Governing the States and the Nation: The Intergovernmental Policy ...

and departments to influence local and state decisions. Indeed, it is relatively easy to see the ways in which governors can wield their powers within states, and researchers such asE. Lee Bernick (1979) have classified many of these different methods.

However, the ways in which governors can influence policies outside the borders of their own states are not as readily apparent because governors are generally unable to draw upon formal powers to do so. For instance, governors must work outside of their constitutionally defined role if they wish to individually influence policy at the national level by lobbying the federal government on an ad-hoc basis, partnering with neighboring states on policy initiatives, or simply adopting innovative internal policies that then diffuse throughout other states. Because the goal of this book is to better understand the role of governors in affecting federal policy, it might be useful to delineate the various ways in which governors can work to impact policy outside their home states. In my view, there are four distinct ways in which governors can do this.

First, individual governors can develop successful policies in their own states that are then adopted at the federal level of government. For example, under the guidance of Governor Tommy Thompson, the state of Wisconsin devised a welfare program that served as the general model for welfare reforms adopted by the federal government in 1996. Widely considered one of the most innovative state-level approaches to a serious policy problem facing the states and nation in the 1990s, welfare reform became a policy that symbolized the ability of the states to contribute to policy innovation across the nation. Donald Kettl (2003a), while decrying the lack of policy innovation in the early part of the new century, noted that “Republican governor Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin championed a welfare reform