IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/publus/v34y2004i4p89-108.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Origin, Operation, and Significance: The Federalism of William H. Riker

Author

Listed:
  • Craig Volden

Abstract

William Riker transformed the study of federalism by advancing both a methodological approach and numerous substantive propositions. Methodologically, he introduced students of federalism to the scientific approach of positive political science, illustrating the development of “testable and tested generalizations.” Substantively, he explained the origins of federal systems as a bargain among political leaders with expansionist and militaristic concerns. He argued that the United States was a politically centralized federal system from its founding. He linked the degree of centralization in federal systems to the degree of centralization among their political parties. Despite all his work, though, Riker ultimately dismissed federalism as a minor institution having little impact on policy outcomes. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Craig Volden, 2004. "Origin, Operation, and Significance: The Federalism of William H. Riker," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 34(4), pages 89-108, Fall.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:publus:v:34:y:2004:i:4:p:89-108
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Katharina Holzinger & Andrea Schneider & Klaus Zimmermann, 2011. "Minimizing the losers: regime satisfaction in multi-level systems," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 303-324, December.
    2. Raul A. Ponce-Rodriguez & Charles R. Hankla & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez & Eunice Heredia-Ortiz, 2016. "Political Institutions and Federalism: A "Strong" Decentralization Theorem," International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU paper1603, International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    3. Weingast, Barry R., 2014. "Second Generation Fiscal Federalism: Political Aspects of Decentralization and Economic Development," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 14-25.
    4. Raúl A. Ponce-Rodríguez & Charles R. Hankla & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez & Eunice Heredia-Ortiz, 2020. "The politics of fiscal federalism: Building a stronger decentralization theorem," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 32(4), pages 605-639, October.
    5. Raúl A. Ponce-Rodríguez & Charles R. Hankla & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez & Eunice Heredia-Ortiz, 2016. "Political institutions and federalism: a “strong” decentralization theorem," Working Papers. Collection A: Public economics, governance and decentralization 1604, Universidade de Vigo, GEN - Governance and Economics research Network.
    6. John Aldrich & Michael Munger & Jason Reifler, 2014. "Institutions, information, and faction: an experimental test of Riker’s federalism thesis for political parties," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 158(3), pages 577-588, March.
    7. Alfred M Wu, 2019. "The logic of basic education provision and public goods preferences in Chinese fiscal federalism," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(12), pages 1-15, December.
    8. André Lecours, 2014. "The Question of Federalism in Nepal," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 44(4), pages 609-632.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:publus:v:34:y:2004:i:4:p:89-108. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/publius .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.