In political science, administrative battles between states and local governments are a common occurrence within countries that utilize the state system in the first place. As states are granted a varying yet significant degree of autonomy, their institutions occasionally end up in conflict of interest with federal law. Such conflicts tend to arise when state-level authorities refuse to comply with federal legislation that, from their perspective, fails to represent the best interest of a particular state.
With income inequality and environmental dangers on the rise, local activism facilitates the growing partisanship and the subsequent conflict of interest between the states and the overall government. Recent legislation changes in relation to politically charged topics, namely same-sex relationships and marijuana legalization, caused a rise in dissatisfaction by the governmental position in some local communities. Hence occur administrative battles: disputes on authority within the public administration sector.
An example of the administrative battle in public administration would be the variety of activist and legal action taken by different states in response to the Affordable Care Act. Implemented by the Obama Administration in 2010, the Act increases the affordability of medical insurance. Despite healthcare pricing being a well-known issue on a national level, the Act resulted in the polarization of the United States (Pacheco et al., 114). Following the implementation of the Act, public service authorities in more liberal states began to battle for taking it further, while the more conservative states advocated for non-compliance.
Historically, states have never hesitated to inform the national government on their dissatisfaction with the introduced laws (Gordon, 5), and the tendency has only increased in recent decades. On the philosophical level, the prevalence of these conflicts might call in question the efficiency of the existing democracy. On the more practical level, and perhaps even more so, such administrative battles frequently decrease the efficiency of public administration as resources are constantly spent on de-escalating them.
Constitutionally, the federal law is recognized as a supreme power on the U.S. territory (Pacheco et al., 114). Thus, if a conflict of interest arises, the federal law has higher jurisdiction and must be upheld prior to any state-level legislation. Yet historically, the legislation practice has quickly become more complicated than that. Other examples of the administrative battles predictably arise in the areas where federal and state powers overlap, namely general welfare spending, courts system, taxation, and money borrowing.
Taxation-related conflicts are especially historically prevalent in the area of administrative battles. Those arguably go as far back as the Nullification crisis of the 1830-s that first introduced the reality of internal divisions to the American consciousness (Park, 508). The issue has persisted into modernity, partially rooted in the governmental structure of the U.S., with states having sometimes drastic social and cultural differences.
In conclusion, the administrative debates between different legislative authorities are, unfortunately, a well-known issue in American public administration history. Those conflicts decrease the efficiency of public administration and often generate additional problems along the way. Yet to a degree, the social and economic differences between the states make them unavoidable. The readings and interpretations of the Constitution have also significantly evolved and differ substantially across states, often in accordance with a state’s political positioning. The goal is not to get rid of the administrative battles but to reduce the damage as much as possible and preserve the national integrity while maintaining a high-efficiency standard.
Works Cited
Gordon G.J. “Federalism and Public Administration.”. In: Farazmand A. (eds) Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance. Springer, Cham, 2016, pp. 1-10. Web.
Pacheco, Julianna et al. “The Affordable Care Act And Polarization In The United States”. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal Of The Social Sciences, vol 6, no. 2, 2020, p. 114. Russell Sage Foundation. Web.
Park, Benjamin. “The Angel of Nullification: Imagining Disunion in an Era Before Secession.”. Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 37, no. 3, 2017, pp. 507–536. Web.