Federal mandates by popular demand

This paper proposes a new framework for studying federal mandates regarding public policies in areas such as environmental quality, public health, hig hway safety, and the provision of local public goods. Voters have single-pe aked preferences along a single policy dimension. There are two levels of g overnment, federal and local. The federal level can constrain local policy by mandating a minimum (or maximum) policy. Localities are free to adopt an y policy satisfying the constraint imposed by the federal mandate. We show that voters choose federal mandates that are too strict, which leads to exc essively severe mandates. We show that similar results can obtain when fede ral provision of the public-provided good is more efficient than local prov ision.