Our Mission

Regional Governance Project

Federalism Education Project

Federalism Rate of Return Project

European Union
Federalism Project (356kb)

Federalism Links

A note on the Significant Features 
of Fiscal Federalism

Our Mission

The Council's mission is:

• to contribute positively to the betterment of society and the lives of our nation’s citizens through enhanced understandings of government and intergovernmental relations; 
  

• to provide a non-partisan and overarching view of the workings of the American federal system ; 
  

• to lead to more meaningful citizen participation in government and, in turn, more enlightened and effective decision-making in our nation’s government structure.

The Council’s primary focus is on relations between federal, state, and local governments within the United States. However, it does conduct periodic investigations into international federalism as a way of informing the debate in the U.S.  

To achieve the mission goals above, the Council conducts a number of programmatic activities:

• monitoring of the workings of the Federal - State - Local intergovernmental partnership;
  

• tracking emerging and ongoing issues in that partnership;
  

• conducting targeted investigations into ways to improve the operation of the federal system;
  

• fostering federalism education for the general public, and for students in the primary, secondary and higher education systems in the United States.

These activities are organized into different projects, each of which has, or is in the process of having, a white paper written up which frames the general issues. Brief descriptions of these projects are provided below. More detail and, where available, white papers and other supporting materials, can be found at the hyperlinks below, or in the menus on the side or bottom panels of this page. 

Regional Governance Project 

This project encompasses examinations of different options for regional governance in the United States, i.e. governmental structures which can address policy problems which cross the boundaries of US States.

Federalism Education Project

This project encompasses efforts to find different ways to more fully educate Americans about the workings of the American Constitution and its system of federalism.

Federalism Rate of Return Project

This project encompasses efforts which focus on measuring the rate-of-return to different forms of federal and intergovernmental public service delivery.

European Union Federalism Project 

This project contains activities which are studying the way in which the European Union is organizing itself to see what lessons there are that might be relevant to the evolution of the American federal system.