View Research by Author - John Shannon

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The author discusses political debates that have revolved around the question of whether our intergovernmental system should move toward the state-dominant or the Washington-dominant extremes. He reviews the history of state-dominant federalism (1789-1933) and Washington-dominant federalism (1933-late 1970s) and discusses the more balanced federal system of the 1980s in which neither the states nor the federal government dominated the intergovernmental landscape. The paper concludes with a discussion of three reasons why federalism increasingly is taking this middle-of-the-road approach.

The author traces the shift from small government, which existed in the United States until World War I, to big government, which arrived in the wake of the Great Depression. He defines the four stages of federalism: small government federalism (1789-1933); big government federalism I (1933-1953); big government federalism II (1953-late 1970s); and big government federalism III (late 1970s-present ). He then discusses the contrasts and similarities of the Reagan and Clinton administrations, the strengths and weaknesses of federal regulatory power, and the moderating constraints of what he terms middle-class federalism.

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