“I think the shifting of power to the federal government is independent from this question – as you mention, it is a problem that is occurring in Australia and Canada, both of which have states that are highly mixed between urban and rural, much like the US. I completely agree that this is a problem, and the point you describe about the federal government effectively forcing states not to make major reforms as otherwise they would lose certain federal funds is a huge issue. I just don’t think this has anything to do with the states ability to self-sustain or their urban/rural mix. After all, it is happening regardless.”

You have a good point here. My working hypothesis of fiscally imbalanced rural and urban states undermining federalism in the US doesn’t really account for the same trend in less imbalanced federations.

I haven’t researched this trend extensively in other federations. I do recall reading that in Australia it began during WWII when the federal government first levied income taxes specfically designed to crowd out previous state taxation, and in turn began granting conditional federal revenues to states.

A constitutional mechanism to equalize imbalanced fiscal resources between states, without allowing the federal government to impose policy preferences, is worth considering (the wikipedia article on equalization schemes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equalization_payments is worth a read).

“Rather than a state with a majority of metropolitan residents railroading through legislation that is to the detriment of rural residents (California) or the opposite (Texas), you would have a negotiation in which the wishes of both groups were put forth by people that actually represented them. If no agreement could be reached on a particular issue, each state can still do what is within its power to do what is best for its residents, whereas in a single state, you would either get political deadlock in which nothing could be done to the benefit of either group, or you would again have one group with an absolute majority doing things at the others expense.”

I find this idea intriguing: states negotiating with other states as agents on behalf of their residents to resolve policy differences. The US generally does not have this tradition given the lack of a federal forum/representation for state governments, the federal constitution’s prohibition on interstate compacts without federal approval, and the numerosity of states. The one policy area I am familiar with negotiations and compacts being commonly used is in water rights from rivers that border multiple states.

Given the preeminence of directly elected representatives in federal constitutions (and in countries with devolved regions), this inter-region negotiation role seems to be more often played by political parties. For example the US Republican party representing more rural areas, SNP in the UK, or the Bavarian CSU. Contrast this to the EU, where the preeminence of member states’ delegations in the constitutional organs leads to negotiations being carried out directly by the member states.

I’d be interested in reading more literature on this idea. Germany would seem more likely to have this form of governance in practice, given the federal forum/representation for state governments and the more manageable number of states.

On a slight tangent, I recall that Germany also has a constitutional mechanism by which the federal council of states can consent to transfers of powers from the state governments to the federal government. While in Australia, states can do this on a one-by-one basis. US states generally don’t have a mechanism for ceding power to the federal government, although this is generally avoided by the federal government unilaterally claiming such powers anyways.

“The lack of examples of successful “rural states” is less that there are none, and more because this is the norm. By “rural states”, this is referring to states that do not contain any metropolis that is large enough to be a state in its own right
… Likewise, many countries fit this description – successful countries comparable in population to Singapore & Hong Kong are Ireland, New Zealand, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Austria and Panama. The populations of the largest metropolis in each of these countries compared to their total population ranges from 23% (Sweden) to 36% (Panama), so their largest city is neither dominant enough to make up the majority of the country’s population, nor sufficiently large to warrant statehood in its own right. Even if you were to remove the largest city from each, you would still be left with several other cities in each country (Bergen, Malmö, Cork, etc.) that would be capable of driving their economy.”

This paragraph leads me to believe that I may have misunderstood the amount of separation between urban and rural areas you are proposing. I had previously assumed that you were proposing for the so called rural states to have almost no urban areas. This is a common trope in state reform movements in the US (for example the State of Jefferson movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_state) ).

I concur with you, if I am now correctly understanding your proposal for the ‘rural’ states to have some urban areas, but not be dominated by them, and the ‘urban’ states to be limited to a few ‘city-state’ like metropolises. A decent example is which Germany which has 3 city-states and 12 ‘area’ states.

Your article did use the example of Sheffield and rural Yorkshire county having different needs as urban and rural areas of the Yorkshire and the Humber region. Although setting the cut off for what should constitute an urban state is threading a thin line — and taking this with a large grain of salt as I’m not very knowledgeable of regional politics in the UK — it seems to me that Sheffield probably wouldn’t be an obvious candidate for an urban state (and should rather remain part of the Yorkshire and the Humber region).

If California were to adopt a federalism-within-federalism model, the San Francisco Bay Area, Greater Los Angeles/Orange County, San Diego, and Sacramento would be obvious candidates for city-states-within-states. The rest of the state could be divided into about 5 area-states-within-states each with a mix of medium cities and rural areas. Although, I’d be hesitant to seperate San Diego from its surrounding non-urban areas which are mostly desert and would be extremely poor.