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Expenditures on police departments account for significant portions of local government budgets in the United States. Yet activism on police reform and changing views on the causes of violence have called into question law enforcement's role in public safety. While intergovernmental transfers have historically supported traditional policing, the American Rescue Plan Act's Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (CSLFRF) affords cities the opportunity to disrupt the status quo by providing them with the federal funds and flexibility to reshape their public safety policies around Community Violence Interventions (CVIs). This article examines how 13 cities that participated in a White House convened collaborative used CSLFRF aid to support CVIs. Our analysis reveals significant variation in how these cities in allocated CSLFRF dollars to CVI programs, suggesting that the combination of federal aid and White House encouragement has thus far led to incremental policy changes, whose durability remains an open question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In federal systems, central governments invariably maintain data on the fiscal activity of subnational jurisdictions. While these datasets have much to offer comparative policy analysts, they can also create misleading impressions of reality. This is in part because official datasets render invisible the politics that shapes subnational governments' fiscal choices. Using these datasets, the article argues, requires researchers to understand the technical and political considerations that inform their design. A discussion of the authors' research on how local governments in the United States are using federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act to support novel Community Violence Interventions (CVIs) illustrates the argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

United States territories—home to more than 3.5 million Americans—are excluded from the safeguards of American federalism. Unlike states, they are subject to the plenary power of the U.S. Congress, lack core legal protections, and are denied meaningful political representation. As such, territories must find alternative approaches to exercising political voice in the American federal system. Yet territorial-federal relations have received virtually no empirical attention from federalism scholars. To address this gap, we examine territories' efforts to advance their interests within both bottom-up and top-down intergovernmental councils, as well as through territory-specific advocacy. Our analysis of organizational participation, agendas, and policy outcomes suggests that territories—while denied access to traditional mechanisms of shared rule—do participate in intergovernmental relations, through a combination of bottom-up and top-down multilateral intergovernmental councils (IGCs), as well as bilateral intergovernmental lobbying. Challenges to exercising political voice vary across these institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article discusses the role of the journal Publius in understanding and analyzing the renegotiation of territorial authority within and beyond nation-states. The editors emphasize the importance of federalism as a political principle and technique, as well as an approach to social organization. They highlight three emergent trends that will shape the study of federalism in the coming years: the polycrisis faced by federations, the interaction between federal structures and civil society institutions, and the intellectual challenges in the field. The editors outline their plans to address these trends, including organizing workshops, promoting scholarship to policymakers and the media, and cultivating a new generation of federalism scholars. [Extracted from the article]

Social policies' responsiveness to rising inflation depends in large part on whether they contain automatic indexation mechanisms, which ensure that the real value of wages and benefits expands during inflationary periods. Here we compare how the indexation of Canadian and U.S. policies on pensions, minimum wages, and food security have affected their responsiveness to the recent cost-of-living crisis. Three main conclusions emerge from our analysis. First, automatic indexation is not necessarily a silver bullet to avoid policy drift. Second, automatic indexation and its design are not the only factors that matter to determine whether high inflation leads to policy drift. Finally, in times of higher inflation, social programs that lack automatic indexation can avoid policy drift, as long as a strong political consensus allows for ad hoc social policy expansion capable of offsetting the negative effects of inflations on social benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The latest issue of Publius: The Journal of Federalism features articles on subnational governments in the international political economy, regional identities, and partisan views on regional autonomy and climate change. The new Federalism Monitor section provides insights into federal systems worldwide, with shorter, accessible submissions on political trends and governance challenges. The issue also includes book reviews and announces new Book Review editors, promising exciting developments and special issues in the future, including a landmark publication on the future of American federalism in 2026. [Extracted from the article]