More than forty years ago, journalist Joel Garreau argued in The Nine Nations of North America that the continent functioned less as a unified political system than as a collection of regional economies defined by culture, infrastructure and trade rather than state borders.
When I read Garreau while living in Washington after serving in the federal government, I was intrigued but skeptical. His thesis struck me as overly simplistic. Not so today.
America — or more precisely, the country we still call the United States — is increasingly immobilized by zero-sum politics. The federal government remains powerful in theory, but in practice, it is no longer the primary arena where many of the nation’s most urgent problems are solved. Governing capacity is drifting downward — and outward — to states, cities and metropolitan regions that can still act with speed, competence and public trust.
Across healthcare, infrastructure, climate policy, housing and economic development, federal institutions that once set national direction are faltering. This dysfunction is no longer abstract. Americans feel it in rising costs, uneven services, and widening regional disparities. In response, a quiet reorganization of governance is underway. Rather than sweeping national reform, authority is shifting incrementally toward states and metropolitan regions aligned by shared economic interests and policy goals.
This shift is not the result of any single administration, though recent years have accelerated it. The deeper forces — polarization, globalization, technological change and regional economic divergence — have been building for decades.
Nowhere is this transformation more visible than in California. With an economy approaching $4 trillion — larger than that of most countries — the state would rank among the world’s largest economies if it were sovereign. But California’s significance today is not just economic scale. It is increasingly functioning as a governing laboratory, setting standards that ripple outward because national and global markets cannot afford to ignore them.
When federal fuel-efficiency standards stalled, California established its own. When Congress failed to act on digital privacy, California enacted the nation’s strongest consumer data protections. When federal immigration enforcement intensified, California cities declared themselves sanctuaries. These were not symbolic gestures. They were exercises in practical authority — policy decisions that became de facto national norms.
California is not alone. Innovation, capital and population growth are now concentrated in a limited number of metropolitan regions — the Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle, Boston, Austin and Miami. These metros function as global nodes, often more connected to international markets and peer cities than to large parts of their own states. Their policy priorities increasingly diverge from those of slower-growth regions, and when national policy fails to keep pace, they pursue alternatives: interstate compacts, regional alliances and direct global partnerships.
Economist Kenichi Ohmae foresaw this shift in The End of the Nation State, arguing that cross-border metropolitan regions — not nation-states — would become the primary engines of growth and innovation. The San Diego–Tijuana region exemplifies this model today: a deeply integrated binational economy spanning logistics, biotech, advanced manufacturing and culture. Its economic logic increasingly bypasses national capitals, operating instead through regional networks and global supply chains.
Healthcare offers a preview of this emerging order. Recent federal actions projected to strip millions of Americans of health insurance and reduce food assistance have prompted states to act independently. A bipartisan coalition of governors has formed a public-health alliance to coordinate disease surveillance, vaccination policy, data sharing and emergency preparedness — outside traditional federal channels.
On the West Coast, California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii now issue coordinated guidance on COVID-19, influenza and RSV, explicitly citing weakened federal leadership. California has taken the lead, leveraging its population size, fiscal capacity,and administrative infrastructure. The message is unmistakable: if national institutions cannot provide coherence or credibility, states will build parallel systems.
Climate policy follows the same pattern. When the federal government withdrew from international climate commitments, California did not wait. The state negotiated directly with foreign governments, signed international agreements, and convened global climate summits. These are not the actions of a subordinate jurisdiction waiting for direction — they are the behaviors of a sovereign actor operating within a federal shell.
What is emerging is not the collapse of the United States, nor a movement toward secession. It is a reconfiguration: a looser, more networked country in which states and metropolitan regions — often led by California’s example and resources — exercise growing practical authority while federal power contracts in effectiveness, if not in law.
City-states and regional alliances are not a threat to democracy. In an era of institutional paralysis, they may be its most viable renewal. If the United States hopes to remain competitive and cohesive in the decades ahead, it must recognize this reality and adapt — rather than cling to a centralized model that no longer reflects how the country actually works.
For better or worse, California is no longer simply participating in American federalism. It is pioneering what comes next.
John Eger is a professor emeritus in the School of Journalism and Media Studies at San Diego State University. Previously, he served as a telecommunications advisor to President Gerald R. Ford, legal assistant to FCC Chairman Dean Burch, and Senior Vice President of CBS.
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