The time is July 1988, and baseball fever is rising. With barely a glimmer of hope remaining, “Big Jim” Thompson steps into the batter's box to swat a ninth inning “home run” that prevents the White Sox from going down to defeat—or more accurately—from going down to Florida. Such is the stuff of legends, although the real story is hardly less dramatic. Seated at a desk at home plate of Comiskey Park, Illinois Governor James Thompson signed a $ 150 million financing package for the construction of a new stadium that will keep the White Sox in Chicago and fore-close the team's removal to St. Petersburg. With vigorous lobbying from the Governor, the Illinois General Assembly, in the closing minutes of its 1988 session, had narrowly approved the stadium legislation.

The news from Chicago, however, is more than a baseball story. The news tells us a great deal about modern governors in domestic policy making. They are more activist than their counterparts a generation or so ago, particularly in the realm of homestate economic development. Though most governors do not serve as long as Thompson–by late 1988, he had been governor for nearly 12 years–modern governors, as compared to their 1950s counterparts, are staying in office longer and, perhaps as a consequence, acquiring greater national influence.

Ask most political scientists about constitutional law, and they will tell you about the Federal Constitution and its interpretation by the U.S. Supreme Court. Examine a text on American constitutional law, and you will likely find the same tendency to equate constitutional law with the U.S. Constitution. Even the recent campaign for constitutional literacy during the Bicentennial of the Constitution altogether ignored the most obvious gap in Americans' constitutional knowledge—namely, the virtually total ignorance about state constitutions.

This inattention to state constitutions and state constitutionalism is unfortunate, because state constitutions are assuming an increasing importance in American politics. They have served as the incubators for institutional innovations that are now receiving national attention. President Reagan's proposals for a balanced budget amendment and for an item veto both had their origins in state charters. Moreover, because most state constitutions can be amended relatively easily, they have provided an alternative avenue by which groups that are blocked in the legislative process can pursue political change. California's Proposition 13 is a case in point. Finally, state constitutions have furnished the basis for probably the most significant development in civil liberties law over the past two decades, namely, the rediscovery of state bills of rights as independent protections for civil liberties.

Experience with the concepts of federalism and sovereignty is usually limited to readings and lectures, especially in a class of undergraduates. Since these two concepts are the foundation of American governmental structure on all levels, I want to ensure that the students grasp them. I feel that students have a better grasp of information and its application when they can actually use the information themselves. I have developed the following exercise to explore federalism and sovereignty issues: posing a question concerning a state's revision of its constitution to the students as if they were on the state's constitution revision commission. The lively debates and discussions that ensue cover not only the main issues of sovereignty and federalism but encompass the use (and misuse) of executive power, legislative oversight, and commissions—all concepts that are critical to the study of American national, state and local government.

Towards the end of a class focusing on constitutions (and after a class covering the basics of federalism), the stage is set by talking about state constitution revisions and the trend toward simpler “plain English” state constitutions. (Note: This can be adapted for county/city/town charter revisions also.) The class is told that the instructor is the governor of the State of Confusion, and they have been gathered to form the State of Confusion's Constitution Revision Commission. The first section the commission will address at the next meeting is the following:

Occasional references to the old radical teaching that “all politics is local” notwithstanding, American political scientists have by and large treated the study of local politics as a subject of much lesser importance than national politics. The standard introductory course in “American democracy” has a national focus—often it is exclusively national. Briefly, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the study of “urban politics” occupied a more prominent place in the discipline, but interest has waned. The priority concern in both teaching and research continues to be American national government and politics.

This narrow focus leads to a distorted and truncated view of American democracy. Despite increased nationalization, state and local government has been and remains a basic element in the practice of American politics. The productivity and creativity of democracy in America are outcomes, not simply of a national political process, but of a complex system of governance in which local collective action provides much of the energy and initiative for addressing public problems. A vast amount of political activity in the United States is channeled through state and local institutions, where much of the work of public problem solving is done.