Divided States

In the Biden Administration's twilight hours, conversations in state capitols anticipated an upheaval in American politics. Red state politicians had long fed their voters tales about gutting the administrative state and disciplining lawless, Democratic cities—and now they expected action. But Divided States argues that observers overlooked the key feature of American states: division, not between red and blue, but rather between what politicians said on the frontstage and what happened in administrative domains invisible to the public. On this administrative backstage, agency officials used their discretion over the interpretation of federal rights and programs to pursue different projects. They built guardrails that sheltered state residents from disruptive policies, which made street-level governance more progressive—or less embattled—than the headlines suggested. Via deep ethnographic inquiry into the politics of Medicaid and election administration in the bluest and reddest states, Divided States documents American federalism on the precipice of crisis. It shines a light on the political machinery of the New Deal and Great Society, which agency officials, advocacy organizations, and Democrats used to protect and extend the promises of progressive politics—sometimes with help from Republicans. This emboldened MAGA Republicans, who grew accustomed to a system that divorced words from consequences. An old-school ethnography based on a decade of research, Divided States traces conservative visions of an undemocratic social order back to its origin point in state administration to offer a new account of extremism and democratic backsliding in America.