Supercharging the State? Electrification and Federalism in the New Deal Era

• In Event: Political Economy in Geographic Space

Abstract

What role does technological change play in the centralization of state power? This research seeks to understand the impacts of electrification on the relationship between state and local governments during the New Deal Era with a focus on fiscal centralization. Electrification provides a particularly illuminating study of how technological change contributes to fiscal federalism. On the one hand, theoretical arguments suggest that federal loans which contributed to the electrification of rural areas would provide local governments with more autonomy (Oates 1972; Bardhan and Mookherjee 2006). However, infrastructure required to successfully implement electrification efforts require significant collaboration and coordination with state governments. This tension raises questions about the extent to which electrification, and technological change more generally, leads to shifts in the balance of power between state and local governments. Here, I plan to identify the impact of rural electrification on fiscal decentralization with using either an instrumental variables and/or regression discontinuity design approach at the county level between 1936, when the REA was established, to 1950, when the REA shifted its focus from rural electrification to rural telecommunications.

Author

• Jason Anastasopoulos, University of Georgia