We thank Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek for their insightful comments regarding our book and its “densely layered picture of intergovernmental relations.” Although it is rarely treated as such, federalism is indeed “a pervasive, inescapable influence” on the politics of public policy. By treating state officials as impactful stakeholders with an interest in both the design and the implementation of government programs, we hope to reorient the study of intergovernmental relations and “spawn a cottage industry of scholarship.” We would be tremendously gratified if future research takes up just a fraction of the thought-provoking questions raised in the preceding review.
For instance, we share Orren and Skowronek’s interest in “those who are making these [policy] design choices, especially the choices that seem to prepare for obvious footfalls going in.” In documenting each policy’s origins and enactment, our case studies highlight the role of these policy entrepreneurs and examine the rationale for their design choices. Our analysis reveals that national policy makers are sometimes acutely aware of how the states are likely to respond. For example, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Committee on Economic Security acknowledged the risk that a state-administered unemployment insurance system would create vested state-level interests that would stand in the way of modification or repeal. The evolution of the program validated their concerns. In other cases, policy makers are caught off guard by the states’ response. House Ways and Means Committee chairman Wilbur Mills famously called Medicaid the most expensive mistake of his career, and we argue that his miscalculation resulted from the rapidly shifting political, economic, and administrative environment in which Medicaid was introduced. We agree that there is “much more to be said about policy design” and the extent to which policy entrepreneurs incorporate feedback-related calculations into their decision making.
In selecting which cases to feature in the book, we deliberately chose to showcase “the states’ relationship to national policy across a wide swath of American political development.” Examining intergovernmental programs across historical eras enables us to both move beyond the “standard progression of historical periods and categories” often associated with the study of American federalism and identify the common design features and contextual factors associated with different types of feedback effects. Policy making is a messy process, and it is difficult to generalize, but we can identify patterns. Orren and Skowronek offer several constructive case selection strategies that would build on our findings. Indeed, our analysis of the Affordable Care Act—where the Medicaid expansion and health insurance exchanges generated different intergovernmental dynamics because of their distinctive design features—puts one of their recommendations into practice. Studies of a single policy area over different historical eras, or of different programs within a single policy area, represent two promising paths forward. Education policy provides a good example. The relationship between state and local governments varies across early childhood, K–12, and higher education and offers an opportunity to examine what we label “coalition potential” in more detail.
We sincerely hope that researchers will heed Orren and Skowronek’s counsel to “read Responsive States as a challenge” and will pursue the “ambitious agenda” it outlines. Federalism deserves a central place in the study of the politics of public policy, both in the United States and around the globe.
