AMERICAN FEDERALISM AND PARTISAN RESISTANCE IN AN AGE OF POLARIZATION A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Joshua Len Meyer-Gutbrod August 2018 © 2018 Joshua Len Meyer-Gutbrod AMERICAN FEDERALISM AND PARTISAN RESISTANCE IN AN AGE OF POLARIZATION Joshua Len Meyer-Gutbrod, Ph.D. Cornell University 2018 The increase in partisan polarization at the national level has corresponded to an increase in partisan resistance and a decline in the ability of the federal government to respond to public concerns with effective policy. While literature has shown that state politics has polarized in tandem with the national political parties, there are abundant examples of recent bi-partisan cooperation between national and state governments. This dissertation explores the conditions under which American federalism might offer a mechanism for mitigating polarization by producing these opportunities for bi-partisan policy implementation. I argue that conflict between national and state governments is a product of the electoral motivations of state politicians, as they are structured by two interrelated political institutions. First, national political parties produce a national partisan agenda to which state politicians are held electorally accountable. Alongside their identification with a political party, state politicians must also contend with distinct local interests organized under American federalism and represented within state governments. I argue that, when the electoral incentives associated with American federalism and political parties encourage conflicting responses to federal policy, it can cross-pressure state officials resulting in negotiation between state politicians and partisan rivals at the national level. By examining the history of federalism and historical trends in decentralization of federal funding, I show that polarization has encouraged national political parties to produce more coercive policy and to increasingly decentralize policy implementation to state partisan allies. This increases the potential for conflict with moderate state partisan allies due to variation in local constituent pressures. Examining a new database of state legislative response to federal preemption law, I find that there is significant bi-partisan implementation during the recent period of high polarization, with conflicts between state and federal agents more regularly arising from variation in local policy preferences. In examining the highly polarized Affordable Care Act, I find that unique local constituent preferences encouraged state politicians to deviate from the agenda of national partisan allies. This effect was magnified when the state majority party risked loss of control of state institutions due to a strong competitive partisan environment within the state. These results suggest that the potential for state politicians to engage in bi-partisan policy implementation with the national rivals is a direct product of national polarization and can provide an avenue for policy compromise and continued effective governance. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Joshua Meyer-Gutbrod earned his Ph.D. in the Department of Government at Cornell University in the fall of 2018 with a specialization in American Politics. His research focuses on how partisan polarization has impacted state politics and altered the potential for conflicts between the state and federal governments over policy implementation. Raised in Leavenworth, KS, Dr. Meyer-Gutbrod earned his B.A. at the University of Notre Dame in 2008, with concentrations in Political Science and Philosophy. Before returning to school for his Ph.D., Dr. Meyer-Gutbrod worked with the Lucy Burns Institute on the development of Ballotpedia.org, a website dedicated to providing citizens with information about state politics and state and local elections. Following the completion of his Ph.D., Dr. Meyer-Gutbrod will research variation in state legislative campaign platforms at the University of California, Santa Barbara as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow. iii To my wife, Erin, my best friend and my collaborator in our greatest accomplishment, our children. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Significant achievements are never accomplished alone and this dissertation is certainly no exception. The challenges of writing a dissertation go well beyond academic debate and scholarly revisions and extend to the professional and personal support that are necessary for success as a Ph.D. candidate. During my six years at Cornell University, I have been lucky to have the support of friends, family and colleagues, both within the Department of Government and within the broader Ithaca community. These individuals have helped to guide this manuscript, and shape my own professional and personal development. First and foremost, the assistance I have received from my dissertation committee over the past six years has been instrumental in moving my ideas and arguments from abstract speculations to the concrete arguments presented below. I need to thank Dr. Suzanne Mettler, the chair of my dissertation committee, for her role in shaping this project from the onset. Given my interest in state politics and American federalism, Suzanne pointed me towards the Affordable Care Act as a quickly developing research topic in the field. As my research agenda developed, Suzanne provided both an anchor and an overview. At critical points in the project, she shifted from encouraging me to go into the weeds or to step back to regain the broader perspective. The balance she struck was critical to my professional development and has helped me to design a study that examines specific policies and institutions but that still engages with American politics broadly. My co-Chair, Dr. David Bateman played an equally critical role in shaping the specifics of my argument. David’s careful revisions of chapter drafts were instrumental in narrowing my claims and making my argument more clear and precise. I will always appreciate his ability to synthesize my writing in ways that both clarified my research and also challenged my theoretical v arguments and empirical measures. His written notes were supplemented by excellent meetings in which he provided constructive and creative ways to reframe my arguments. Finally, I would like to thank my third committee member, Dr. Jamila Michener, for her ability to provide perspective on my argument beyond the direct claims I was making. It was fascinating to engage with a scholar whose own work focused on federalism and Medicaid policy, but approached it from an entirely different perspective. Jamila, both through her chapter revisions and our in-office meetings, helped me to better understand both the relevance of my project beyond academia and the breadth of approaches for engaging with the material. Further, our mutual interest in federalism helped to spawn a few successful grant requests from the Political Science Department at Cornell University that were instrumental in shaping my upcoming project, which has received funding from the National Science Foundation. I hope we can continue to collaborate as my data collection expands and the project takes better shape. In addition to my dissertation committee, other members of the Department of Government at Cornell University regularly provided both feedback and professional support as my career developed. I would like to thank the staff within the Department of Government for the countless times they assisted me with everything ranging from scheduling and teaching issues to navigating the job market. In particular, I would like to thank Tina Slater, who is nothing short of a miracle worker with regards to assisting graduate students at every phase of their dissertation and job search. I would also like to thank the American politics subfield, in particular the participants in the American Politics colloquium, who provided essential feedback for a number of my dissertation chapters. In addition, my experiences as a teaching assistant for Dr. Elizabeth Sanders, Dr. Peter Enns, Dr. Suzanne Mettler, Dr. Adam Levine, and Dr. Isaac Kramnick were influential in shaping my own approach to lecturing and instruction. I vi particularly appreciate Isaac Kramnick’s assistance and advice as my faculty mentor for my first independent course with the First Year Writing program and Dr. Brent McBride for providing a resource during my fifth year as I was teaching within the German Studies Department. I would like to thank my fellow graduate students, particularly my cohort including Seb Dettman, Diane Wong, Martijn Mos, Elizabeth Plantan, Liz Acorn, and Delphia Shanks-Booth. This group’s consistent commitment to engaging with each other’s work well beyond our first and second year classes was one of the highlights of my graduate education. Receiving feedback from scholars who are examining issues across the discipline of political science helped to broaden my perspective on my own work. At the same time, I enjoyed following the work of my peers as it developed through our years in graduate school. Finally, while my cohort provided critical feedback on my research, my officemates in B11, in particular Mallory SoRelle, Sarah Maxey, Steffen Blings, and Delphia Shanks-Booth provided a community whom I could always turn to with a professional question or for a conversation about current politics and a brief distraction from dissertation writing.