scholarly journals When Do Unions Matter to Social Policy? Organized Labor and Leave Legislation in US States

Social Forces ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cassandra Engeman
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Event History Analysis ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Event History ◽  
Policy Adoption ◽  
Us States ◽  
Democratic Control ◽  
Leave Policy

Abstract Trade union institutions are historically and comparatively weak in the United States, and union membership has been in steady decline over several decades. Scholars thus question the contemporary relevance of organized labor to social policy. Yet, there is considerable state-level variation in social policy and union institutional strength that remains underexamined. Focusing on variability across US states, this paper uses mixed-methods analysis to examine relationships between organized labor and parental and family leave legislation under varying political conditions. Event history analysis of state-level leave policy adoption from 1983 to 2016 shows that union institutional strength, particularly in the public sector, is positively associated with the timing of leave policy adoption. These findings are robust to the inclusion of other factors, including Democratic control of state houses, which is also shown to facilitate leave policy adoption. Comparative case studies support event history findings and illustrate how state house partisanship informs the level of government that leave advocates target for policy change. The paper concludes by suggesting further attention to subnational policies and investigation into the social movement practice of target-shifting and its effects. Ultimately, the paper demonstrates the operation of power resources at the subnational level within a liberal market national context.

scholarly journals Pandemic Politics: Timing State-Level Social Distancing Responses to COVID-19

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Adolph ◽  
Kenya Amano ◽  
Bree Bang-Jensen ◽  
Nancy Fullman ◽  
John Wilkerson
Keyword(s):  
Event History Analysis ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Event History ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Critical Window ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
History Analysis ◽  
Novel Coronavirus

Abstract Context: Social distancing is an essential but economically painful measure to flatten the curve of emergent infectious diseases. As the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 spread throughout the United States in early 2020, the federal government left to the states the difficult and consequential decisions about when to cancel events, close schools and businesses, and issue stay-at-home orders. Methods: We present an original, detailed dataset of state-level social distancing policy responses to the epidemic, then apply event history analysis to study the timing of implementation of five social distancing policies across all fifty states. Results: The most important predictor of when states adopted social distancing policies is political: All else equal, states led by Republican governors were slower to implement such policies during a critical window of early COVID-19 response. Conclusions: Continuing actions driven by partisanship, rather than public health expertise and scientific recommendations, may exact greater tolls on health and broader society.

State-Level Cyberbullying Policy

2016 ◽  
pp. 62-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramona Sue McNeal ◽  
Susan M. Kunkle ◽  
Lisa Dotterweich Bryan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Information Technology ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Government Policies ◽  
Policy Adoption ◽  
Legislative Action ◽  
Bullying Laws ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cyberbullying Policy

Cyberbullying is the use of information technology to deliberately hurt, taunt, threaten or intimidate someone. Currently, there are no federal statutes in the United States which directly address this problem. The response of the states has varied from attempting to use existing anti-bullying laws to limit cyberbullying to passing new laws that specifically target cyberbullying behavior. An important question is, “why are some states taking a lead in combating this cybercrime through new laws while others are relying on existing laws?” The literature on policy adoption suggests politics, resources and public need are important factors in predicting why certain states are more likely to enact government policies. This chapter analyzes the impact of these factors and others on policy adoption by exploring the level of legislative action to update existing cyberbullying laws for 2009 through 2014.

Varieties of Capitalist Interests: Power, Institutions, and the Regulatory Welfare State in the United States and Sweden

2004 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter A. Swenson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Industrial Societies

Current wisdom about the American welfare state's laggard status among advanced industrial societies, by attributing it to the weakness of the Left and organized labor, poses a historical puzzle. In the 1930s, the United States experienced a dramatically progressive turn in social policy-making. New Deal Democrats, dependent on financing from capitalists, passed landmark social insurance reforms without backing from a well-organized and electorally successful labor movement like those in Europe, especially Scandinavia. Sweden, by contrast, with the world's strongest Social Democratic labor movement, did not pass important social insurance legislation until the following two decades.

Policy Shaped under Pressure: Internationalization, Decentralization, and Policy Adoption of Local Governments

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 343-368
Author(s):  
Nara Park ◽  
Young Ho Eom
Keyword(s):  
Local Governments ◽  
Event History Analysis ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Government Intervention ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Event History ◽  
Policy Adoption ◽  
Local Autonomy ◽  
History Analysis ◽  
Multiple Pressures

What leads local governments to adopt a particular policy? This article examines the diffusion of internationalization ordinances enacted by Korean local governments from 1989 to 2016. Since decentralization in 1995, Korean local governments have become autonomous actors that can introduce policies of their own. Employing event history analysis, this study reveals that, in adopting internationalization ordinances, Korean local governments face multiple pressures, including central government intervention, the behavior of other local governments, and their own capacity and policy requirements. Policymaking that is directed by the central government, however, is characterized by weaker effects and a shorter lifespan. Local autonomy is key to successful local governance in a decentralized regime.

Distribution and capacity utilization in the United States: evidence from state-level data

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 240-267
Author(s):  
Luke Petach
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Distribution System ◽  
Capacity Utilization ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Coordination Failure ◽  
Wage Policy ◽  
Us States ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Strategy I

Applying previously unused regional data to the problem of wage- versus profit-led growth, this paper estimates a demand-and-distribution system for a panel of US states for the years 1974 to 2014. Using variation in minimum-wage policy across states as an instrument for the labor share, I find that – at a regional level – the United States is strongly wage-led. In the absence of a satisfactory econometric identification strategy, I estimate the distributive curve non-parametrically. The results suggest the presence of significant non-linearities, with US states exhibiting profit-squeeze dynamics at low levels of capacity utilization and wage-squeeze dynamics at high levels. These results suggest difficulties for wage-led policy akin to a coordination failure.

scholarly journals Agenda Setting, Innovation, and State Gay Rights Policy: An Event History Analysis

2004 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 241-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roddrick A. Colvin
Keyword(s):  
Diffusion Of Innovation ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Event History Analysis ◽  
Gay Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Event History ◽  
Independent Variables ◽  
History Analysis ◽  
And Diffusion

By using gay rights policy as a framework, this research attempts to link the process of agenda-setting with the diffusion of innovation across the United States both theoretically and empirically. Based on independent variables that reflect both agenda-setting and diffusion, it is hypothesized that stronger predictive models will result from linking agenda-setting to innovation. While many scholars have found state-specific variables to be the strongest predictors of gay rights policy adoption, by joining agenda-setting and innovation, this research also suggests that other variables play an important role in the adoption of such policies. These variables are: previous adoption by a state’s capital city, the party of the governor, corporate policy adoptions in the state, the diversity of the state’s population, and the size of the gay and lesbian population.

State-Level Cyberbullying Policy

2016 ◽  
pp. 59-79
Author(s):  
Ramona Sue McNeal ◽  
Susan M. Kunkle ◽  
Lisa Dotterweich Bryan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Information Technology ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Government Policies ◽  
Policy Adoption ◽  
Legislative Action ◽  
Bullying Laws ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cyberbullying Policy

Cyberbullying is the use of information technology to deliberately hurt, taunt, threaten or intimidate someone. Currently, there are no federal statutes in the United States which directly address this problem. The response of the states has varied from attempting to use existing anti-bullying laws to limit cyberbullying to passing new laws that specifically target cyberbullying behavior. An important question is, “why are some states taking a lead in combating this cybercrime through new laws while others are relying on existing laws?” The literature on policy adoption suggests politics, resources and public need are important factors in predicting why certain states are more likely to enact government policies. This chapter analyzes the impact of these factors and others on policy adoption by exploring the level of legislative action to update existing cyberbullying laws for 2009 through 2014.

Comparing Electoral Integrity within and across States

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pippa Norris
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
The South ◽  
Us States ◽  
The World ◽  
American Elections ◽  
Electoral Performance ◽  
Cross National

This chapter compares cross-national and state-level evidence from expert and mass surveys to diagnose problems in American elections. When evaluating the integrity of elections, experts rated America exceptionally poorly. Compared with all 153 countries in the survey, based on the average evaluations of both the 2012 and 2014 US elections, America scored 62 out of the 100-point PEI Index. Compared with the rest of the world, the United States ranks 52nd worldwide. Experts also evaluated the 2016 elections across all fifty US states and Washington, DC. The results show that the south remains the region of America which experts assess as having the weakest electoral performance. Democratic-controlled states usually had significantly greater electoral integrity than Republican-controlled states, across all stages except one (the declaration of the results, probably reflecting protests in several major cities following the unexpected Trump victory).

The Population Ecology of Interest Group Death: Gay and Lesbian Rights Interest Groups in the United States, 1945–98

2005 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANTHONY J. NOWNES ◽  
DANIEL LIPINSKI
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Population Ecology ◽  
Event History Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Event History ◽  
Gay And Lesbian ◽  
Advocacy Groups ◽  
History Analysis ◽  
Probability Of Death

An event-history analysis of the disbandings of nationally active gay and lesbian rights advocacy groups in the United States for the period 1945–98 is presented. Specifically, the hypothesis (which comes from population-ecology theory) is tested that the survival prospects of gay and lesbian rights interest groups are related non-monotonically to the number of groups in the population (i.e., density). The statistical analyses presented support the hypothesis: as density rises from near zero to high, the death rate first decreases but eventually increases. Several other hypotheses are also tested, and among the findings is the following: the survival prospects of gay and lesbian rights interest groups are related non-monotonically to group age – as group age increases, a group's probability of death first rises but then decreases.

Financial officers, the municipal swap industry and the rise of risky innovations among states

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnes Janssen
Keyword(s):  
Business Model ◽  
Event History Analysis ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Event History ◽  
Turn Of The Millennium ◽  
Us States ◽  
Corporate Scandals ◽  
History Analysis

Abstract At the turn of the millennium, US states started to employ debt-related derivatives. Surprisingly, the prevalence of these instruments among states peaked soon after the first corporate scandals involving such complex financial tools. Why did states embrace swaps? I build on political and sociological arguments and posit that both the industry’s and the state’s interests must be considered. The swaps industry started marketing swaps to treasurers as part of their fee-based business model and in response to declining profits, while governments welcomed swaps as they fit the treasurers’ professional agenda. I test this argument with original data on the initial swaps adoption by US states between 1989 and 2014. The event history analysis lends support for the theory. The findings complement explanations for the rise of risky instruments among states and contribute to the literature on financialization.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document