The Politics of Public Labor
September 10, 2025
Location Not Available
Government work has doubled since 1960, both in the United States and elsewhere (Brady et al. 2020). Not only do public employees now account for a larger share of the labor force, they all but replaced private sector employees as the political leaders of contemporary trade union movements. Limited political research has assessed the impact of these changes. While economists and sociologists have developed robust research programs in the area of public employment, political scientists studying this topic are more fragmented. This short course aims to integrate the field by offering intensive feedback on participants’ working papers, as well as by stimulating discussion on how to strengthen this area in the discipline.
The short course aims to integrate scholars from diverse backgrounds, subfields, and career stages. Presenters include:
- Christopher Chambers-Ju (Assistant Professor, UT Arlington), studying the effect of teachers’ strikes on support for labor unions in Mexico
- Desmond King (Mellon Statutory Professor, Oxford), studying the relationship between race and the administrative state.
- Isabel Perera (Assistant Professor, Cornell University), studying how the political influence of public sector unions accounts for a new form of “supply-side” policy feedback
- Nicholas Toloudis (Professor, The College of New Jersey), studying how the political strategies and policy preferences of teachers’ unions change in relations to the governance structures of public education in the United States, France, and European Union
- Chas Walker (PhD Candidate, Boston University), studying the role of race in US public sector unionism
- Steven White (Associate Professor, Syracuse University) , studying the political development of police unions’ influence on US politics
- Alan Yan (PhD Candidate, UC Berkeley), studying the effect of right-to-work laws on the US partisan balance
Confirmed discussants include John Ahlquist (Associate Dean and Professor, UC San Diego), Alexander Hertel Fernandez (Associate Professor, Columbia), Mimi Lyon (Assistant Professor, Albany), and Kathleen Thelen (Ford Professor, MIT). As a short course, it also welcomes the participation of others, either as presenters or as discussants.