AFTER REAGAN'S DEREGULATION: STATE-FEDERAL CONFLICT OVER ENERGY POLICY

President Reagan's New Federalism has promised to redistribute the political power within the fcdcral system through a concerted program of deregulation and decentralization. Through such an approach, the Administration holds that intergovernmental policy making will reap the benefits of increased cooperation, efficiency, and effectiveness. This paper examines Reagan's New Federalism in energy policy, finding a continued presence of state-federal conflict in intergovernmental implementation decisions. This conflict emerges as the President's priorities of deregula- tion and decentralization often combat one another. This analysis, then, suggests that New Federalism's emphasis on deregulation, rather than decentralization, carries the greatest weight in explaining the politics on intergovernmental energy policy implementation in the 1980s. Copyright 1988 by The Policy Studies Organization.