Gambling on Decentralization: How Sub-National Regulatory Interests Condition the Impact of Federal Policy

Intergovernmental relations scholars note a decentralizing trend transferring authority from national to state and local government in the American federalist system. Theory suggests that a misalignment of the interests of national and regional actors may lead to variation in sub-national regulatory environments. We investigate how different sub-national regulatory environments condition the impact of Tribal gaming. Using tribal-state gaming compacts and amendments from 1990–2010, we examine how restrictions in sub-national regulatory agreements condition intended impacts of the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. We find that revenue sharing and market restrictions differentially influence the impact of gaming on tribal per capita income but not levels of unemployment. Through the case of Tribal gaming, we determine how sub-national agreements condition the relative accomplishment of policy goals important to Native nations.

Review on the online gaming industry in India

The objective of this research is to determine the status of the Indian Gaming industry in India, the platform on which it prevails the most, and the factors that affect the growth of this Industry. To get answers to my objective, I carried out a sample survey with a sample size of 40. The data was collected unbiasedly from individuals of different age groups, however, on average the majority of the Indian gaming population, comprised of youth with ages between 21 to 23 years. The study also shows that the availability of smartphones at affordable price margins as well as the uproar of a massive internet consumer base, by the availability of free internet by the use of “Jio” sim, introduced people to this new genre of entertainment and made online gaming industry a major hit.

Making Sovereignty Mean Something: Native Nations and Creative Adaptation

Scholarship regarding Native Nations has often focused on the problems of Native Nations caused by a brutal history of genocide, repression and forced assimilation. Relatively little attention has been paid to how Native Nations creatively adapt to their circumstances in a continual process of reinvention. This article provides insights into Native Nations through examples in the lower 48 states and Alaska. This study, based on 16 interviews the author conducted with Native Nations leaders in Alaska and the lower 48 states, demonstrates how Native Nations adapt to their unique circumstances to make sovereignty meaningful, because of and in spite of federal legislation that seeks to govern Nation Nations. Ultimately, I argue that many Native Nations today are purposefully modernizing by creatively adapting to their circumstances, transforming systems of governance, and leveraging economic tools, integrating their own evolving cultural practices. While modernization implies following a Western developmental path, purposeful modernization is driven by the choices of the people. While change was forced upon Native Nations in numerous, often devastating, ways since colonization, they have nevertheless asserted agency and formed governments and economic institutions that reflect and reinforce their own cultural norms. This article highlights examples of how Native Nations and the lower 48 have adapted given the very different circumstances created in part by state and federal policies such as the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) and Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA).

Gaming Opportunities: American Indian Casinos, Cash Transfers, and Income Mobility on the Reservation

We examine the impact of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act on the income rank of American Indian (AI) reservation residents. We assemble a panel dataset at the individual level for tax filers residing on AI reservations in 1989. We examine the effect of casino operations and cash distribution payments (from casino revenues) on the income-rank evolution over time. Casino operations provide an unambiguous increase in family income rank for those residing on reservations with an operating casino relative to those on reservations without a casino. The presence of an operating casino increases relative income rank by half a percentage point.

The Blood Line: Racialized Boundary Making and Citizenship among Native Nations

Blood informs a central racial ideology in the United States that has historically been used to racialize many different groups. American Indians (AIs) are the only population in the United States for whom the racial logic of blood remains codified as a means of conferring collective belonging. This article explores how AI blood quantum persists as both a race-making and nation-making instrument. I ask two research questions: How does blood quantum persist as a metric of tribal citizenship? Are tribal citizenship criteria connected to contemporary demographic, geographic, political, and economic forces? I first extend racial formation theory to describe blood quantum as a “racial project” in its use to both construct tribal identities in explicitly racial ways and determine access to political, social, and material resources. I also consider how the sovereign right of Native nations to confer tribal citizenship is evident in the observed variation among citizenship rules. Using data from more than 80 percent of AI Native nations in the contiguous United States, I employ a multinomial regression model to evaluate tribal citizenship variation. I have two central findings: (1) although tribal citizenship criteria are starting to depart from the racializing policies of the settler-colonial state, blood quantum thresholds remain particularly durable; and (2) variation in tribal citizenship criteria is meaningful by geographic region, tribal governance status, and Indian gaming. Against a backdrop of growing racial diversity in the United States, I discuss implications of the blood line on tribal citizenship boundaries and tribal sovereignty.

Indian Gaming

Indian gaming, also called Native American casino gaming or tribal gaming, is tribal government gaming. It is government gaming built on sovereignty and consequently is a corollary to state gambling such as lotteries rather than a corollary to corporate gaming. While the types of games offered in casinos might differ in format from ancestral indigenous games, gaming itself is a cultural tradition in many tribes, including those who operate casino gambling. Native American casino gaming is a $33.7 billion industry operated by nearly 250 distinct tribes in twenty-nine states in the United States. The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) of 1988 provides the framework for tribal gaming and the most important case law in Indian gaming remains Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Butterworth, in the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the US Supreme Court decision over California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians.