Most of the work of administering federal programs is done not directly by federal agencies but by their partners — state and local governments, private nonprofit organizations, and for-profit contractors. The Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, Medicaid, No Child Left Behind, OSHA, and Homeland Security, to name just a few, are all run by partnerships, frequently specified in legislation. The non-federal or non-governmental partners do everything federal employees might do, frequently with attitudes and interests very different from those of the federal agencies. Indeed, capturing those different approaches to policy and implementation can create value in the federal program, as where program administration is devolved to governments (including private organizations such as accrediting organizations) that may have more information about relevant conditions and preferences and in addition be able to mediate between the federal government and the affected interests. For our purposes, “operational federalism” includes arrangements that make the operations of federal programs heavily dependent on outsourcing to private companies, prominent examples being military procurement and Medicare. Although the entities involved in operational federalism are all the products of the constitutional design of the United States, the ways in which they collaborate to produce actual governance is analyzed neither in constitutional theory nor conventional political theory. This operational federalism constitutes the actual government of the nation, however, and is the product of legal arrangements specified in statute and stylized contracting practices. This course will explore the legal frameworks for various types of programs that create operational federalism, with an eye toward drawing out their implications for the distribution of the practical power to govern.