National Parties and State Power: Federalism’s New Logic in an Era of Executive-Centered Partisanship

Abstract While recent scholarship on executive-centered federalism emphasizes unilateral action and the growing partisan divide between “red” and “blue” states, it often treats the role of party organization and presidential leadership of the party system as secondary. Tracing key episodes that played out during the first year of Trump 2.0’s administration, including disputes over transgender and immigration policy, presidential support for aggressive redistricting strategies in several states, and state-led litigation, we argue that understanding contemporary federal–state relations must take account of how presidential partisanship has remade the party system over the past half-century. Our analysis draws on a new historical dataset measuring party organizational and geographic consolidation from 1834 to 2024, which shows that Trump’s merging of party and presidential power is decades in the making—a culmination of an executive-centered nationalization of partisanship that has placed states on the front lines of battles for the services of administrative power.