Political Regionalism and Administrative Regionalism
| Author | Donald Davidson |
| Published date | 01 January 1940 |
| Date | 01 January 1940 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/000271624020700118 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
138
Political
Regionalism
and
Administrative
Regionalism
By
DONALD
DAVIDSON
TO
THE
general
reader
anxious
to
Tgather
comfort
from
the
studies
of
experts,
nothing
is
more
encouraging
than
the
present
disposition
of
political
science
to
lift
the
anathema
from
discus-
sions
of
regionalism,
for
the
social
scien-
tist
who
is
willing
to
talk
about
regional-
ism
is,
by
that
act,
willing
to
speak
American,
as
the
followers
of
Marx
and
other
European
guides
seemingly
are
not;
and
by
implication,
he
is
also
will-
ing
to
admit
that
more
than
one
kind
of
American
can
be
spoken.
Such
a
comfort
is
worth
having
in
a
time
when
the
general
reader
has
been
all
but
over-
whelmed
by
popular
advocates
who
think
and
write
in
a
different
context
and
can
see
but
one
design
wherever
they
look.
It
is
a
little
discouraging,
perhaps,
to
find
that
&dquo;regionalism&dquo;
is
excluded
from
the
compendious
index
of
the
Beards’
America
in Midpassage,
which
includes
everything
else
under
the
sun.
But
the
great
studies
of
the
National
Resources
Committee,
which
emphatically
do
make
a
place
for
regionalism,
and
the
special
or
general
studies
of
other
agencies
and
individuals
more
than
balance
the
ac-
count.
Among
social
scientists,
certainly,
the
discussion
of
regionalism
has
proceeded
far
enough
to
distinguish
some
general
agreement
on
the
following
fundamen-
tals :
( 1 )
the
existence
in
the
United
States
of
marked
regional
differentia-
tions
which
arise
from
various
causes,
some
old,
some
new;
(2)
the
existence
of
large-scale
social
and
economic
prob-
lems,
differing
in
kind
and
degree,
which
have
a
regional
outline;
(3)
the
inabil-
ity
of
separate
states
to
deal
adequately
with
such
problems;
(4)
the
demon-
strable
inequalities
caused
by
attempts
to
meet
these
problems
by
Federal
legis-
lation ;
and
(5)
the
historic
fact
that
nonsolution
or
inadequate
solution
of
such
problems
leads
to
sectionalism,
which
is
political
regionalism
in
its
gross
and
active
form.
POLITICAL
REGIONALISM
The
gross
form
of
political
region-
alism
appears
when
a
major
regional
grievance
remains
unsatisfied
over
a
considerable
time
and
the
region
con-
cerned
is
left
&dquo;without
recourse.&dquo;
If
the
issue
is
brought
into
the
arena
of
na-
tional
policy
and
if
the
region
is
left
in
a
solid
minority,
with
a
majority
vote
concentrated
in
other
regions,
then
we
have
the
extreme
result:
secession,
as
in
the
sixties;
or
threatened
secession,
as
upon
many
occasions;
or
at
least
long
continuing
disturbance
and
bad
feeling.
But
political
regionalism,
if it
is
a
sin,
is
not
to
be
imputed
to
the
minority
region
alone.
The
majority
regions,
for
all
their
insistence
on
the
merits
of
their
&dquo;national&dquo;
view,
derive
a
profit
which
is
denied
to
the
minority
region.
The
na-
tional
view,
so-called,
may
bring
ad-
vantage
to
one
part
of
the
Nation
and
disadvantage
to
another
part.
Hence,
as
Turner
has
pointed
out,
regional
lead-
ers
invariably
disguise
specifically
re-
gional
aims
and
attempt
to
give
regional
policies
the
coloring
of
national
policies.
Political
regionalism,
though
locally
mo-
tivated,
aims
at
Federal
policy.
Fed-
eral
policy
is
always
being
influenced
by
the
interplay
of
regional
aims,
and
often
turns
out
to
be
political
region-
alism
falsely
generalized.
There
is
no
real
disagreement
as
to
the
ends
to
be
obtained
by
a
national
policy
which
would
take
this
situation
into
account.
Economic
inequalities
be-
tween
regions
hurt
just
as
much
as
the
economic
inequalities
between
&dquo;classes&dquo;
about
which
we
now
hear
so
much.
The
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