Turning Federalism Inside Out: Intrastate Aspects of Interstate Regulatory Competition

Abstract

Contemporary analyses of federalism neglect to consider adequately the contents and consequences of intrastate structures and institutions. This neglect of the intrastate aspects of federalism and interstate regulatory competition leaves impoverished our understanding of contemporary American federalism and the issue of interstate regulatory competition and competence. My burden in this paper is to demonstrate that these two related claims are accurate. The burden of future work in this vein is to explain more theoretically and empirically the role of state institutional and constitutional structures on the efficacy of interstate regulatory competition. The larger ambition is to connect analyses and models of intrastate regulatory decisionmaking with contemporary theories of federalism.