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John Kincaid, Robert B. and Helen S. Meyner Professor of Government and Public Service and director of Lafayette’s Meyner Center for the Study of State and Local Government, is quoted extensively in the Week in Review Section of Sunday’s New York Times.
An article entitled “The Not-So United States” by Pam Belluck examines “the political and ideological extremes bubbling up from the states these days” and looks at the impact local legislatures are having. Massachusetts became the first state to enact near-universal health care coverage this month while, at the other end of the spectrum, South Dakota recently enacted a law that bans all abortions except those necessary to save the life of the mother. Excerpts follow:
These debates raise a number of questions. Is the country destined to balkanize into a patchwork of polar-opposite policies? How will this diversity be reconciled? Does it need to be?
. . . The federal government’s posture on certain issues . . . spurs action by the states. On some issues, the federal government, under the current and other recent administrations, has imposed far-reaching laws and regulations, said John Kincaid, a professor of government and public service at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa.
“There’s been a tremendous amount of federal pre-emption of state law in last couple of decades,” Dr. Kincaid said. He cited federal laws governing consumers, food labeling, class-action lawsuits and the No Child Left Behind education law.
“So the states are responding,” he said. “I think we’ve moved from an era of cooperative federalism to an era of coercive federalism in which the federal government is really dictating to the states. That has produced a really activist response of states trying to cope with this.” . . .
This atmosphere has turned the concept of federalism, once a favorite of conservatives seizing on states’ rights to buck liberal national laws and court decisions, into an equal-opportunity idea embraced just as readily by liberals — especially with a White House and Congress dominated by Republicans. . . .
Similar cycles of divergence have occurred at other times in American history, historians and political scientists said. . . .
The early-20th century was another time of state activism, historians said. Ultimately, “much of the New Deal legislation in the 1930’s was modeled after state legislation,” Dr. Kincaid said. In the years before the New Deal, he said, “a lot of states had old-age pensions that looked a lot like Social Security and workmen’s compensation.”
The crystal ball, then, would indicate that some of the issues enthralling the states will eventually get sorted out nationally in federal legislation. . . .
But don’t expect that to happen overnight, or on every issue. Dr. Kincaid predicts “a significant buildup of policy actions in the states that will get reflected in the Congressional elections” and over time, lead to federal change. Other issues, like abortion, reside with the federal courts, meaning actions like South Dakota’s could have no impact on the outcome.
Kincaid is senior editor for a series of volumes on comparative federalism and served as co-editor of the first book, Constitutional Origins, Structure, and Change in Federal Countries, published in 2005. A second volume, Distribution of Powers and Responsibilities in Federal Countries, came out in January.
He was named Distinguished Federalism Scholar in 2001 by the American Political Science Association, recognizing his outstanding contributions to the study of federalism and intergovernmental relations. The association is the major professional society for American political scientists.
President of the International Association of Centers for Federal Studies from 1998-2005, Kincaid has lectured and consulted on issues of federalism, intergovernmental relations, constitutionalism, and regional and local governance in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.
He is the author of various works on federalism and intergovernmental relations, served as editor of Publius: The Journal of Federalism from 1981-2005 – a quarterly scholarly journal with a worldwide readership – and editor of a 50-book series, Governments and Politics of the American States.
Kincaid served as executive director of the bipartisan U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations in Washington, D.C., from 1987-94, when he joined the Lafayette faculty. He is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
He is a recipient of the Donald Stone Distinguished Scholar Award from the Section on Intergovernmental Administration and Management of the American Society of Public Administration; coeditor of The Covenant Connection: From Federal Theology to Modern Federalism (2000); coeditor of Competition Among States and Local Governments: Efficiency and Equity in American Federalism (1991); editor of Political Culture, Public Policy and the American States (1982); and author of other scholarly works.
Brandon Benjamin ’06 investigated federalism and government performance with John Kincaid, Meyner Professor of Government and Public Service.