Doctoral Dissertation Research: Explaining the Mechanisms of Collective Bargaining Legislative Outcomes at the State-Level

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SES-1602606Larry IsaacAnna JacobsVanderbilt UniversityOne manifestation of class contention today is the revival in advocacy for Right-to-Work (RTW) legislation in the last decade. In 2014 alone, there were 60 proposed RTW bills in 27 states, and the passage of RTW laws in Michigan (2012) and Wisconsin (2014) has led many to question how regressive labor laws could be passed in heavily unionized states. Ultimately the question being asked is embedded in the larger question of who or what influences the policies enacted by the state? Within the field of sociology, there are four distinct theories that attempt to answer this general question: (1) pluralism, (2) elite theory, (3) instrumentalist-Marxism, and (4) state-centered institutionalism. The increasingly heated battle between labor and business interests in state legislatures provides a perfect case for testing the relative merit of four dominant sociological theories of power. The purpose of this dissertation is to answer the following questions: (1) What factors account for the variation in state legislators? actions? (2) What factors account for the fate of proposed collective bargaining bills in state legislatures? This study examines the proposal and passage of all state-level collective bargaining bills during the 2011-2012 legislative session. The analysis combines five unique datasets. The first dataset consists of data on every bill related to collective bargaining proposed among all state legislatures in the 2011-2012 legislative session (N=2,068). The second has data on the financial contributions to state-level elections in 2008 and 2010. The third has information on state and constituent characteristics from the 2010 census. The fourth contains data on state level institutional differences, such as differences in rules about vetoing, majority rule, and committee appointment procedures. The fifth dataset will collect publicly available data on the corporate business ties of all state legislators in 2012. These data will be used to study two outcomes: First, by using each legislator as a unit of analysis, the investigator plans to explain variation in legislators? bill proposals. Second, by using each proposed bill as the unit of analysis, generalized ordered logistic regression models will predict the outcome of each bill: (1) proposed, (2) failed in first chamber, (2) failed in second chamber, (3) vetoed, or (4) passed into legislation. Both analyses will analyze all four theoretical models.