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Contributors include Martin Burgi (Ruhr-University Bochum), Luis Cesar de Queiroz Ribeiro (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), Jaap de Visser (University of Western Cape), Habu Galadima (University of Jos), Sol Garson (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) Boris Graizbord (National College of Mexico), Rakesh Hooja (HCM Rajasthan State Institute of Public Administration, India), Andreas Kiefer (European Affairs Office of the Land Salzburg), Andreas Ladner (Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration), George Mathew (Institute of Social Sciences, India), Mike Pagano (University of Illinois at Chicago), Graham Sansom (University of Technology Sydney), Franz Schausberger (Salzburg University), Nico Steytler (University of Western Cape), Francisco Velasco Caballero (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), and Robert Young (University of Western Ontario).

American federalism is a highly institutionalized compound of dual, cooperative, and coercive federalism that are coexisting states as well as historical phases. Contemporary coercive federalism has several systemic consequences including a shift in federal policy-making from places to persons, long-term fiscal stress, deceased intergovernmental institutions, rising polarization, a relegitimizing of states' rights, and a paradoxical decline of public trust in the federal government coupled with public dedication to federal policy-making. Trump's presidency, therefore, will likely be more of an interlude than a transformative moment in American federalism. Long-term trends highlighted in this issue will likely outlast Trump, although the trends point toward more centralization and polarization even while states and localities remain independently innovative on many fronts.

The 2016 election provided ample evidence that voters often support candidates who put forward policies which will be of little benefit or may even be detrimental to them. But why do voters support such policies? Using Texas as a case study, John Kincaid writes that the Republican Party was able to reframe debates over school finance reform by linking concern over the redistribution of resources from wealthier to poorer districts to threats to dominant forms of economic, cultural, and racial privilege from a "politically correct" liberal elite.

AbstractThis study examines accommodations of 'national' minorities in the context of territorial neutrality and territorial democracy in American federalism and critiques Kymlicka's criticism of the United States as the foe of peripheral nationalism. Aside from the imagined nationalism of the white American South, peripheral nationalism has not been politically viable in the United States. Territorial democracy permitted territorially based cultural pluralism that facilitated immigrant assimilation while asymmetrical territorial governance arrangements accommodated 'national' minorities not necessarily desiring statehood. Secession, therefore, is not a credible threat in American federalism.