Domestic Polocies in the Usa
Essay Preview: Domestic Polocies in the Usa
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Because responsibility for U.S. foreign affairs is the exclusive domain of the federal government, one expects U.S. states to be restricted from any kind of international involvement. The U.S. Constitution prohibits states from signing treaties or forming compacts with foreign nations. These legal restrictions give rise to the prevailing view of states as strictly domestic actors, with no authority, capability, or even interest in foreign affairs.
But today, few domestic policies are still strictly domestic. As the global economy has changed, the nature of domestic policy has transformed. The issues traditionally the domain of the states — such as economic development, criminal justice, and family law, to name a few — are issues that increasingly have foreign causes and effects. Today, states have to forge foreign ties in order to meet their local responsibilities. Thus states send trade missions to foreign nations, open trade offices overseas; and hold international conferences on law enforcement. States routinely bypass Washington, D.C to form their own relations directly with other nations, all in order to meet their domestic governing obligations.
How has Washington responded to these developments? Legally, only the federal government can represent the nation in foreign affairs; the states have no authority to do so. Throughout the nation’s history, the Supreme Court has restricted the states from encroaching on federal supremacy in foreign affairs on the grounds that independent action on the part of the states poses a danger to the integrity of the nation. The federal government has the authority to restrict the states from establishing or continuing foreign contact, and could exercise that power to restrict the states at any time. And yet, states — and even cities — are developing international roles for themselves with surprisingly little objection from the federal government — sometimes even with federal encouragement and financial support.
That the states are developing foreign relations directly with other nations with tacit — much less overt — federal support, runs counter to every presumption there is about states and the conduct of U.S. foreign affairs. But in 2000, in the most recent court case concerning states and foreign affairs, the U.S. Supreme Court preempted a Massachusetts law prohibiting the state from