Does continued state empowerment threaten democracy?

Gridlock on the national level has pushed policy decisions to the states. With that shift comes an erosion of democratic norms and institutions.

Here's a totally non-comprehensive recent history of Washington state politics — the state expanded Medicaid under Obamacare, voters in the Legislature approved some of the tightest gun control laws in the country, and, in the wake of the recent Dobbs decision, Democrats — who control the governor's office and both chambers in Olympia — have pledged to protect abortion rights come hell or high water.

These are some of the reasons life in the Evergreen State looks much different than it does in Texas, where policy making is moving in the opposite direction. In Austin, Republicans in the Texas Legislature refused to expand Medicaid, you don't need a permit to carry a handgun, and it's now a felony punishable by up to life in prison to perform an abortion.

University of Washington professor Jacob Grumbach says the fact that blue and red states are moving further and further apart isn't surprising.

"States and state governments have always played a really important role," Grumbach says, "but they're playing an increasingly important role as the national government does less important policy."

Grumbach is the author of "Laboratories Against Democracy: How National Parties Transformed State Politics."

In the book, he tracks multiple related phenomena in American politics — first, the nationalization of local politics, where candidates of the same party don't vary much from area to area. He also looks at the return of the states as the places driving major policy changes. These factors are pushing us in a dangerous undemocratic direction, he says.

"Some states are actually really changing their democratic institutions," Grumbach says, "that's changing the right to vote, and changing that sort of fairness of their legislative districts through gerrymandering, and that is a little bit more dangerous. That's not just policy diverging on taxes. This is really the tools of our democracy itself."

Grumbach spoke to Soundside about how federal policy has shifted to the state level since the 1970s and the implications of this ongoing shift.