IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/indrel/qt83h8q7v1.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

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

Author

Listed:
  • Anzia, Sarah F.
  • Moe, Terry M.

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 clearly have opportunities to use policies to create a future structure of politics more 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 paper, 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 great advantage of Democrats over Republicans.

Suggested Citation

  • Anzia, Sarah F. & Moe, Terry M., 2015. "Do Politicians Use Policy to Make Politics? The Case of Public Sector Labor Laws," Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series qt83h8q7v1, Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:indrel:qt83h8q7v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/83h8q7v1.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tsebelis, George, 1999. "Veto Players and Law Production in Parliamentary Democracies: An Empirical Analysis," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 93(3), pages 591-608, September.
    2. Richard B. Freeman & Casey Ichniowski, 1988. "When Public Sector Workers Unionize," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number free88-1.
    3. Gregory M. Saltzman, 1988. "Public Sector Bargaining Laws Really Matter: Evidence from Ohio and Illinois," NBER Chapters, in: When Public Sector Workers Unionize, pages 41-80, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Tomz, Michael & Wittenberg, Jason & King, Gary, 2003. "Clarify: Software for Interpreting and Presenting Statistical Results," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 8(i01).
    5. Gregory M. Saltzman, 1985. "Bargaining Laws as a Cause and Consequence of the Growth of Teacher Unionism," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 38(3), pages 335-351, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pc:p:3573-3630 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Gregory, Robert G. & Borland, Jeff, 1999. "Recent developments in public sector labor markets," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 53, pages 3573-3630, Elsevier.
    3. Feiveson, Laura, 2015. "General revenue sharing and public sector unions," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 28-45.
    4. Michael F. Lovenheim & Alexander Willén, 2019. "The Long-Run Effects of Teacher Collective Bargaining," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 292-324, August.
    5. Agustina S. Paglayan, 2019. "Public‐Sector Unions and the Size of Government," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 63(1), pages 21-36, January.
    6. Duplantis, Malcolm M. & Chandler, Timothy D. & Geske, Terry G., 1995. "The growth and impact of teachers' unions in states without collective bargaining legislation," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 167-178, June.
    7. Michael F. Lovenheim, 2009. "The Effect of Teachers' Unions on Education Production: Evidence from Union Election Certifications in Three Midwestern States," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(4), pages 525-587, October.
    8. Currie, Janet & McConnell, Sheena, 1994. "The Impact of Collective-Bargaining Legislation on Disputes in the U.S. Public Sector: No Legislation May Be the Worst Legislation," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(2), pages 519-547, October.
    9. Caroline M. Hoxby & Andrew Leigh, 2004. "Pulled Away or Pushed Out? Explaining the Decline of Teacher Aptitude in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 236-240, May.
    10. Hanne Fjelde & Desirée Nilsson, 2018. "The rise of rebel contenders," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 55(5), pages 551-565, September.
    11. Christoph Schwierz & Boris Augurzky & Axel Focke & Jürgen Wasem, 2012. "Demand, selection and patient outcomes in German acute care hospitals," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(3), pages 209-221, March.
    12. Christofides, Louis N. & Pashardes, Panos, 2002. "Self/paid-employment, public/private sector selection, and wage differentials," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(6), pages 737-762, December.
    13. Gary Goertz & Tony Hak & Jan Dul, 2013. "Ceilings and Floors," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 42(1), pages 3-40, February.
    14. Schmidt, Manfred G., 2001. "Parteien und Staatstätigkeit," Working papers of the ZeS 02/2001, University of Bremen, Centre for Social Policy Research (ZeS).
    15. Casper Hunnerup Dahl, 2014. "Parties and institutions: empirical evidence on veto players and the growth of government," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 159(3), pages 415-433, June.
    16. Lawrence F. Katz & Alan B. Krueger, 1991. "Changes in the Structure of Wages in the Public and Private Sectors," Working Papers 662, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    17. Dhammika Dharmapala & Richard H. McAdams & John Rappaport, 2019. "Collective Bargaining and Police Misconduct: Evidence from Florida," CESifo Working Paper Series 7718, CESifo.
    18. O'Rourke, Kevin H. & Sinnott, Richard, 2006. "The determinants of individual attitudes towards immigration," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 838-861, December.
    19. Ritter, Nolan & Vance, Colin, 2013. "Do fewer people mean fewer cars? Population decline and car ownership in Germany," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 74-85.
    20. Charbit, Claire & Michalun, Varinia, 2009. "E-Government Partnerships Across Levels of Government," MPRA Paper 16564, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    21. Tim R. Sass & Stephen L. Mehay, 2003. "Minority representation, election method, and policy influence," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(3), pages 323-339, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social and Behavioral Sciences;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdl:indrel:qt83h8q7v1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/irucbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.