Reimagining the American Union
The Case for Abolishing State Government

Advocates for abolishing state government, arguing it is a grave threat to US democracy and a needless fiscal burden.

Stephen H. Legomsky (Author)

9781009581417, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 9 January 2025

306 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.44 kg

'The strongest portions of the book are chapters outlining the numerous counter-majoritarian features of our current system that, in combination, create 'a systematic bias in favor of governance by a partisan minority' Together, these chapters make a devastating case that state governments and officials today prevent partisan and other majorities from having their political preferences reflected in deliberations and outputs of the federal and state governments.… Legomsky convincingly argues that our current constitutional system is fundamentally undemocratic and that we cannot simply cross our fingers and hope for more democratic, majoritarian policy outcomes to emerge.' John D. Nugent, Political Science Quarterly

Reimagining the American Union challenges readers to imagine an America without state government. No longer a union of arbitrarily constructed states, the country would become a union of its people. The first book ever to argue for abolishing state government in the US, it exposes state government as the root cause of the gravest threats to American democracy. Some of those threats are baked into the Constitution; others are the product of state legislatures abusing their already-constitutionally-outsized powers through gerrymanders, voter suppression schemes, and other less-publicized manipulations that all too often purposefully target African-American and other minority voters. Reimagining the American Union goes on to demonstrate how having three levels of legislative bodies (national, state, and local) – and three levels of taxation, bureaucracy, and regulation – wastes taxpayer money and pointlessly burdens the citizenry. Two levels of government – national and local – would do just fine. After debunking the offsetting benefits typically claimed for state government, the book concludes with a portrait of what a new, unitary American republic might look like.

Introduction
1. The origins of American federalism: a tourist's guide
2. Democracy: structural problems
3. Democracy: state behavior problems
4. Fiscal waste
5. The benefits of state government
6. A new American republic.

Subject Areas: Constitutional & administrative law [LND]