Interstate Cooperation: Compacts and Administrative Agreements

First in-depth examination of the various forms of interstate cooperation and their central role promoting a successful federal system of government in the United States. Cooperative interstate relations are essential for maintaining the economic and political union established by the United States Constitution. Despite this importance, the study of interstate compacts, federal-state compacts, and interstate administrative agreements have generally been neglected by political scientists for more than half a century. In this second edition of Interstate Cooperation, Joseph F. Zimmerman demonstrates that many public goals can be achieved by either a compact or an agreement. Interstate administrative agreements, moreover, may be verbal or written, and have increased sharply in number because their flexibility allows changes to be made quickly without legislative authorization. Zimmerman aims to stimulate additional research on these forms of interstate cooperation in order to help formulate additional innovative solutions to our major interstate problems. “Interstate Cooperation will prove to be a classic on the subject matter. This is a truly magnificent work on a topic that has been severely neglected by scholars.” — Nelson Wikstrom, coauthor of American Intergovernmental Relations: A Fragmented Federal Polity Joseph F. Zimmerman is Professor of Political Science at the University at Albany, State University of New York. His many books include Horizontal Federalism: Interstate Relations; Regulating the Business of Insurance in a Federal System;and Congress: Facilitator of State Action, all published by SUNY Press.