While interstate compacts are essentially contracts whose provisions are limited primarily by the imaginations of their drafters, their development has, in practice, evolved along best practices. Compacts are legally binding agreements between state governments. Because these dynamic institutions change with gubernatorial administrations and legislative representation, creating an agreement that adequately manages an ongoing and complex interstate relationship is critical, and delineating the governance apparatus is one way to ensure the smooth, continued operation of the compact.

In an effort to make compacts easier to understand and to help state legislators and policymakers more effectively use interstate compacts to address multi-state policy challenges, The Council of State Governments’ National Center for Interstate Compacts has relaunched its website and one-of-a-kind compacts database. Both tools are available at www.csg.org/compacts.

The use of interstate compacts has evolved considerably throughout the course of American history. Each state belongs, on average, to 25 different agreements of the approximately 215 active interstate compacts. In the last half century, interstate compacts have become more sophisticated and are being used to create administrative agencies to solve ongoing state policy challenges.

CSG's National Center for Interstate Compacts has launched its updated database of interstate compacts.  It is the only resource of its kind on the web today.