Interstate Economic Relations

Extract

Interstate Economic Relations. By Joseph F. Zimmerman. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. 308p. $60.00.

Scholars of American federalism have focused much more attention on relations between federal and state governments than they have on those among states. Joseph F. Zimmerman is the exception. Although this book is replete with an impressive number of citations, it is Zimmerman himself who has almost single-handedly rectified this state of affairs. His earlier publications on national–state relations, including federal preemption, federal mandates, and federal–state commissions, were the precursors to two comprehensive examinations of interstate relations. In Interstate Relations: The Neglected Dimension of Federalism (1996), Zimmerman laid out basic premises of interstate relations within the American federal system. In Interstate Economic Relations, he expands considerably those premises, illustrates them with case studies of economic competition and cooperation among the states, and presents impressive evidence of the critical role of the U.S. Supreme Court as parameter-setting referee.