Very little systematic research has been conducted to determine the policy effects of changing the form of county government. The findings of this study suggest that efforts to modernize county government structure may enable county officials to respond successfully to increasing citizen demands for a higher level of current services as well as expand the menu of services. Specifically, there is a strong association between the type of county government (non-charter commission, non-charter commission/appointed administrator or elected executive, or charter commission/ appointed administrator or elected executive) and county spending for all types of services. In addition, there is a strong linkage between type of county government and three categories of county services representative of the service roles of the modern American county-that is, traditional, local, and regional services.

VER THE LAST several decades,county government officials have found themselves in an untenable budgetary dilemma. Simply stated, they have found that it has become much more difficult to raise sufficient revenue to fund county resident demands for the expansion of older traditional services such as roads, welfare, health, police, and courts and the start-up of newer municipal-type services (e.g., fire, utilities, protective inspections, libraries) and regional services (parks and recreation, sewage and solid waste disposal, resource conservation, urban renewal and redevelopment, transit). Although this dilemma has been much more acute in counties experiencing economic decline or a decrease in population, it is also prevalent among economically stable and rapidly growing counties. Contributing to the difficulty of raising enough revenue has been the uncertainty over the continuation of federal aid, adverse economic forces such as inflation and recession, and the erosion of the local property tax base. A particularly vexing problem has been constraints on counties' revenue-raising capability by state constitutions and statutes.County as well as municipal officials in the United States have long complained about the revenue-raising limitations imposed on

In a 1992 issue of this journal, 12 scholars proposed an ambitious research agenda for the study of the American county. By all accounts, this agenda was both a catalyst and a guide for those interested in the nature, role, functions, operations, and practical relevance of county governments to either continue their research or to launch new studies in this underresearched area. The present article provides a detailed inventory of the research that has been conducted in the eight areas identified in the 1992 agenda. Specifically, which research questions have or have not been addressed satisfactorily? Such an exercise is a logical prerequisite for charting a path for future research on counties; it represents a synthesis of scholarly needs for theory building, hypothesis testing, and cumulative research and the dynamic and enduring knowledge-base needs of county practitioners and elected officials.

The American democratic system of government is being put to its greatest test since the Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s, as the country endeavors to cope with the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. That is, considerable pressure continues to build up at the fault lines of governance inherent in the country’s unique federal form of government which explicitly and implicitly expects national, state, and local levels to work together while they also may function as separate, autonomous entities to promote and provide for the general welfare. These fault lines exist where governance and service provision matters necessitate the collective attention and action of two or more levels of government. Both cooperation and conflict are possible interactive outcomes in these situations. This article provides an early assessment of how national, state, and local governments have worked together since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequently a “report card” of sorts on the functioning of intergovernmental relations in the U.S. at the present time. More specifically, the article will examine the current condition of interstate, interlocal, state-local, and national-state relations. While the findings and observations reported here are certainly enlightening, they should be viewed as preliminary. Followed up research should be conducted to determine if there have been any policy learning has occurred and if such information has been used in improve the quality of governance in keeping with citizen expectations of American federalism.