America’s decentralized governing system was exposed badly by the worldwide Covid-19Covid-19 pandemic. Beforehand it was quite well advanced in medical research to initiate control, but it fared in preventing the broad spread of the disease. Greater partisanship, at elections and in governing, makes co-operation in pursuit of even widely desired public outcomes more difficult—and not just in this policy area. Complexity and partisanship, together with different rankings of priorities, all make governing America still more likely to fail in various ways. Other federations, including Australia and CanadaCanada, usually have more flexible arrangements so that institutional rivalries do not preclude optimal policy outcomes. Over time the situation has become worse in the United States, because it lacks some of the flexibility that alternative constitutional arrangements provide.