Devolution thus proved more a pragmatic tactic than an ideological strategy. This scarcely means that the ideas don't matter. They do-but principally to provide an intellectual skin to devolution's pragmatic skeleton. Moreover, devolution, privatization, and deregulation were not separate ideas flying in loose formation. Each has become a tool for the next.
Devolution works only if privatization works.
Some states worked on giving companies more flexibility in exchange for meeting tough performance standards. Other states experimented with emissions trading and other market-based tactics. Deregulation became devolution, and much devolution depended on privatization. Thus, the transformation of American federalism runs far more subtly than Lowi suggests. Faced with tough problems that current government institutions seemed unable to solve, Americans cobbled together new tactics with broad strategic implications.