I take it as a basic maxim of federalism that problems
infecting the entire federal geography uniformly are best tackled by the
federal government, with the involvement of the polities (governments) within
the federation being in sync with the federal mandates. Problems that plague
some polities while barely leaving a scratch on other polities within the
federation are best solved by the individual polities because their situations
differ appreciably. The federal government’s role would be more about coordination
than setting one size that fits all. Federalism is especially beneficial at the empire-scale, which the U.S.S.R., Russia, India, China, the United States and the European Union have, because the large geographical size tends to be
diverse, or heterogeneous, within, whereas the smaller republics, provinces, or
states within tend not to be so large as to have such striking differences.
Hence, the cultural differences between Bavaria and Bremen are dwarfed by the
differences between Germany and Greece, and the differences between Northern
and Southern Illinois are dwarfed by the differences between Illinois and
Texas. So it is only natural, I submit, that U.S. and E.U. state governments
took the lead in combating the coronavirus pandemic because it was a much more
serious problem in some states than others.[1]
In the E.U., initiatives by the state governments to open
their respective economies did not face an assumption of a monopoly of power by
the president of the European Commission, whereas in the U.S., the federal
president came down hard on state governments even just announcing that they
had devised plans without timetables to
reopen. When on April 14, 2020 the Austrian government allowed small businesses
to reopen (albeit with physical-distance requirements still in place), the
heads of the California, Connecticut, and New York governments were pushing
back against the federal president’s claim to have the sole power to open up
the American economy.
A day earlier, on April 13, 2020, the governments of New
York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Rhode Island, and
Massachusetts had announced that they had a coordinated plan to reopen all of
those economies at the same time when the medical conditions in those states
warranted doing so. California, Oregon, and Washington also announced that they
had their own respective plans (without a timetable), but had agreed on some
criteria to have in common. Even the two clumps of states on two coasts of a
continent differed in terms of interconnectedness, so the eastern group would
more strictly coordinate reopening the economies than would the west-coast
group. Federalism can thus accommodate even differences between clusters of
states!
California had managed the contagion so well that its
government was well justified, I submit, in drawing up a plan to suit its own
situation rather than to wait on a federal plan that would presumably hinge on
all of the states being out of danger. Because the states’ respective
situations differed at the time (New Orleans in Louisiana was particularly sick
at the time), it made sense that the decisions would be made at the state
rather than the federal level. Due to the small size and interconnectedness of
some of the states in the northeast, it made sense that the governments would
coordinate.
In contrast (and still from the standpoint of federal theory),
it was not wise of the federal president to insist that the governments within
the Union could do nothing in opening up their respective economies without his
approval. Responding to the plans just announced, President Trump said, “When
somebody’s president of the United States, the authority is total. And that the
way it’s got to be. It’s total. It’s total. And the governors know that.”[2]
His stance sounds a bit like federal preemption on steroids. In other words, he
was refusing to allow federalism to work. More specifically, he was refusing to
allow federalism to operate even though it could proffer its unique benefit.
Were the pandemic pretty much the same in all of the states,
including Hawaii and Alaska, then one response would make sense; differential
responses would have little benefit from being different and could be less
efficient than the proverbial one size that fits all. This would also assume
that the economies in the U.S. were similar both in how negatively they had
been affected from the shutdown and in how they would bounce back. States like
Arizona, Florida, and Hawaii in which the tourism industry made up a
significant part of the respective economies, might need to bring their
economies back to life before other states, other things (such as the virus)
equal. Similarly, governments of industrial states would doubtless look at
planting to harvest season. Many variables would be in play in any decision to
lift the shutdowns, and even the variables themselves could differ from state
to state.
Gavin Newsom, California’s chief executive and head of state,
listed the following variables just in what the government would have to be to
do by the time the fifth-largest economy in the world opens: “expand testing to
identify and isolate the infected, maintain vigilance to protect seniors and
high risk individuals, . . . meet future surges in hospitals with a ‘myriad of
protective gear,’ continue to collaborate with academia on therapies and
treatments, redraw regulations to ensure continued physical distancing at
businesses and schools and develop new enforcement mechanisms to allow
[California] to pull back and reinstate stay-at-home orders.”[3]
Doubtless he also intended to look at many other variables, including how
damaging extending the stay-home order would be to the economy. Tourism and
agriculture (e.g. wine harvesting) would be two of the variables within the
economic rubric. Even so, Newsom emphasized the importance of scientific
variables. In other states, as well as at the federal level, economic variables
could have the upper hand. Hence, the rationale for having the state level at
the forefront, with the federal government playing more of a coordinative
function and issuing lowest-common-denominator policies that would set a common
floor that fits all of the states’ respective circumstances, takes into account
ideological differences on how to weigh science relative to economy. With
desperate independent oil producers pushing for a reopening of the Texas
economy, the economic variables could be expected to hold sway there. Moreover,
the business lobby’s power could be expected to differ relative to other
special interests in the States.
A federal-level decision, which would have to be based on a
fixed set of variables applied to an empire-scale, would tend to include over-generalizations,
or averages that do not match with the statistics of any particular state. As of the morning of April 12, 2020, for
example, 22,105 deaths had been linked to the virus in the United States. It
cannot be assumed that these deaths were geographically spread out even proportionately
in the U.S., for New York accounted for 10,000 deaths alone. Half of the U.S.
population was not living in New York, let alone New York City. Whereas New
York’s Andrew Cuomo had warned that New York’s plight would roll across the
continent and beyond, and thus that New York’s strict measures would eventually
fit every state, some states, like Kansas, North Dakota, and Nebraska, were not
much affected by the coronavirus when the federal guidelines went into effect.
Those guidelines could make it possible that such states might never reach the
severity of New York’s plight.
1. I don’t
feel the need to look smart by using the particular scientific name, covid-19,
especially when coronavirus is sufficient for readers to understand which virus
to which I am referring. As this is not a scientific writing, but is instead a
piece oriented to the general educated reader, using a scientific term not only
does not fit the genre, but also is less widely known and thus understood.
3. Maeve Reston, “California
Governor Outlines Plan to Reopen in Conjunction with West Coast States,”
CNN.com, April 14, 2020 (accessed same day).
