Both federal aid and policy fluidity demonstrate distinctive patterns in relation to functional categories of state agencies The next query turns attention to the subtitle of this essay Are federal aid patterns correlated with policy fluidity'7
Does aid dependency, for example, contribute to turbulence (policy change) in state agencies9
We test the dependency turbulence hypothesis with four ASAP data sets—
1978,1984,1988, and 1994 Table 5 displays the product of the separate analyses The percentage distributions warrant two brief observations
First, as in several pnor cross section analyses across ASAP data sets, the percentages are quite close and consistent For example, among agencies with minor policy shifts, the proportions not receiving federal aid ranged from only 33% to 38% across the survey years Among the same set of policy-stable agen- cies the proportions heavily dependent on federal aid were 19% and 21 % Among agencies reporting major policy shifts the proportions across the tour surveys were not as close or consistent, but the contrasts were hardly extreme or dramatic
Table 5 Policy Fluidity and Aid Dependency
Aid dependency Policy shift
None and minor
Moderate
Major
Year 1978 1984 1988 1994 1978 1984 1988 1994 1978 1984 1988 1994
None 34%
38 37 33 25 28 30 28 18 28 29 23
Under 50%
47%
43 42 46 51 49 47 48 49 46 48 48
50% and more 19%
19 21 21 23 23 23 24 33 26 23 29
(N=) (275) (240) (337) (253) (516) (441) (592) (492) (532) (380) (484) (432) Note Because of founding the percentages may not add to 100
Source D S Wright American State Administrators Project (ASAP) Surveys Institute ol Research in Social Science University of North Carolina Chapel Hill NC
Intergovernmental Interdependences 53 The second observation bears directly on the hypothesis linking policy tur- bulence to aid dependency. It can be assessed best by examining the three sets of percentages in the final (right-hand) column of Table 5. These are the propor- tions of agencies most dependent on federal aid grouped by the three graduations of policy shifts—minor, moderate, and major. For the top cluster (minor) the percentages average 20 while for the bottom cluster (major change) the percent- ages vary from 23 to 32 but average 27. There is, then, only a slight or weak relationship between federal aid and policy turbulence.
This finding is consistent with earlier results and fits the general framework of public administration within the plane of state governance. First, recall that one-third or less of the respondents attributed the initiatives for policy changes to national officials. This was substantially below the proportions tracing policy change initiatives to governors, legislators, and agency staff. In short, national officials, through aid-based interactions, do not appear to be the creators of sub- stantial policy turbulence in state administration.
Second, when state agency heads do attribute policy change to the actions of national official(s), those who acknowledge this source of initiative are far more likely to be state administrators whose agencies are heavily dependent on federal aid. For example, among agencies not receiving federal aid, only 10-
15% of the agency heads across the four ASAP surveys mention national officials as a source of policy change. By way of contrast, 50-60% of the agency heads with high aid dependency (50% or more) indicated national officials as a source initiative for policy change. This finding was consistent across the four ASAP surveys from 1978 to 1994. Federal aid is an avenue along which national influ- ence^) may travel. Despite the width and direction of the avenue, however, there is no assurance that a specified amount of national influence will automatically accompany this distinctive fiscal vehicle.
Third, to the extent that some policy shifts are induced by federal aid, these appear to filter through or across basic tensions or fault lines within the plane of state governance. One fault line is the cleavage between the PPPs (program policy professionals) and the AAGs (appointed administrative generalists). This division can be observed visually in Figure 3. There is a distinct separation between the administrative generalists and the program specialists (Yoo and Wright, 1994).
Fiscal and nonfiscal staff, elected officials, and regulatory agency administrators are clearly a breed apart from the dominant core of state administrative agency heads (the heads of major functional or line agencies). The noncore component of state administrative establishments is challenged not only to ' 'make its mark'' within the plane of state governance, but also to define and assert its status in relation to officials in the national and local planes.
A fourth interpretation of the findings is possible. This attributes the pre- ponderance of policy turbulence to state-level forces modestly augmented or ac- centuated by intergovernmental factors, especially federal aid. This interpretation
54 Wright and Cho emphasizes the primacy of political and institutional dynamics pressing on the edges of the state governance plane and into its internal surfaces. This view is more promising and optimistic with regard to democratic accountability. It sug- gests that despite the regularities and continuities in aid policies, in legislative oversight/control, and in executive support, there are realistic prospects for agency policy shifts caused by several political actors in the state governance plane (Bowling and Wright, 1998a).
The preceding point prompts us to revise and extend V. O. Key's (1956) provocative question posed over four decades ago: "Is there an autonomous state politics?" Our version of this query is, "Are there autonomous state administra- tive systems?" Just as there has been no definitive answer to Key's long-standing question, so too have we not established a definitive answer to its administrative counterpart.
What does emerge from our analyses and results, however, is a provisional assessment. First, there are multiple and diverse administrative systems within each state government (Elling, 1992). The nature of a particular state's adminis- trative establishment has been variously described as a holding company (Kunde, 1987), a kaleidoscope of fluid and conflicting forces (Thompson, 1993), and a web of interconnected relationships involving sharply demarcated institutional boundaries. (Robinson, 1998).
Our research, here and elsewhere, confirms the sprawling character of state administrative systems (Jenks and Wright, 1993). There is no single or unified ' 'executive branch'' of state government. Rather, there are numerous semiautono- mous constellations of administrative authority and influence within state govern- ments. Any one or several of these constellations may be subject to national- level influences, whether by the "carrots" (incentives) of federal aid, or through the "sticks" of national mandates or sanctions. Furthermore, the nature and ex- tent of national influences clearly vary in significant ways across the irregular landscape that constitutes state administration.
National legislation and various administrative actions may contribute to selected turbulence in the state plane(s) of governance. A national presence is evident among several state administrative constellations through federal aid con- duits. We do not find, however, a compelling or uniform reach of national influ- ence that seems destined to overpower the political and administrative founda- tions of state agencies. Consistent with a recent Supreme Court decision, we conclude that, "States are not mere political subdivisions of the United States;
State governments are neither regional offices nor administrative agencies of the Federal Government" (New York v. United States 505 U.S. 186, 1992). The fluidity or turbulence associated with program changes in state agencies is gener- ated as much or more by within-agency and within-state variables than by federal aid features.
Intergovernmental Interdependency 55
IV. NATIONAL REGULATORY IMPACTS
Elazar (1984:252) argued over a decade ago that "the American federal system may be passing into a new phase, one in which grants, while remaining important, will no longer set the tone of intergovernmental relations. . . . Now the move seems to be in the direction of new relationships in the field of governmental regulations." Elazar's statement captured a prominent and widely discussed shift in the character of national-state relations in the 1980s. "Regulatory federalism"
was only one manner of describing the shift (ACIR, 1984; Hanus, 1981). A more pointed and pejorative way of describing the new regulatory era was "from coop- erative to coercive federalism" (Kincaid, 1990).
Federal aid is often cited as the defining instrument of cooperative federal- ism. To the extent that there is a singular or distinctive feature of regulatory (or coercive) federalism, it derives from legally based national actions. The varied scope and content of regulatory federalism have been amply explored (ACIR, 1984, 1993; Chubb, 1985b; Conlan, 1986, 1995; Kettl, 1983; Kincaid, 1990, 1993, 1996). Several of its general and specific features are examined below since the 1994 ASAP survey was aimed in part at assessing national regulatory impacts on state administration.