Content area
Full text
The Price of Federalism. By Paul E. Peterson. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1995. 239p. $36.95 cloth, $15.95 paper.
The world of federalism is not heavily populated with big ideas or ambitious theories. The federal system is complicated territory with thousands of governments, organized in various ways and interrelated vertically and horizontally. Studies of federalism have more often captured this complexity in metaphors--most famously, Grodzin's "marble cake"--than in theories of any scope, power, or influence. It is therefore fairly remarkable that The Price of Federalism is distinguished by its attention to important ideas.
In this comprehensive work, Paul Peterson aims to paint a big picture--to describe the federal system in bold relief, to trace its significant changes, to account for this evolution, and to evaluate it. Appropriately, Peterson chooses to focus on the bottom line-the funds that the several levels of government expend to build infrastructure, educate children, ensure public safety, guarantee income, provide adequate food, housing, and health care, and to supply other goods and services. (The focus on funding does not do justice to regulation, the influence of which cannot be adequately measured by government expenditures. But Peterson's picture is big enough already.)
To analyze these expenditures, Peterson collapses all domestic spending for the last 40 years into the standard economic categories of distribution and redistribution, the former supporting goods and services that are provided without regard to individual or geographic need and the latter intended for recipients with need. By employing these categories, Peterson connects...