Where Have You Gone, Terry Sanford? Governors and Federal Grants

• Author: Frank J. Thompson
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12617
• Published date: 01 September 2016
• Date: 01 September 2016

Book Review Editors’ Introduction 823

Frank J. Thompson is Distinguished

Professor of Public Affairs and

Administration at Rutgers–Newark and

is also affiliated with the Rutgers Center

for State Health Policy in New Brunswick,

New Jersey. He has published extensively

on issues of politics and administration,

health policy implementation, administrative

federalism, and public management. His

most recent book is

Medicaid Politics:

Federalism, Policy Durability, and Health

Reform

(Georgetown University Press).

Thompson received his PhD in political

science from the University of California,

Berkeley. He is a fellow of the National

Academy of Public Administration.

E-mail: fjthomp@newark.rutgers.edu

Book Reviews

A half century ago, Governor Terry Sanford

( 1967 ) 1 of North Carolina published an

important and provocative book on the role

of the states and their top elected executives in the

American federal system. The volume, Storm over the

States , generally focused on the need to reform state

government. More specifically, it developed three

Danny L. Balfour and Stephanie P. Newbold , Editors

Frank J. Thompson

Rutgers University–Newark

Where Have You Gone, Terry Sanford?

Governors and Federal Grants

Sean Nicholson-Crotty , Governors, Grants, and

Elections: Fiscal Federalism in the American

States (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University

Press, 2015). 185 pp. $44.95 (paper), ISBN:

9781421417707 .

major themes concerning the burgeoning number

of federal grant programs to the states (84–96,

184–186, 194). First, the proliferation of grants, each

with its own requirements, heightened problems of

coordination and, ultimately, effectiveness. Second,

the grants unnecessarily constrained state discretion,

thereby reducing prospects for innovation and superior

performance. Finally, and of special relevance for

present purposes, the governor had limited capacity to

direct, oversee, and control the state agencies involved

in implementing the grants. Sanford ’ s concerns about

the grant system soon became identified with the well-

known metaphor, “picket-fence federalism.”