1824 



An American experiment on a grander scale, the Tennessee Valley 

 Authority, illustrates the regional approach applied to a multistate 

 area. Furthermore : 



Rpgionalism became almost an ideology in the United States during the depres- 

 sion years. Its advocates cited the Tennessee Valley Authority as the idealization 

 of tlie concept. Although admittedly a capital-intensive development of dams, 

 power plants, transmission lines, flood control works, and navigation improve- 

 ments, TVA was much more: a complex program of soil improvement, agricultural 

 processing, farm technology, reforestation, and commercial development of the 

 entire basin of the Tennessee River and its tributaries. 



The TVA concept was characterized by the following features : 

 Corporate organization 



Exercise of the sovereign powers of the Federal Government 

 Right to hold and sell property, to sue and be sued 

 Authority to construct and operate power dams and distribution lines — to 



sell power wholesale or retail ... 



Domain over the entire watershed of the Tennessee River 

 A policy of contracting with State and local governments and individuals 



for cooperative development arrangements 

 Maintenance of its own civil service and labor relations 



Incorporation within its central organization of miniature departments of 

 commerce, agriculture, labor, health, mining, and engineering technology, 

 in addition to its more widely publicized power activities.^*' 



Thus, a feature of the Government-sponsored TVA experiment was 

 the employment of centralized regional — rather than national or 

 subdivided— planning and authority. What made this arrangement 

 possible in the face of traditional American antipathy toward Federal 

 Government management and control in the normally private de- 

 velopment sector was the economic emergency and the need for con- 

 certed, large-scale action in a severely depressed region. Although it 

 was both technically and politically successful, and although many of 

 the lessons learned in the experiment were applied elsewhere in the 

 United States, the TVA model as such was not repeated. 



Aj^plied subnationally, the regional approach requires either the 

 exercise of strong central authority, or institutional relationships 

 and procedures for achieving consensus and cooj)eration, or some com- 

 bination of both. The TVA experiment leaned in the first direction 

 (though it actively sought cooperation with local authorities); co- 

 operative joint organizations of States to develop such regions as 

 Appalachia, Four Corners, and the Great Lakes, coordinated by the 

 Department of Commerce, illustrate the middle ground; the regional 

 councils of government depend on consensus, owing their success 

 mainly to good staff work performed at shared expense and directed at 

 problems of commonly perceived urgency. 



Manifestly, procedures for assuring support and effective manage- 

 ment of regional enterprises at the subnational level are subject to 

 varying combinations of control and consensus (other than in coun- 

 tries where even local development is centrally planned and directed). 

 However, the requirement for voluntary agreement to accomplish 

 regional undertakings in the international sphere — where there is no 

 central authorit}" — is inherent: 



. . . the differences between subnational and international regions are vast. 

 The primary distinction is that of sovereignty, of competing national interests. 

 The nations comjjrising a region need to reconcile their own interests with their 

 participation' in a joint enterprise. In addition, the Great Powers have the 

 problem of reconciling their own national interests with their bilateral relations 

 with the individual states of the region and with the region as a whole. ^^^ 



«i Ibid., p. 373. 

 <82 Ibid., p. 376. 



