Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c47g7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-17T20:22:40.260Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Do Politicians Use Policy to Make Politics? The Case of Public-Sector Labor Laws

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 December 2016

SARAH F. ANZIA  and
TERRY M. MOE
SARAH F. ANZIA*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
TERRY M. MOE*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
*
Sarah F. Anzia is Assistant Professor, Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, 2607 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94720 (sanzia@berkeley.edu).
Terry M. Moe is Professor, Department of Political Science, Stanford University, 616 Serra Street, Encina Hall West, Room 100, Stanford, CA 94305–6044 (tmoe@stanford.edu).
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Schattschneider's insight that “policies make politics” has played an influential role in the modern study of political institutions and public policy. Yet if policies do indeed make politics, rational politicians have opportunities to use policies to structure future politics to their own advantage—and this strategic dimension has gone almost entirely unexplored. Do politicians actually use policies to make politics? Under what conditions? In this article, we develop a theoretical argument about what can be expected from strategic politicians, and we carry out an empirical analysis on a policy development that is particularly instructive: the adoption of public-sector collective bargaining laws by the states during the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s—laws that fueled the rise of public-sector unions, and “made politics” to the advantage of Democrats over Republicans.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 110 , Issue 4 , November 2016 , pp. 763 - 777
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Aldrich, John H., and Rohde, David W.. 2001. “The Logic of Conditional Party Government: Revisiting the Electoral Connection,” Congress Reconsidered, 7th edition, eds. Lawrence, C. Dodd and Oppenheimer, Bruce I.. Washington, DC: CQ Press.Google Scholar
Alexander, Herbert. 1971. Financing the 1968 Election. Lexington, MA: Heath Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Anzia, Sarah F. 2014. Timing and Turnout: How Off-Cycle Elections Favor Organized Groups. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Anzia, Sarah F., and Moe, Terry M.. 2015. “Public Sector Unions and the Costs of Government.” Journal of Politics 77 (1): 114–27.Google Scholar
Arnold, R. Douglas. 1990. The Logic of Congressional Action. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Battista, Andrew. 2008. The Revival of Labor Liberalism. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Bawn, Kathleen, Cohen, Martin, Karol, David, Masket, Seth, Noel, Hans, and Zaller, John. 2012. “A Theory of Political Parties: Groups, Policy Demands and Nominations in American Politics.” Perspectives on Politics 10 (3): 571–97.Google Scholar
Campbell, Andrea Louise. 2003. How Policies Make Citizens: Senior Political Activism and the American Welfare State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, Marty, Karol, David, Noel, Hans, and Zaller, John. 2008. The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cox, Gary W., and McCubbins, Mathew D.. 1993. Legislative Leviathan: Party Government in the House. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Cox, Gary W., and McCubbins, Mathew D.. 2005. Setting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the U.S. House of Representatives. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dark, Taylor. 1999. The Unions and the Democrats: An Enduring Alliance. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
DiSalvo, Daniel. 2015. Government against Itself: Public Union Power and Its Consequences. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Flavin, Patrick, and Hartney, Michael. 2015. “When Government Subsidizes its Own: Collective Bargaining Laws as Agents of Political Mobilization.” American Journal of Political Science 59 (4): 896–911.Google Scholar
Freeman, Richard B. 1986. “Unionism Comes to the Public Sector.” Journal of Economic Literature 24 (1): 41–86.Google Scholar
Goldfield, Michael. 1989–90. “Public Sector Union Growth and Public Policy.” Policy Studies Journal 18 (2): 404–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenstone, J. David. 1969. Labor in American Politics. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Gurciullo, Brianna. 2015. “Scott Walker's Labor Plan Aims at Major Democratic Fundraising Source.” Center for Responsive Politics, http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2015/09/scott-walkers-labor-plan-aims-at-major-democratic-fundraising-source/.Google Scholar
Hacker, Jacob S., and Pierson, Paul. 2014. “After the ‘Master Theory’: Downs, Schattschneider, and the Rebirth of Policy-Focused Analysis.” Perspectives on Politics 12 (3): 643–62.Google Scholar
Heard, Alexander. 1960. The Costs of Democracy. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Howard, Christopher. 1997. The Hidden Welfare State: Tax Expenditures and Social Policy in the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Jenkins, Jeffrey A., and Monroe, Nathan W.. 2012. “Buying Negative Agenda Control in the U.S. House.” American Journal of Political Science 56 (4): 897–912.Google Scholar
Klarner, Carl. 2013. “Other Scholars’ Competitiveness Measures,” http://hdl.handle.net/1902.1/22519 UNF:5:we2ixYigyI3G VaDGKsU58A== Harvard Dataverse Network [Distributor] V1 [Version].Google Scholar
MacKenzie, G. Calvin, and Weisbrot, Robert. 2008. The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s. New York: The Penguin Press.Google Scholar
Mayhew, David R. 1974. Congress: The Electoral Connection. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
McCartin, Joseph A. 2006. “Bringing the State's Workers In: Time to Rectify an Imbalanced US Labor Historiography.” Labor History 47 (1): 73–94.Google Scholar
McCartin, Joseph A. 2008. “‘A Wagner Act for Public Employees’: Labor's Deferred Dream and the Rise of Conservatism, 1970-1976.” Journal of American History 95 (1): 123–48.Google Scholar
Mettler, Suzanne, and Soss, Joe. 2004. “The Consequences of Public Policy for Democratic Citizenship: Bridging Policy Studies and Mass Politics.” Perspectives on Politics 2 (1): 55–73.Google Scholar
Moe, Terry M. 2006. “Political Control and the Power of the Agent.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 22 (1): 1–29.Google Scholar
Moe, Terry M. 2011. Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America's Public Schools. Washington, DC: Brookings.Google Scholar
Murphy, Marjorie. 1990. Blackboard Unions: The AFT & the NEA, 1900-1980. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Oberlander, Jonathan, and Weaver, R. Kent. 2015. “Unraveling from Within? The Affordable Care Act and Self-Undermining Policy Feedbacks.” The Forum 13 (1): 37–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patashnik, Eric M. 2008. Reforms at Risk: What Happens After Major Policy Changes Are Enacted. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Patashnik, Eric M., and Zelizer, Julian E.. 2013. “The Struggle to Remake Politics: Liberal Reform and the Limits of Policy Feedback in the Contemporary American State.” Perspectives on Politics 11 (4): 1071–87.Google Scholar
Pierson, Paul. 1993. “When Effect Becomes Cause: Policy Feedback and Political Change.” World Politics 45 (4): 595–628.Google Scholar
Pierson, Paul. 2004. Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Rohde, David W. 1991. Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saltzman, Gregory M. 1985. “Bargaining Laws as a Cause and Consequence of the Growth of Teacher Unionism.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 38 (3): 335–51.Google Scholar
Saltzman, Gregory M. 1988. “Public Sector Bargaining Laws Really Matter: Evidence from Ohio and Illinois.” In When Public Sector Workers Unionize, eds. Richard, B. Freeman and Ichniowski, Casey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Schattschneider, E.E. 1935. Politics, Pressure, and the Tariff. New York: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Schlozman, Kay Lehman, Verba, Sidney, and Brady, Henry. 2012. The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Shafer, Byron. 2003. The Two Majorities and the Puzzle of Modern American Politics. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Shaffer, Robert. 2002. “Where Are the Organized Public Employees? The Absence of Public Employee Unionism from U.S. History Textbooks, and Why It Matters.” Labor History 43 (3): 315–34.Google Scholar
Shor, Boris, and McCarty, Nolan. 2011. “The Ideological Mapping of American Legislatures.” American Political Science Review 105 (3): 530–51.Google Scholar
Slater, Joseph E. 2004. Public Workers: Government Employee Unions, the Law, and the State, 1900-1962. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Walker, Alexis N. 2014. “Labor's Enduring Divide: The Distinct Path of Public Sector Unions in the United States.” Studies in American Political Development 28 (2): 175–200.Google Scholar
Weingast, Barry, and Marshall, William J.. 1988. “The Industrial Organization of Congress; or, Why Legislatures, Like Firms, Are Not Organized As Markets.” Journal of Political Economy 96 (1): 132–63.Google Scholar
Wilson, Graham K. 1979. Unions in American National Politics. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Zieger, Robert H. 1986. American Workers, American Unions: 1920-1985. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Anzia and Moe supplementary material

Anzia and Moe supplementary material 1

Download Anzia and Moe supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 182.7 KB