Managing Carrots and Sticks: Changes in State Administrators' Perceptions of Cooperative and Coercive Federalism During the 1990s

Abstract

The so-called devolution revolution was a significant theme in American federalism in the 1990s. Opinions on the issue vary widely. Some suggest that “major changes” occurred in intergovernmental relations. Others were pessimistic about the occurrence of any devolution during the decade. We investigated changes in intergovernmental relations between the national and state governments in the 1990s on the basis of Elazar's approach to American federalism involving: (1) administration, (2) cooperation and coercion, and (3) regulation. We used American State Administrator's Project (ASAP) data collected in 1994 and 1998 to access state administrators' perceptions of national fiscal and regulatory impacts on state agencies. We conclude that state administrators' perception of national fiscal and regulatory impacts changed only moderately from 1994 to 1998, and that evolution rather than revolution describes better the character of state-national intergovernmental changes during the 1990s.