Season 2, Episode 2 | State vs. Federal Power: How Identity Shapes American Democracy

State vs. Federal Power: How Identity Shapes American Democracy

Do you feel more Texan than American? If you had to choose, would you say you’re a Texan first and an American second? What about an Alaskan, a New Yorker, or a Californian? For much of U.S. history, people identified more with their state than the nation itself—and in many places, that state pride still runs deep.

But does state identity actually shape the way we govern? Can it influence trust in government, political engagement, and even pushback against federal laws? 

In this episode of This Constitution, host Savannah Eccles Johnston sits down with Dr. Emily Pears, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College, to explore how federalism and state identities continue to influence American governance. The discussion kicks off with a historical look at how early Americans identified more with their states than the nation, a dynamic the founders leveraged to balance power between state and federal governments.  

Dr. Pears explains that while state identities have weakened, they still shape political behavior—affecting trust in state governments and fueling resistance to federal authority in states like Texas, Alaska, and Utah. She highlights real-world examples, such as the legalization of marijuana in 24 states despite federal prohibition and Utah’s Sovereignty Act, which challenges federal intervention. Rather than outright rejecting federal laws, states are testing the limits of their authority, maintaining a delicate constitutional balance.  

Looking ahead, Dr. Pears foresees the need for civic education to help Americans understand federalism and engage more actively in state governance.  

Tune in for this fascinating conversation on how state identities continue to shape American democracy.

In This Episode

(00:00:03) Introduction to the episode
(00:00:15) The Constitution as a blueprint
 (00:00:27) Introduction to Dr. Emily
 (00:01:15) State identities at the founding
 (00:02:27) Federalism and state power
 (00:03:57) Relevance of state identities today
 (00:05:22) Personal state identity
 (00:05:55) State identity in Texas
 (00:06:27) State identity in Utah
 (00:08:06) Role of state identities in checks and balances
 (00:09:33) Impact of weak state identities
 (00:11:21) Partisanship and state identity
 (00:14:22) Examples of state pushback
 (00:15:42) State authority and federal intervention
 (00:16:29) Understanding nullification
 (00:17:12) Marijuana laws and state responses
 (00:18:33) Testing federal authority
 (00:20:01) Future of state power
 (00:21:39) Importance of federalism
 (00:22:08) Civic education and state awareness
 (00:23:56) State identity as a unifying factor
 (00:25:32) Engaging with state identity

Notable Quotes

• [00:01:22] "At the time of the American founding, there were these really strong state identities and almost no national identity. The citizens thought of themselves as Virginians, not as Americans." — Dr. Emily Pears

• [00:20:01] "Does the federal government have enough strong national identifiers who want to say no, it's important that we adhere to what the federal government says, even when it's a policy that we think is silly or, or sort of don't want to adhere to? " — Dr. Emily Pears

• What we found is that state identity can be a sort of cross-cutting identity. So in a political world where it seems like all that matters is your partisanship, we found that Democrats and Republicans are sort of equally likely to identify with their states. — Dr. Emily Pears

Transcript

[00:00:00 - 00:00:37]

We the people, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America. 

[00:00:37] Savannah Eccles Johnston: Welcome to This Constitution. My name is Savannah Eccles Johnston, and today we are joined by a very special guest. This is Dr. Emily. Peers, say hello, Emily. So, Emily is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna. She received her PhD in politics from the University of Virginia, and from everything I've read online, is a fantastic teacher.

[00:00:59] So, Emily [00:01:00] is here to speak to us today about federalism, and the role of the states in checking against the power of the national government writ large. So, first, Emily, you've written a lot. about this, about federalism, about state identities. The Federalist Papers make clear that state identities will have a big role to play in federalism.

[00:01:21] What is that role? 

[00:01:22] Emily Pears: Yeah, so the first thing to note is that at the time of the American founding, there were these really strong state identities and almost no national identity, right? The citizens of what would become the United States thought of themselves as Virginians. Right. They were attached to the only entities that existed at the time, which were the states.

[00:01:44] States had been around a long time, they meant something, and people really thought of state boundaries as uh, distinct boundaries of culture and politics and economics and everything else. So, citizens had these really strong state identities and [00:02:00] essentially no attachment to any kind of Americanism or national identity.

[00:02:07] So, when the founders. We're writing the constitution, they had this problem that democracies, constitutions need to have the support of a populace who thinks of themselves as citizens of that national entity. And what they had were a bunch of people who thought of themselves as Virginians and Rhode Islanders and not as Americans.

[00:02:27] And so when the states were incorporated into the constitution and when the system of federalism was designed. It was designed in large part to both account for and then to make use of those really strong state identities. So there's lots of reasons why you might want to create a federalist system of government.

[00:02:48] Decentralized power is a good thing. It works better than centralized power. Giving control over day to day life to a government that is closer to the actual citizens it's [00:03:00] governing is a good idea generally. So there's lots of reasons why you would want to do that. federalism, but the way we have federalism, which is with states as the subunits rather than sort of administrative subunits of a national government is because those states existed prior to the creation of the national system.

[00:03:23] And because people were really strongly attached to their state governments as they existed prior to the ratification of the constitution. 

[00:03:31] Savannah Eccles Johnston: But this is one thing I like about the U. S. Constitution, or just constitutions in general. They match the reality on the ground. That's what differentiates them from each other, right?

[00:03:39] In some sense, the U. S. Constitution makes no sense copy and pasted anywhere else because it's made for the character in the history, the boots on the ground situation, 1787. So this is nice for 1787. It might even work in 1820. Do state identities still matter today? Can they still play that role? 

[00:03:57] Emily Pears: Yeah, so one of the things we have to think about is that [00:04:00] first, whether they matter or not today, and then whether we need state identities today or not.

[00:04:07] So, I work with a co-author named Emily Sidner, and she and I have worked, done a lot of survey research trying to understand whether state identities still exist today. And the primary answer is yes. Nowhere near as strongly as they did at the time of the founding, right? There are very few people really, if any, who think of themselves as, um, even Texans.

[00:04:32] More so than Americans, the vast majority of Americans think of themselves as Americans first and as for state citizens second, but state identities do still exist and they're actually relatively strong for lots of people and they provide some source of energy in government. They actually affect people's behavior in politics.

[00:04:57] So for example, we found that [00:05:00] people who have stronger state identity. Trust their state governments more, they participate more in state government, they tend to be sort of more willing to support their state government when it engages in activities that are sort of outside the norm for what other states are doing.

[00:05:18] So can I ask you a personal question? Do you have a strong state identity? It's a very funny question for me to answer. I'm from Massachusetts, but my parents left Massachusetts and moved to New Hampshire. And I spent a lot of time in Maine growing up. And so my identity is actually as a New Englander, which does not fit into the structure of the constitution at all.

[00:05:38] Yeah. No, that's not helpful. It's not, it's not helpful for this. So I don't fit the mold particularly well, but my coauthor and I started this project in part because she was teaching in Texas and I was teaching in California. And right there, you can't talk about state identities without thinking about Texas.

[00:05:55] And when we talk about the idea that state identities might matter, the [00:06:00] first thing people always say to us is, Oh, well, the Texans, right? Texas has an incredibly high average state identity. And there's something about it that compels people to think of themselves as Texans. Not quite first, but certainly much more so than people from Connecticut think of themselves as sort of identifying with Connecticut.

[00:06:20] Savannah Eccles Johnston: Oh, that's so interesting. Can I ask one more question slightly off topic? Since we're recording in Utah, how does Utah perform on this? 

[00:06:27] Emily Pears: So Utah's relatively high, actually, on state identity. So not in the very top, but well above average among states. And what's also interesting is that Utah's high state identity, I think, actually manifests in Utah's politics in a way that it doesn't always in some of our other high identifier states.

[00:06:47] So the very highest identifier states we found are actually Alaska and Hawaii. And really, there are reasons you might expect that they were states longer and sort of more [00:07:00] recently than other states. So the people living there have much more recent, if not direct, memory of being from Hawaii. Rather, and not Americans, right?

[00:07:12] So that's the reason. And the other thing is that they have large Native populations. And so there's something very culturally distinct about Alaska and Hawaii. So those are the very highest states. Utah comes in pretty close after that top tier. 

[00:07:26] Savannah Eccles Johnston: Wow. So Texas isn't even winning the game. Texas is supposed to win it.

[00:07:30] Texas 

[00:07:30] Emily Pears: is up there too, but they 

[00:07:32] Savannah Eccles Johnston: are not in the very top of our, of our data. Wow. This is so interesting. I, uh, am very proud of the great state of Utah. Good for us. So, this entire season, we are talking about checks and balances, and normally when you think about checks and balances, you think about the powers of Congress to counteract an overly ambitious president.

[00:07:51] In this conversation, we're talking about states and the power of states to check the power of the federal government writ large. So what role do [00:08:00] state identities, particularly strong state identities, play in allowing states to be a check on the federal government? 

[00:08:06] Emily Pears: Yeah, so what you see when you look back at the Federalist Papers and the way the Federalist Papers talk about federalism is that the founders absolutely thought that the states would be equipped to push back against federal aggrandizement or growth in the federal government, inappropriate growth in the federal government, and states would be equipped to do that in part because they had the backing of their citizens.

[00:08:31] So citizens who identified more strongly with their states than they did with the nation, In a, a battle between state and nation would back their states, and that was a tool that the founders used to make sure that the new constitutional system they created would remain balanced. So just as Congress is intended to check presidential power.

[00:08:54] And presidential power is meant to check congressional power. So, too, the states are meant [00:09:00] to be equipped to push back against federal intervention. And the national government is meant to be able to try to sort of push against state aggrandizement if that happens. 

[00:09:11] Savannah Eccles Johnston: But it only seems to work if citizens identify with their states and will often choose that state over the national government.

[00:09:18] So how does that work in the low performing states for state identity today? I don't know what's at the bottom of that list, but I don't know, Connecticut, I imagine they're at the bottom. How effective are they then in pushing back against the federal government if you don't have a strong state identity?

[00:09:33] Emily Pears: Yeah, so we don't have any conclusive evidence yet that really says that states have to have this strong state, this strong sort of average state identity in order to be able to push back against the federal government. But we do have evidence that suggests that states are going to be better able to and have the backing of their citizens more strongly if they have strong state identifiers.

[00:09:56] Sue. What our research would suggest, at least, is [00:10:00] that there are states that are better able, better equipped to push back and there are states that are going to have a really hard time pushing back. There might be other things about those states that do permit them to push back. Maybe they have, uh, political party politics that help them in that sort of dynamic with the federal government.

[00:10:21] But, certainly, our research suggests that. States are going to be more emboldened to be able to pursue the path they think is right, even if it involves pushing back against the federal government when they have these high state identifiers for citizens. 

[00:10:36] Savannah Eccles Johnston: Yeah, this is such an interesting idea and I want to get to partisanship here in just a moment.

[00:10:42] But your research is so interesting because it touches on something we all see. Just for example, Amy Klobuchar, speaking at the inauguration on Monday, makes mention of her state multiple times, and she kind of uses Minnesota as, as her state, it's almost like a platform from which to push [00:11:00] back. It almost gives her legitimacy in counteracting things she wants to counteract, which is very interesting.

[00:11:06] She's using that as the base. So, partisanship. Yeah. Does partisanship affect this? For example, are citizens more likely to trust their state government, identify with their states, and support state power when the other party is in power in the national government. 

[00:11:21] Emily Pears: Yeah, so I don't have a direct answer to that sort of dynamic.

[00:11:26] We know that citizens are more likely to be high state identifiers when they match their state politics. Oh. So if your state's presidential vote share sort of matches your partisan identification, essentially if your state went for the candidate that you voted for, you are more likely to be a higher state identifier.

[00:11:47] And if the governor of your state shares your party, then you are more likely to be a higher state identifier. So essentially Democrats in Texas are likely to have a lower state identification than [00:12:00] Republicans in Texas. So we know that dynamic exists. So people's sense of belonging and sense of identity is shaped in part by their sense that their state reflects their partisan views.

[00:12:14] It stands to reason, then, that if the national government is controlled by the opposing party, the state's going to have even more strength and legitimacy in pushing back against that federal intervention. Oh, that's very interesting. It would suggest, too, that the trickiest situation is when you have the federal government controlled by the same party that the state is controlled by, so you've got the potential for a lot of state pushback.

[00:12:41] But maybe not quite the political will to engage in that pushback. 

[00:12:46] Savannah Eccles Johnston: Right, well this is just a problem of partisanship for the system of checks and balances at large right now, which is, it is less effective. The more partisan individuals become. 

[00:12:57] Emily Pears: Yeah, exactly right. So right when you, Congress is supposed [00:13:00] to push back against the encroachment of presidential power, when Congress and the president are, when those offices are controlled by the same party, that relationship goes away, that contentious relationship, that sort of ambition being made to counteract ambition goes away.

[00:13:13] Same thing with the states that the states are supposed to have. a strong backing from their citizens to push back against the federal government. If they're controlled by the same party that the federal government is controlled by, everybody sort of says, well, we all like these policies, so why bother defending state power as state power?

[00:13:34] Savannah Eccles Johnston: Right. I wonder, though, if, if this, uh, let's say the president and the, and Congress are controlled by the same party. Some of our best examples of checks and balances come from situations where it's the same party, right? FDR and, and, uh, the court packing, Nixon resigning after Barry Goldwater tells him to do so, a fellow Republican.

[00:13:53] But this was all during an era where state identity would have mattered more. I imagine it's declined pretty consistently [00:14:00] consistently. But today, it seems to be partisanship or polarization. Is more powerful. than any kind of institutional belonging and state belonging, which, uh, seems problematic. Okay, let's get back to state identities here for a second.

[00:14:15] Can you give me any recent examples of states effectively checking the national government? Times when they can actually do it. 

[00:14:22] Emily Pears: Yeah. 

[00:14:23] Savannah Eccles Johnston: Well, The 

[00:14:23] Emily Pears: The effective part sometimes has to be played out over time, but they're certainly trying, right? So the marijuana laws are, I think, a pretty good example. So we've got 24 states right now that have authorized the use of recreational marijuana, another 14 that allow it for medicinal purposes.

[00:14:39] It's illegal. Right. That's just a sort of a direct challenge of federal government authority. So states are certainly feeling emboldened to push back in that sort of policy area. Immigration is another one that has over the last decade or so been a way that states have been testing the boundaries [00:15:00] of sort of the constitutional grant of power.

[00:15:03] Seeing how much they can act as authorities to enforce federal immigration policies when the federal government is not enforcing those policies, I think we'll see more pushback from states over the next few years, especially I think we'll see more pushback from states over the next few years, especially when the Right.

[00:15:21] Border states have a particular interest in immigration policy that maybe the federal government at times doesn't quite recognize or they at least have a distinct interest that the federal government doesn't have on its own. And I also noted that Utah last spring passed the Utah Sovereignty Act. Um, right.

[00:15:42] Which is certainly an example of a state saying, Hey, look, we're not going to tolerate federal intervention here. We're going to push back when we think it's right to do so. We're going to defend the borders of our state's authority. That's [00:16:00] the kind of thing that our research would suggest being emboldened to do and will ultimately be more successful at.

[00:16:08] doing when they have the backing of a high identifier state citizenry. Now, the founders didn't imagine nullification or certainly didn't want to permit nullification. That's not what the sort of empowering states to defend their authority is really about. Right. But something up to the 

[00:16:28] Savannah Eccles Johnston: nullification.

[00:16:29] Let's define that term first for, for listeners. So what is nullification? Because it seems to be making a comeback. If not the word, but the, the application of it. 

[00:16:37] Emily Pears: Yeah. So, so this is a, this is a tricky thing, right? That, um, we're talking about sort of states defending themselves against federal encroachment, which does start to sound like nullification, essentially states saying.

[00:16:50] We're just not, we're going to essentially veto or not enforce or sort of overturn federal legislation that is constitutional federal [00:17:00] legislation on the basis of this idea that we somehow have supreme authority over the land within our borders, which states do not have. There's a supremacy clause.

[00:17:11] Savannah Eccles Johnston: Right. In the Constitution. We kind of fought this battle in the Civil War, and that phrase really goes out of vogue, nullification, but how else do you describe what's happening, especially with marijuana laws, for example, than effective nullification? 

[00:17:25] Emily Pears: Yeah, so what's interesting is that actually I think the states, and this is I think mostly true for the marijuana laws, aren't actually saying we reject that federal law.

[00:17:36] They're just saying we're just going to permit something. And if you'd like to come in here and enforce your law, then you can come in and enforce the law. So they're not actually rejecting the federal law, they're just enacting laws that contradict the federal law and. Waiting to see what the federal government does.

[00:17:56] Right. So I don't think it's, it's the same as nullification. [00:18:00] At least the constitutional justification for it isn't the same. They're not claiming an authority or a sort of constitutional basis for being able to reject federal laws. They recognize that they're not able to reject federal laws, but are sort of testing the boundaries of that through soft power or saying you have this.

[00:18:22] constitutional authority, but how much real authority do you have and how much are you willing to exercise? And that's especially maybe where the backing of citizens is going to matter a lot. Does the federal government have enough strong national identifiers who want to say No, it's important that we adhere to what the federal government says, even when it's a policy that we think is silly or, or sort of don't want to adhere to.

[00:18:48] Savannah Eccles Johnston: Right. And this might actually be the most effective way that states can check the federal government. Basically, uh, try it. Right. See if, if you have the political will, if the people will back you to [00:19:00] enforce this law, we're betting that the people are going to back us and, and not enforcing this law. But I think it's a good point that no one's making that constitutional argument yet.

[00:19:09] But it almost makes it more effective that they're not making that constitutional argument. They're just kind of relying on which way the people will go. We're banking, it'll be with us and not with you. Right. 

[00:19:18] Emily Pears: And it seems to be working. Right, that's true. So if, if we all know that nullification is sort of a settled issue, you can't engage in nullification, if you just do nullification by another means and don't call it that, it might be a sort of backdoor into nullification without testing.

[00:19:35] It's 

[00:19:35] Savannah Eccles Johnston: amazing how these ideas just keep coming back. We just keep playing with the same ideas historically. Okay, so good. So you have immigration, you have the marijuana decriminalization stuff as examples of, of states kind of effectively checking the national government. So the question I have for you is, do you see the pendulum swinging for so long, especially since the Civil War, power has been swinging to the federal government.

[00:19:57] Do you see the future? Where more [00:20:00] power is devolved to the 

[00:20:00] Emily Pears: states. So I at least see a future where states are going to aggressively try to recapture more power. And I say that because of politics. It is hard to imagine effective, strong national political authority. In a nation that has both Texas and California in it, if states are going to have such strong differences in, in their political composition, as we get more and more geographic sorting of the population, it's hard to imagine national policies, blanket policies that can effectively govern a country that's this large and diverse.

[00:20:44] And of course, that was part of the founders' claim, right, that there weren't really good policies that could cover people from Massachusetts and also people from Alabama. And so you let the states do as [00:21:00] much of the governing as possible because that allows for differences. From one state to the next, I think as we become more polarized, as political differences come to the forefront, as we see policies like immigration, like abortion policies, sort of become more and more hot button issues, issues that people are focused on, an increase in state authority and devolving power back to the states to create the policies that match their culture and their citizenry.

[00:21:33] is a pretty good answer to how do we hold together this sort of constitutional system. 

[00:21:39] Savannah Eccles Johnston: Right, so federalism still matters. Yeah. It's a way to let off pressure from the political system. It's a way we can still live together without killing each other. Right. Effectively. Yeah. Okay, so knowing that's the case, knowing that federalism still matters.

[00:21:51] in 2025 and that it's a way that Californians and Texans can live together in one country. What needs to happen to preserve the [00:22:00] capacity of states to one, check the power of the federal government and two, maybe reassume some powers? What needs to happen? Yeah, so I think people 

[00:22:09] Emily Pears: have to become aware again of federalism.

[00:22:12] What exactly do their states do? The federal relationship is a very complex one. And especially, you know, when we talk about things like the controversy now over the Department of Education, generally citizens, it's sort of obscured from view. what the federal government is doing and what the state governments are doing.

[00:22:32] Understanding that distinction, understanding what policies, what funding, what sort of restrictions are state imposed and which of those are federally imposed, will help people sort of disentangle that relationship or understand that relationship better. And then I think you can have a way forward to creating a policy environment that people are sort of happier with once they know what's available and who's [00:23:00] doing what in their sort of legal structure of their daily lives.

[00:23:04] Savannah Eccles Johnston: Right, so civic education matters here, that in some sense states are only as effective as their citizens allow them to be, and know that they can be. Right. This is such an interesting point. And once more going back to this idea of polarization, it's something that everyone is deeply concerned about.

[00:23:22] Maybe federalism gives us a path. To say, California can be California, Texas can be Texas, and whichever party's in power will say, no, the federal government is the federal government and supreme. But maybe it's really useful to have states that can be bastions and kind of refuge, uh, refuse, uh, refugee, refuse, anyways, reservations, I guess, for people who are, uh, of a different, uh, political mindset that, uh, federalism began this country and in some ways can preserve it and save it.

[00:23:56] Emily Pears: Yeah, so that's true. We certainly don't want to, I [00:24:00] think it's not a way out of polarization for all the liberals to move to California and all the conservatives to move to Texas and those two places just sort of become their own distinct entities. What we found is that state identity can be a sort of cross cutting identity.

[00:24:18] So in a political world where it seems like all that matters is your partisanship, we found that Democrats and Republicans are sort of equally likely to identify with their states. And so using or sort of priming that state identity, talking to Utahns like they are Utahns and not. Yeah. Republicans or Democrats or people who back a political, a particular candidate or have a particular ideology, state identity can be a sort of cross cutting identity that brings people back together in a way that matches.

[00:24:54] the structure of the constitutional system. So you could [00:25:00] build up and sort of recreate the identity environment that the Constitution was designed to incorporate rather than an identity structure of Republicans and Democrats, which the Constitution isn't really designed to deal with. 

[00:25:17] Savannah Eccles Johnston: Well said. So, you've got a student sitting in front of you.

[00:25:22] They say, Dr. Piers. What can I do to preserve the federal structure or to increase my state identity or whatever you want to say? What's the one thing you tell them to do? 

[00:25:32] Emily Pears: Well, I tell them certainly to get in touch with your state identity. I think it's something we could all take a moment to sort of think about what states matter to us, where we feel at home and why that is.

[00:25:43] So what sort of makes you identify with a particular state? Or are you someone like me who identifies with a region rather than an individual state? And then. Take a moment when you read about policies, whether they're policies that you like or don't like, to figure [00:26:00] out who is actually directing that policy, where is the power coming from to sort of structure that, that restriction or that policy or that benefit so that you know better.

[00:26:11] What is a federal intervention and what's a state intervention? 

[00:26:14] Savannah Eccles Johnston: Awesome. So you're telling me it's a great thing that I have a Utah State flag on my water bottle. 

[00:26:18] Emily Pears: Absolutely. Excellent. 

[00:26:20] Savannah Eccles Johnston: Well, your, uh, your research is so interesting. Thank you for, uh, coming and sharing your knowledge with us. We appreciate it so much.

[00:26:27] Outro: The Constitution is more than parchment under glass at the National Archives. It's a blueprint for American self-government. It shapes every part of our civic life, from the rights we cherish to the laws we live under. We explore the ongoing battle over the meaning and relevance of America's founding document. This Constitution will equip you to engage the most pressing political questions of our time. Join us every two weeks as we hash out constitutional questions together. This podcast is ordained and established by the Center for Constitutional Studies at Utah Valley University, the home of Utah's Civic Thought & Leadership Initiative.