On welfare, Indiana and Michigan are proving that states canstill be ‘labs of democracy’

For more than 80 years, the U.S. states have been considered by commentators to be ‘laboratories of democracy’. Now, there is increasing concern that the states are becoming less and less likely to generate innovative policies. Looking at the growing role of federal waivers Donald F. Kettl suggests that the truth isn’t so simple. He writes that in exchange for working with the Obama administration on issues such as healthcare, conservative-led states like Indiana and Michigan have been able to push their own pathbreaking proposals to merge policy ambitions from the left with market tactics from the right.