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The Great State of Northern Virginia
Competitive federalism has many advantages. Citizens can move to communities that better reflect their preferences for public goods, they can vote with their feet, thereby penalizing poorly performing governments, and they can serve as a salutary example for others by trying out new ideas in governing.
Yet, in 1789 the United States had 13 states and four million people. If the number of states had grown as fast as the number of people or if we in the United States had about the same amount of federalism as do the contemporary Swiss we would today have about 1000 states.
I think we need more states. If 1000 sounds extreme why is 50 the magic number? And why is 50 the magic number when the population is 150 million as when it is 300 million?
James Buchanan (my colleague not the one who was President) once asked, "Who will join me in offering to make a small contribution to the Texas Nationalist Party? Or to the Nantucket Separatists?" I side with Jim, in saying sign me up!
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on April 26, 2006 at 07:15 AM in Economics, Political Science | Permalink
Comments
I believe Texas has the legal right to split into several sttes.
Posted by: spencer at Apr 26, 2006 8:12:02 AM
I've heard that too, it was in an Op-Ed in the WSJ or the NY times about a year ago.
But when I read a bit more about that online, it seemed to be in doubt:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Annexation
Because "Land from the Republic of Texas became major parts of New Mexico and Colorado, and also slivers of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming..." They may have already been at the four state cap.
Certainly it would be interesting to see Texas and California broken into several states, especially if they were drawn in such a way that a Republican state popped our of California and a democratic one out of Texas.
But if the senate has to approve these extra states, it is hard to imagine the small states voting to approve it.
Posted by: OneEyedMan at Apr 26, 2006 9:15:07 AM
Arnold Kling floated exactly this idea last year.
Posted by: Matt McIntosh at Apr 26, 2006 9:23:36 AM
"And why is 50 the magic number when the population is 150 million as when it is 300 million?"
That's simple -- path dependency. The process of splitting a state would be too complex and contentious. Not to mention the other states might not agree to allow it (which would increase the number of senators and dilute the existing states power). The number of states is 50 and 50 shall be the number of states (unless, that is, at some point, Puerto Rico is upgraded or Manitoba defects).
If we think that big states have become too large, a more feasible approach would be to devolve more power down to the region/county level.
Posted by: Slocum at Apr 26, 2006 9:40:10 AM
Slocum suggests that we might "devolve more power down to the regional level."
The problem with this idea, a good one at face value, is that the exact opposite has been occurring naturally. Why one wonders?
Liberals and perhaps libertarians as well would suggest that it may be the role of money in politics. Large players have more to gain from having a larger affect on a larger base. Call it cost efficiency combined with critical mass.
Or another tack, government is organized, among other things, to regulate commerce. When commerce was predominantly the family farm, the county government unit was the best fit.
As a native Californian, I would be personally happy if the fantasy that our state might be split into two, better yet three, new states came to pass. But in spite of the cultural differences between say the OC and the SF Bay Area, this ain't Yugoslavia (yet) and it ain't going to happen.
Posted by: Martin at Apr 26, 2006 10:07:59 AM
Vernor Vinge has an interesting short story -- "Conquest by Default" --about the effect of an externally imposed form of competitive federalism (CF). Of course, he posits the idea as one employed by aliens as their only form of governance (as a form of anti-monopolism). The aliens come to Earth and encounter humanity, the CF is mixed with equal parts colonialism, all leading to some interesting results.
Posted by: Shawn at Apr 26, 2006 10:25:16 AM
Prior to admission, there were serious discussions of the divisions of the present California and Texas into several states, in the case of California two or three states, and Texas, up to five. These discussions were framed around both national and local issues: slavery and the status of the Missouri compromise was the dominant national issue, while migration, density, long-term interests vs. interests of recent migrants, familiarity with US institutions, and taxation were the dominant local topics.
For an excellent discussion of California's statehood process:
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v017/n2/article_1.html
Posted by: Daniel Wolf at Apr 26, 2006 10:44:18 AM
might wanna check out the cascadia seperationist movement which is trying for Vancouver to Portland.
http://zapatopi.net/cascadia/
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Posted by: andrew jones at Apr 26, 2006 11:08:58 AM
Too bad splitting up States is specifically prohibitted in the Constitution.
Maybe government services could be allocated, and regulated, by Congressional district?
Posted by: Brock at Apr 26, 2006 11:14:55 AM
The whole world needs a do over. Overlay the world map in hexagons of a mile square. Everybody that had some proof of residence on a certain datein that block would vote on which neighboring block(s) to join. If there is an agreement with the neighboring blocks(s) then when enough area or population is grouped they would form a region,. Then the regions would vote on neighboring regions to form countries.
Posted by: Robert Lowry at Apr 26, 2006 11:27:33 AM
salutAry
Gee, even economists make spelling mistakes. Seriously, the amount of bad (English) spelling in the world has reached simply obscene proportions. I wonder what an economist would do about that.
Posted by: A Tykhyy at Apr 26, 2006 11:30:28 AM
I agree that we should have more states. I would like to see the current map redrawn along geographic lines that take account of metropolitan economic dynamics and geography.
For instance my own state, Ohio should be split into between 3 and five states. One would be in northeastern Ohio around Cleveland, and would include Akron and Canton, another in south central Ohio around Columbus and the Scioto river valley. A third would be Cincinnati and the Miami river valley, but probably ought to include some of northern Kentucky (I tend to see river valleys as unifying and not as suitable boundaries, which should be drawn in more thinly populated upland areas. Areas in the northwest around Toledo might be a Maumee river valley state or part of Detroit. The east and south east along the Ohio River should be combined with some of West Virginia.
On the other hand there are some thinly populated areas that should not be states. Much of North and South Dakota should be returned to the buffalo.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at Apr 26, 2006 11:47:03 AM
At the very least an increase in the number of Representatives seems reasonable. There's no reason for it to be fixed. New Hampshire has a decent idea.
Posted by: John Thacker at Apr 26, 2006 11:59:17 AM
We can easily get the effects of additional states without having to muck with the constitution and redraw boundaries and so forth. All it requires is for state governments to devolve much of their centralized authority onto smaller, decentralized, more numerous jurisdictions - conveniently already in existence as counties, parishes, townships, cities, and villages.
Send the state legislators home, close the state-wide DMV, rescind the state-wide sales tax. Amend the state constitution to make the state as limited in its powers as the federal government is (in theory, anyway... "dormant commerce clause" my elbows).
Is it likely that any state government would ever give up its authority to regulate hairdressers and tax liquor sales? No, but it's more likely than amending the federal constitution to allow the creation of East Montana and Newer Mexico. It can be done completely at the state level, and it can be done on a state-by-state basis. It also eliminates controversy over the regional reallocation of United States Senators and Electoral College Electors.
Posted by: eddie at Apr 26, 2006 12:15:01 PM
"Who will join me in offering to make a small contribution to the Texas Nationalist Party"
The DNC.
Posted by: ptm at Apr 26, 2006 1:05:31 PM
If you're interested in practical secession, may I suggest a few links of interest.
Discussion of all things secession related.
* http://www.freestateproject.org
Although the Free State Project (FSP) is not a secessionist movement per se, they seek to re-assert many of the powers that have been usurped by the national government.
* http://www.vermontrepublic.org/
The Second Vermont Republic is unusual in that it appears to be an active lefty seccessionist movement.
Although I support secessionist movements, I don't see formal secession on land coming about in a way that doesn't involve a lot of bloodshed and hardship. However, I can see a way via seasteading, the creation of cities and states on the sea. Also be sure to check out Patri Friedman's essay, Dynamic Geography: Blueprint for Efficient Government:
http://patrifriedman.com/projects/socs/commented/drawer/dynamic_geography.html
Posted by: Christopher Rasch at Apr 26, 2006 1:46:17 PM
R.Schwartz: drawing boundaries along watersheds is a very sensible idea. In poorer parts of the world, water rights are frequently the cause for violent conflict, but this is a problem in every place which uses irrigation for farming.
Posted by: A Tykhyy at Apr 26, 2006 1:48:17 PM
I think the comments about carving a Democratic state out of Texas and a Republican one out of California point to the problem with this approach. There are 13 times as many House races as Senate races, but the same number of losing incumbents in each, because the House gerrymanders. Will government as a whole become better if we teach the Senate to do the same thing?
Posted by: ryan at Apr 26, 2006 1:51:43 PM
I wonder if anyone has explored the idea of having several states/governments over the same territory, with different citizens and firms participating in different ones. Actually when I think about it, that's partly what Mafia is, an alternative government although probably not fully functional.
Posted by: A Tykhyy at Apr 26, 2006 2:03:37 PM
ryan: Equal representation does not require to redistrict when population figures change. Just give the representatives a number of votes equal to the number of their constituents, or even better the ones who voted for them.
Posted by: A Tykhyy at Apr 26, 2006 2:05:44 PM
Two points of order.
1, the Constitution doesn't prohibit creating some states out of old ones, it just requires that this creation be done with the consent of the original state. (Thus, the constitutionality of West Virginia).
2, The United States consented to the Texas-split-up when Texas was admitted into the union, and to my knowledge has never repealed it, so Texas could probably split by unilateral action.
Michael Stokes Paulsen and Vasan Kesavan have written on both of these topics.
Posted by: Will Baude at Apr 26, 2006 3:50:16 PM
Somewhat OT but I recall that a certain Winston County in Alabama at the start of the Civil War tried to secede from Alabama based on the logic that if a state had a right to secede from the union, then a county had a right to secede from a state. Needless to say this view was not respected by the Confederacy who promptly send troops to squash the newly formed Republic of Winston.
Posted by: radek at Apr 26, 2006 7:24:55 PM
Indeed it the Constitution does not prohibit the partition of states. In Article IV, Section 3 it explicitly provides that:
New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.
West Virginia came about as a state in a fashion similiar to the anecdote about the Republic of Winston. A shadow government of sorts in the original state of Virginia was set up in the northwest of Virginia (comprising by-and-large what we know now as WV) where the secessionist, Confederate government wasn't able to assert itself and after a time into the Civil War this shadow government declared that it wanted to partition Virginia into Virginia and West Virginia and since president Lincoln and the Union Congress recognized this shadow government in Charleston as the real government of Virginia, consent to the partition and welcomed the new State of West Virginia into the Union and Congress seated the Representatives and Sentators thereof as any other member of their body.
It isn't very likely that even if a state legislature decided it wanted to partition its state into several states that Congress would consent to it for the obvious reasons of diluting the representation of larger states.
Back home in Iowa the reverse debate is going on: there have been numerous movements over the past 10-15 years to merge county governments or county courts or rural school districts and almost every time any such measure is proposed it is soundly defeated. The public justifications for keeping 99 county governments in Iowa is usually something spurious along of the lines of, "How are the elderly and invalid supposed to have access to their government services if the seat of local government is more than the present half-days horse ride?"
Posted by: MIke at Apr 26, 2006 8:37:46 PM
Wasn't there a short-lived movement right before World War II to create the "Jefferson State" out of Northern California (north of SF)?
There was the brief Republic of West Florida (origin of the Bonnie Blue Flag).
North Carolina briefly considered seccession from the Confederacy.
I've heard of the Cascadia project.
Are there any other semi-serious secceed from the home state movements?
Posted by: ElamBend at Apr 26, 2006 10:20:52 PM
I was going to mention the constitutional and Texas-related items that Will did, but he beat me to it.
Also, the above comment on increasing the number of representatives is something I generally agree with (even doubling it wouldn't be particularly extreme), though it greatly increases the oppurtunity for both partisan and sweetheart gerrymanders, so something would have to be done to counteract that effect. Both historically (within the U.S.) and globally (compared to other democracies) we have an extremely high number of electors per lower house representative (adding in the number of Senators because many democracies are acutally or functionally unicameral doesn't substantially alter this comparison of ratios).
Posted by: washerdreyer at Apr 26, 2006 10:46:24 PM
