In the United States the Reagan Administration has proposed a number of policy initiatives which have the effect of decentralizing governmental services. The services, until recently, had increasingly become the responsibility of the federal (i.e., centralized) government. This paper inquires as to the possible effects of such decentralization tendencies. Drawing upon approaches advocated by the policy sciences and futures studies, the analysis weighs goals, trends, and conditions to propose a set of projections and policies.