FOOD FIGHTS - REGULATORY ENFORCEMENT IN A FEDERAL SYSTEM

How effective are the approaches used by federal agencies to gain compliance from state officials in programmatic areas? William Gormley posits three types of federal government approaches: those providing state officials with considerable discretion ("catalytic" controls); those backed by more explicit oversight from federal agencies ("coercive" controls); and those relying on political and other incentives to generate state-level compliance ("hortatory" controls). Using the relations between three southern states (Mississippi, South Carolina, and Georgia) and the Department of Agriculture's regional office in Atlanta, Gormley focuses on the implementation of intergovernmental relations related to USDA's Child Care Food Program. He finds that hortatory controls worked well in gaining the cooperation and compliance of South Carolina's officials. However, the application of coercive controls had mixed results in Mississippi where the bureaucratic and political contexts were more open to the Atlanta's office demands than were conditions in Georgia where the coercive approach failed. Gormley concludes by noting the more problematic nature of the coercive approach and the care that must be taken in designing an intergovernmental implementation strategy.