Chapter 15 Key Takeaways

The chapter argued that state and local government is the larger half of American government — by employees, by direct services to citizens, and by sheer institutional volume — and that any honest account of how American government works must center, not footnote, the state-and-local layer. The takeaways below tie back to the chapter's stated learning objectives.

The empirical scale

  • The United States has 50 states + the District of Columbia + 5 inhabited territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa). The combined territorial population is roughly 3.5 million Americans whose constitutional rights are limited compared to state residents.
  • The US Census Bureau's 2022 Census of Governments identified approximately 90,000 distinct units of local government: about 3,000 counties, 36,000 municipalities, 12,800 townships, 12,800 school districts, and 38,000 special districts.
  • State and local governments together employ approximately 20 million people — roughly 5 million state, 15 million local. The federal civilian workforce is about 2.1 million. State-and-local outnumbers federal by approximately five to one.
  • Federal spending in fiscal year 2025 was about $7.0 trillion; state-and-local combined spending was about $4.1 trillion. On services people consume directly (schools, police, roads, prisons, courts, hospitals, sanitation, parks), state and local governments substantially outspend the federal government.

State government structure

  • All 50 state constitutions establish three branches. State constitutions are vastly longer than the federal one — the average is about 39,000 words; Alabama's is over 350,000 words, the longest in the world.
  • State constitutions establish a floor, not a ceiling, for federal rights. After Dobbs (2022), state-constitutional rights protections have become particularly consequential.
  • Forty-nine states have bicameral legislatures. Nebraska is the lone unicameral and formally nonpartisan legislature, since 1937.
  • Fifteen states impose term limits on state legislators. The empirical effects: reduced institutional memory, increased turnover and demographic diversity, power-shift toward executive and bureaucracy, no clear effect on campaign spending.

Governors

  • Every governor has a veto. Forty-three states give the governor a line-item veto over appropriations bills (the federal president has none after Clinton v. City of New York, 1998). Wisconsin's partial-veto power is the most expansive.
  • Strong-governor traditions (New York, California, Maryland) and weak-governor traditions (Texas, Vermont) reflect deep institutional choices. Texas's diffused executive power — separately elected Lt. Governor, Comptroller, AG, Land and Agriculture Commissioners — illustrates how formal gubernatorial power can be modest even in a politically potent state.
  • Thirty-six states limit governors to two terms (lifetime or consecutive); fourteen have no limits.

State courts

  • About 95% of all civil and criminal cases in the United States are filed in state courts.
  • State-court selection methods include: gubernatorial appointment with confirmation, partisan election, nonpartisan election, and merit selection (the Missouri Plan) with retention election. Many states use combinations across court levels.
  • The "new judicial federalism" is the pattern of state supreme courts using state constitutions to provide rights protections beyond the federal floor — most prominent in Massachusetts (Goodridge, 2003), New Jersey (Mount Laurel), Vermont (Baker, 1999), and the post-Dobbs state-constitutional abortion-rights litigation.

Direct democracy

  • Twenty-four states allow some form of citizen-initiated ballot measure. Three mechanisms: initiative (citizens place a measure on the ballot), referendum (legislative measure submitted to voters), recall (voters remove an elected official).
  • California's heavy reliance on direct democracy has produced both the durability of Proposition 13 (1978) and the political consequences of Proposition 187 (1994), Proposition 8 (2008), and the Davis recall (2003).
  • Post-Dobbs abortion-rights ballot measures have prevailed in every state with direct-democracy mechanisms that has voted on the question — including in states that vote Republican for federal office (Kansas, Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri).

Counties, municipalities, school districts, special districts

  • About 3,000 counties or county-equivalents cover the United States. Sheriffs are typically elected at the county level; about 3,000 sheriffs command around 300,000 sworn deputies and corrections staff.
  • Municipal government comes in three primary forms: strong-mayor, council-manager (most common in cities over 2,500), and commission.
  • Dillon's Rule holds that cities are creatures of state law and have only those powers expressly granted, necessarily implied, or essential to declared objects. State preemption of local minimum-wage increases, gun ordinances, sanctuary policies, short-term-rental rules, and plastic-bag bans has been a major battleground. Preemption cuts both directions politically — red states preempting blue cities (Texas, Florida, Missouri) and blue states preempting red localities (Colorado, New York).
  • About 12,800 school districts are usually governed by elected school boards in nonpartisan, off-cycle elections. School-board politics has become more nationally contested since 2020.
  • About 38,000 special districts — water, fire, library, sewer, transit — operate with their own taxing authority and typically very low public visibility.

Tribal and territorial governments

  • 574 federally recognized Native American tribes are sovereign nations within the United States, with constitutions, courts, legislatures, and police. McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020) was a major reaffirmation of treaty obligations.
  • Five inhabited territories — Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa — have approximately 3.5 million combined residents who do not vote for President and have only non-voting House delegates. The territories' constitutional status remains the live unresolved question that the Insular Cases left.

Asymmetric federalism

  • After Dobbs and against the broader pattern of decentralized policy authority, state-level variation has become dramatic: abortion access, gun laws, marijuana legality, criminal justice, education curricula, election administration. The federal Constitution defines the floor; state and local governments mostly determine the practical reality.

The Democracy Audit at the state-and-local level

  • The chapter's Democracy Audit asks readers to extend the federal-level audit downward: identify your state legislators, county commissioners, school-board members, and a special district that affects you. Read the actual budgets, agendas, and voting records.
  • Power flows to those who show up. At the state-and-local level, "showing up" means a single email, a single school-board meeting attendance, a single primary-election vote. The leverage is often higher at this level than at any other level of government.
  • The federal level dominates the news cycle. The state-and-local level dominates daily life. The asymmetry between attention and consequence runs in a direction worth noticing.