Serving Two Masters? State Implementation of Federal Regulatory Policy (Report‪)‬

During the 1960s and 1970s there was a tremendous spurt in enabling legislation for vast new networks of social regulation. This form of regulation, which Ripley and Franklin (1986) term "protective regulatory," is designed to protect citizens from the harmful effects of unrestrained competition; examples include consumer product safety protection, workplace safety protection, and environmental protection. Many of these policies have been implemented by state governments, utilizing a mechanism called partial preemption. This device enables the federal government to return program responsibility to the states while retaining the ultimate authority to decide on the adequacy of state actions. States are allowed to design and implement their own laws, so long as these laws are consistent with national goals and meet federal guidelines. If a state elects not to participate or is unable to secure national approval for its programs, the overseeing federal agency assumes responsibility for enforcing federal statutes within that state's boundaries. Once a state obtains approval for its programs, program implementation is employed through national and state authority concurrently, though the state is given primary administrative responsibility, or "primacy", within its borders. This implementation largely delegates the authority for developing and enforcing regulatory standards to state agencies. The relevant federal agency is empowered to revoke its grant of primacy at any time at which it determines that the state is no longer in compliance with federal mandates. States are likewise free to rescind their assumption of program authority at any time. This intermixing of national and state enforcement responsibility comprises what one scholar refers to as "conjoint federalism" (Welborn 1988). Examples of conjoint federalism include federal health and safety regulation (as implemented through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration), surface mining regulation (under the auspices of the Office of Surface Mining) and many recent pieces of environmental regulation, which are implemented through the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA).