A look ahead for federalism scholarship

The book concludes with a discussion of the trends and threats facing federalism and federalism scholarship. These include polarization and extreme partisanship, increasing intergovernmental conflict, changing roles of actors, concerns whether the public values federalism, and slippage in democratic performance and representation. While American and comparative federalism scholarship is excellent in some areas, the dynamics of federalism such as those posed in these trends and threats are difficult for scholars to measure. However, there are efforts to do this and there have been new datasets developed that augur for more meaningful work in this area. Highlighted in the chapter are intergovernmental conflict, interest groups, local government, public opinion, accountability and political party - areas of research where theory can be tested on a changing federalism landscape. The chapter ends with a call for American and comparative scholars to take advantage of the work of each other in ways that can help improve both.