84 CHAPTER 3|FEDERALISM
Powerful interest groups have an incentive to claim national impor-
tance for their causes to increase their likelihood of success. As the politi-
cal scientist Michael Greve explains, “Interest groups and parties thrive
on redistribution, which is best accomplished at a highly centralized level
of government—because it spreads the costs over a larger number of losers
and eliminates exit options for them.”^42 That is, when interest groups get
a national law passed that benefits their group (for example, dairy price
support legislation for dairy farmers, which increases the price of milk by
26 percent for the average consumer), the entire country pays the costs.
These groups win by expanding the conf lict to the entire nation rather
than keeping it contained within a specific state.
The health care reform example at the beginning of the chapter also illus-
trates this point. Passing a single piece of legislation was a much more effi -
cient way to provide health insurance for more than 30 million Americans
than attempting to get each state to pass similar legislation. This scenario
occurs again and again across many issues and creates a powerful central-
izing force. Within that pattern of centralization, however, there have been
lengthy periods when states’ rights held sway over the national government.
This evolving balance of power between the national government and the
states obscures a broader reality of federalism: we are citizens of several levels
of government simultaneously. One leading scholar of American federalism
says that the basic question of federalism involves choices about how many
communities we will be.^43 If you asked most people in our nation about their
primary geopolitical community, they would probably not say “I am a Mon-
tanan” or “I am an Arizonan”; most would likely say “I am an American.” Yet
we have strong attachments to our local communities and state identities.
Most Texans would not be caught dead wearing a styrofoam cheesehead, but thou-
sands of football fans in Green Bay, Wisconsin, regularly don the funny-looking
things to watch their beloved Packers. We are members of multiple communities, a
fact that has had an indelible impact on our political system. The beauty of our fed-
eral system is that despite its complex and evolving nature, it makes a lot of sense.ONE OF THE STRENGTHS OF FEDERALISM
is that it allows regional diversity
to fl ourish. Green Bay Packers fans
proudly wear their cheesehead hats
at Lambeau Field, showing that
what passes for normal behavior
in one part of the country would be
viewed differently in other areas.