Law Commons^™

Do Citizens Care About Federalism? An Experimental Test, Robert Mikos, Cindy D. Kam

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The ongoing debate over the political safeguards of federalism has essentially ignored the role that citizens might play in restraining federal power. Scholars have assumed that citizens care only about policy outcomes and will invariably support congressional legislation that satisfies their substantive policy preferences, no matter the cost to state powers. Scholars thus typically turn to institutions-the courts or institutional features of the political process-to cabin congressional authority. We argue that ignoring citizens is a mistake. We propose a new theory of the political safeguards of federalism in which citizens help to safeguard state authority. We also test our theory …