Raising the Cost of Control: How Local Governments Resist State Preemption

State preemption of local authority has attracted growing scholarly attention, yet less is known about how local governments successfully resist it. This study analyzes Maine's food sovereignty conflict—in which 17 municipalities resisted state preemption over six years and ultimately secured statewide legislation expanding small-scale producer-to-consumer exemptions—to develop a theoretical account of how local resistance produces outcomes. Using process tracing, the analysis reveals that local governments can prevail against state preemption when resistance raises enforcement costs high enough that states find accommodation more attractive than compliance. Institutional and political conditions shape the terrain on which this dynamic unfolds, while dispersed and uncoordinated resistance can generate cumulative pressure across civic, administrative, and legislative channels that compounds those costs over time. These findings contribute to scholarship on state-local conflict by identifying a mechanism connecting local resistance to state response and advancing a theoretical proposition about when subordinate governments can prevail.