
effective localism depend, the system seems helpless to protect the
efficaciousness of local governing units. To what extent does the system need
to be more flexible in its ability to make changes? To the extent, in part, that the governmental
system at the state and federal levels can meet the demands of the day without
undermining the nation’s commitment to localism.
Ironically, that commitment to localism has to be
defined in such a way as to maintain an effective sensitivity to global
conditions and challenges. Why? Because the modern world is now global, and
viable local governance not only has to address local problems, statewide
problems, national problems, but global ones as well.
Back in 1991, Robert Bellah, et al. wrote,
It is
equally remarkable that this strong new awareness of the non-utilitarian
context of life mostly operates at two quite disconnected levels. There is very local, even personal “Green
behavior” – such as recycling trash, using only certain products, and driving
less. And there is a second, planetary
level of concern, as in campaigns to protect endangered species, tropical rain
forests, or the ozone layer. The
mediating relationships that link the individual household with the planetary
ecosystem are left out – the bounds of human institutions and culture. There is a void in awareness, a gap in our
thinking at the crucial point, the middle range between the local and the
global level. Planetary environmental
degradation is rarely understood as connected with human poverty and
hunger. Why is it that it is easier to
think about the whole planetary ecosphere than to understand the social effects
of our everyday relationships within household, economy, and polity? Environmentalists sometimes forget that human
culture is itself, as Cicero put it, a “second nature,” whose true aim is not
to exploit the rest of nature but to cultivate it, raising the potentials
emergent in humanity toward harmonious completion.[6]
In short, viable citizenship, given the interdependence of nations and
the global consequences of economic activity, demands public virtue that is
sensitive to world-wide issues that not only address environmental issues but also
global labor exploitation, international crime syndicates, global health
issues, etc. that cannot be neglected.
That is, such concerns among the citizenry cannot
be effectively promoted solely by a national governance, but by local activity
and engagements that politicize common people into getting involved not only
with local problems, but also global ones.
Parochial federalism lacks a sufficient voice in dealing with global
issues. It is simply not modern enough
to meet the world that Americans are confronting today.
Of course, this is a complex situation, and
this posting does not provide a solution in which one can have much trust – the
aim here is to draw attention to these conditions. But it – the situation in which localism is
lost – should garner more interest than it now seems to have. A national discussion in which the
conversation goes beyond some newer form of “states’ rights” being expressed,
needs to occur.[7]
The next posting will
address the shortcomings these counter federalist biases have had in maintaining
a federation among a citizenry and yet not fully addressed by parochial
federalism. By addressing these
concerns, as described above, one gets at a very fundamental aspect of a parochial
view of federalism as that term suggests one should have. That would be a parochialism based on local
partnerships across the nation in which a partner comes face-to-face with other
partners.
[1] Daniel J. Elazar, “How Federal Is the Constitution?
Thoroughly,” in a booklet of readings, Readings
for Classes Taught by Professor Elazar, prepared for a National Endowment
for the Humanities Institute (conducted in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, 1994),
1-30.
[2] Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom
(San Francisco, CA: Institute of
Contemporary Studies, 1990).
[3] The reasoning supporting this claim is based on the
provisions of the due process and the equal protection clauses of the
Fourteenth Amendment. With them, the
federal government introduced the potential policing of states in how they
treated all of their citizens. That
said, it took over forty years before the courts began honoring these
provisions by initially protecting property rights of business interests (that
case being Lochner v. New York, 1905).
[4] “Amending State Constitutions,” Ballotpedia
(n.d.), accessed July 14, 2022, https://ballotpedia.org/Amending_state_constitutions.
[5]
Jonathan
Rodden, Why Cities Lose: The Deep
Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2019). This blogger’s recently published book, From
Immaturity to Polarized Politics (available through Amazon), provides an
overview of Rodden’s study in which this “single-representative” districts
provision is identified and described.
[6]
Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M.
Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton, The Good Society (New York,
NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 14-15.
[7]
States’
rights debates are generally conducted for racist and xenophobic attitudes and
beliefs – but a discussion of localism needs to keep its focus on enhancing
ways to encourage a more engaged citizenry in policy formation by all levels of
government. It is only at the local
level that average citizens have a reasonable chance at affecting the process.
