Asymmetric Partisan Polarization, Labor Policy, and Cross-State Political Power-Building

Abstract

As the Republican Party has moved to the Right, conservative politicians have become more comfortable viewing policy as a means of demobilizing their political adversaries. In this article, I show how conservative activists within the Republican Party have leveraged cutbacks to union rights to weaken their political opponents. This case study thus reveals the role of policy feedback strategies in asymmetric partisan polarization. It also illustrates lessons about the conditions under which policy feedback can durably shift the distribution of power in America’s fragmented polity. These insights underscore how the success of policy feedback effects depends not just on the initial passage of policies in one city or state, but on the ability of political actors to organize in multiple venues simultaneously. In particular, they highlight the importance of organizing at the cross-state level given the substantial political authority of states.

State preemption and affordable housing policy

“…We are unable to effectively control for this possibility, particularly over the long timeframe of our analysis. Given the documented importance of the business community on preemption in other policy areas (Hertel-Fernandez, 2019), the political influence of a well-resourced, influential industry may well be large. Future research should focus on exploring the political activities of institutional housing investors.…”

“…ALEC, for example, has model legislation preempting city regulation of short-term rentals 1 and rent control, 2 while the Goldwater Institute has model legislation preempting regulation of short-term rentals. 3 Business interests' influence in state policymaking may be particularly acute in places with low legislative capacity (Hertel-Fernandez, 2019). Relevant interest groups in the affordable housing arena include the real estate lobby and the construction industry.…”

“…Powerful groups such as the firearm, alcohol and tobacco industries were key actors in state preemptions regulating their industries in the 1990s and early 2000s (Givel and Glantz, 2001; Goodman et al, 2020). Groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have been associated with general policy diffusion (Hertel-Fernandez, 2019), ideological (rather than partisan) based policy adoption (Hertel-Fernandez, 2014) and preemption adoption (Pomeranz and Pertschuk, 2017). ALEC, for example, has model legislation preempting city regulation of short-term rentals 1 and rent control, 2 while the Goldwater Institute has model legislation preempting regulation of short-term rentals.…”

The Right to Work and American Inequality

“…Yet historical studies clearly demonstrate that actors who work to pass RTW are not only interested in the mobilization and bargaining power of contemporaneous actors, but also in reshaping the labor market institutional environment, with consequences extending beyond the immediate actors and politics involved around the time of RTW passage (Dixon 2020;Gall 1988;Hertel-Fernandez 2019a, 2019bHogler 2015). Interest groups often operate for decades to achieve their policy goals, suggesting RTW consequences are not immediately tethered to specific situations or bargaining groups (Hogler 2015;Lee 2012).…”

“…Yet RTW is designed to "defang and defund" opponents of more market-oriented and business-friendly partisan and politicalinstitutional logics, thus allowing for a broader change to a state's political-economic institutional environment (Hertel-Fernandez 2019a). This goal extends beyond the mobilization of the immediate actors engaged at the time of policy passage, illustrated by historical studies showing decades-long campaigns to enact RTW (Dixon 2020;Hogler 2015;Lee 2012).…”