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which Grodzins (1966) describes as “marble cake” federalism, is
especially useful for explaining the phenomenon of cooperation
across levels of governments. Local jurisdictions have the ability
and authority to implement some independent laws, politics,
and financial decisions. Their interaction across levels of
governments is about sharing, bargaining, negotiating
cooperation, and drawing down more resources from higher
levels of governments while trying to maintain policy
independence (as opposed to merely implementing higher level
policy mandates). The concept of federalism is not
centralization but rather power sharing among political centers
(Elazar, 1962). On the basis of this perspective, inter-
governmental relationship in the U.S. can be represented as an
overlapping-authority model, which means: 1) governmental
operations simultaneously involve different levels of
governments; 2) the interactions between different levels of
governments are full of bargains and negotiations; and 3) the
autonomy of each level of government is limited but nonetheless
exists (Wright, 2007).
From the resource-seeking perspective, the grant-in aid
system in America also reflects the characteristics of vertical
collaboration (McGuire, 2006). This aid system has long been
characterized by the presence of bargaining, cooperation, and
mutual dependence (Pressman, 1975). With the growth and
expansion of federal grants and new regulatory programs,
federal-state and federal-local programming, federal initiatives
to nongovernmental organizations, and expanded roles for state
governments, vertical collaborative actions and transactions
across levels of governments also increased (Agranoff &
McGuire, 2003). O’Toole and Meier (2004) stated that
intergovernmental grant programs imply a donor- recipient
relationship which involves one or more donor governments
and governmental agencies in regular interaction with one or
more recipient governments and agencies (Pressman, 1975).