Pub Date : 2023-10-03DOI: 10.1017/s0898588x23000044
Sidney Milkis, Katherine Rader
Abstract In the summer of 1941, the March on Washington Movement (MOWM), led by the civil rights and labor leader A. Philip Randolph, planned to march tens of thousands of African Americans on Washington, DC, to pressure President Franklin Roosevelt to abolish discrimination in the federal government and defense industries. After intensive negotiations, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, banning those forms of discrimination and creating a federal agency to oversee this work: the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC). Randolph and his allies use of pioneering pressure tactics coincided with a critical period of institutionalization of the modern presidency, ultimately resulting in executive action that significantly advanced civil rights and economic opportunity for Black Americans. Many scholars, focusing only on civil rights activists’ fraught relationship with Roosevelt and the Southern Democrats’ stubborn defense of Jim Crow in Congress and the states, have seen the highly contentious battles over the authority and policies of the FEPC as constituting a major defeat for MOWM’s state-centered civil rights strategy. Yet Randolph and his allies continued to believe that the most practical path to reform ran through the executive branch. In this article, we draw a contrast between the actions first taken by President Roosevelt with his wavering commitment to the FEPC and the stronger and more definitive actions taken by President Truman to desegregate the military and civil service, which broke open public-sector employment for African Americans. Beyond strategic considerations, the New Deal expansion of jobs in the national service and military made the modern executive an essential target of Randolph’s campaign to join the battles for civil rights with economic freedoms. Randolph’s decision to focus on employment in the rapidly expanding defense industries, federal workforce, and military thus marked a critical episode in the fight for the economic rights of Black Americans.
1941年夏天，由民权和劳工领袖菲利普·伦道夫(A. Philip Randolph)领导的“向华盛顿进军运动”(March on Washington Movement, MOWM)计划让数万名非裔美国人在华盛顿特区游行，向罗斯福总统施压，要求他废除联邦政府和国防工业中的歧视。经过激烈的谈判，罗斯福发布了第8802号行政命令，禁止这些形式的歧视，并成立了一个联邦机构来监督这项工作:公平就业实践委员会(FEPC)。伦道夫和他的盟友使用开创性的施压策略恰逢现代总统制度制度化的关键时期，最终导致行政行动大大提高了美国黑人的民权和经济机会。许多学者只关注民权活动人士与罗斯福之间令人担忧的关系，以及南方民主党人在国会和各州对吉姆·克劳的顽固辩护，他们认为，围绕FEPC的权威和政策的激烈斗争，构成了momm以州为中心的民权战略的重大失败。然而，伦道夫和他的盟友仍然认为，改革的最实际途径是通过行政部门。在这篇文章中，我们对比了罗斯福总统最初对FEPC摇摆不定的承诺所采取的行动，以及杜鲁门总统为废除军队和公务员的种族隔离而采取的更有力、更明确的行动，这一行动打破了公共部门对非裔美国人的就业。除了战略考虑之外，新政扩大了国家服务和军队的就业机会，使现代行政人员成为伦道夫加入争取公民权利和经济自由的运动的主要目标。因此，伦道夫决定将重点放在迅速扩张的国防工业、联邦劳动力和军队的就业上，这标志着美国黑人争取经济权利的一个关键时期。
{"title":"The March on Washington Movement, the Fair Employment Practices Committee, and the Long Quest for Racial Justice","authors":"Sidney Milkis, Katherine Rader","doi":"10.1017/s0898588x23000044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0898588x23000044","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the summer of 1941, the March on Washington Movement (MOWM), led by the civil rights and labor leader A. Philip Randolph, planned to march tens of thousands of African Americans on Washington, DC, to pressure President Franklin Roosevelt to abolish discrimination in the federal government and defense industries. After intensive negotiations, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, banning those forms of discrimination and creating a federal agency to oversee this work: the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC). Randolph and his allies use of pioneering pressure tactics coincided with a critical period of institutionalization of the modern presidency, ultimately resulting in executive action that significantly advanced civil rights and economic opportunity for Black Americans. Many scholars, focusing only on civil rights activists’ fraught relationship with Roosevelt and the Southern Democrats’ stubborn defense of Jim Crow in Congress and the states, have seen the highly contentious battles over the authority and policies of the FEPC as constituting a major defeat for MOWM’s state-centered civil rights strategy. Yet Randolph and his allies continued to believe that the most practical path to reform ran through the executive branch. In this article, we draw a contrast between the actions first taken by President Roosevelt with his wavering commitment to the FEPC and the stronger and more definitive actions taken by President Truman to desegregate the military and civil service, which broke open public-sector employment for African Americans. Beyond strategic considerations, the New Deal expansion of jobs in the national service and military made the modern executive an essential target of Randolph’s campaign to join the battles for civil rights with economic freedoms. Randolph’s decision to focus on employment in the rapidly expanding defense industries, federal workforce, and military thus marked a critical episode in the fight for the economic rights of Black Americans.","PeriodicalId":45195,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Political Development","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135695812","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-27DOI: 10.1017/s0898588x23000056
Kirsten Walters, Theda Skocpol
Abstract Studies of U.S. politics increasingly aim to make sense of two key trends: party polarization and Republican Party radicalization. Surprisingly, however, party divergences on immigration have been largely overlooked. Drawing on state and national political party platforms since 1980, we document the rise of attention to immigration, the polarization of substantive party positions, and the sharp GOP turn toward restrictive measures. After pinpointing the timing and relative trajectories of national and state-level agenda shifts, we explore potential drivers and establish two sets of flashpoint events worth further study: highly visible and mostly deadlocked congressional battles over immigration grand bargains, and bottom-up reverberations from the widespread 2006 immigrant rights protests and post-2008 Tea Party organizing. We find that grassroots Tea Party efforts were intervening accelerators rather than original causes of the Republican embrace of tough immigration restrictions. The article concludes by stressing the chronological layering of successive party polarizations—from 1960s divergences around civil rights, through clashes about abortion and LGBTQ rights from the late 1970s to the 1990s, and followed by immigration polarization in the 2000s. This process of layering polarizations on top of one another may have supercharged recent GOP turns toward ethnonationalism and tolerance for threats of violence.
{"title":"Immigration Clashes, Party Polarization, and Republican Radicalization: Tracking Shifts in State and National Party Platforms since 1980","authors":"Kirsten Walters, Theda Skocpol","doi":"10.1017/s0898588x23000056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0898588x23000056","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Studies of U.S. politics increasingly aim to make sense of two key trends: party polarization and Republican Party radicalization. Surprisingly, however, party divergences on immigration have been largely overlooked. Drawing on state and national political party platforms since 1980, we document the rise of attention to immigration, the polarization of substantive party positions, and the sharp GOP turn toward restrictive measures. After pinpointing the timing and relative trajectories of national and state-level agenda shifts, we explore potential drivers and establish two sets of flashpoint events worth further study: highly visible and mostly deadlocked congressional battles over immigration grand bargains, and bottom-up reverberations from the widespread 2006 immigrant rights protests and post-2008 Tea Party organizing. We find that grassroots Tea Party efforts were intervening accelerators rather than original causes of the Republican embrace of tough immigration restrictions. The article concludes by stressing the chronological layering of successive party polarizations—from 1960s divergences around civil rights, through clashes about abortion and LGBTQ rights from the late 1970s to the 1990s, and followed by immigration polarization in the 2000s. This process of layering polarizations on top of one another may have supercharged recent GOP turns toward ethnonationalism and tolerance for threats of violence.","PeriodicalId":45195,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Political Development","volume":"325 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135537830","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-07DOI: 10.1017/s0898588x23000068
{"title":"SAP volume 37 issue 2 Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0898588x23000068","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0898588x23000068","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45195,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Political Development","volume":" ","pages":"f1 - f3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47296243","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-13DOI: 10.1017/S0898588X23000032
J. Parisot
Abstract This article engages with scholars working on the history of capitalism and with scholars of American political development to form a historical materialist perspective on the creation of the American federal government. First, it returns to the debate about the state in capitalist society to develop an approach for theorizing the relations between class, capitalism, and states. Next, it addresses the position of American capitalism in the 1780s, arguing that it was still in a long transition phase. After this, it reinterprets the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in the context of the long and uneven history of American capitalist development. I argue that the U.S. Constitution created the foundations of a state that would serve capitalist interests, including capitalist slave owners, but, at the same time, provided some space for social relations of production not yet fully subordinated to the power of capitalism to coexist.
{"title":"Capitalism and the Creation of the U.S. Constitution","authors":"J. Parisot","doi":"10.1017/S0898588X23000032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X23000032","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article engages with scholars working on the history of capitalism and with scholars of American political development to form a historical materialist perspective on the creation of the American federal government. First, it returns to the debate about the state in capitalist society to develop an approach for theorizing the relations between class, capitalism, and states. Next, it addresses the position of American capitalism in the 1780s, arguing that it was still in a long transition phase. After this, it reinterprets the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in the context of the long and uneven history of American capitalist development. I argue that the U.S. Constitution created the foundations of a state that would serve capitalist interests, including capitalist slave owners, but, at the same time, provided some space for social relations of production not yet fully subordinated to the power of capitalism to coexist.","PeriodicalId":45195,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Political Development","volume":"37 1","pages":"199 - 211"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42978322","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-06DOI: 10.1017/S0898588X21000080
Laura E. Evans
Abstract U.S. national policies toward Native Americans followed a zig-zag path of change from 1889 to 1970. How do we explain policymakers’ unsteady attraction to the rights of Native Nations? I argue that in precarious circumstances, Native Americans forged interest-based political coalitions with non-Native American western rural interests. At times, this cross-racial, interest-based coalition successfully challenged the power of non-Native American eastern ideologues. These findings advance our understanding of the interplay of race and federalism. Also, these findings illustrate the unique importance of Native Nations for American political development. This article presents quantitative and qualitative analyses of a new dataset on federal Indian policy. It also reviews existing historical scholarship.
{"title":"The Strange Career of Federal Indian Policy: Rural Politics, Native Nations, and the Path Away from Assimilation","authors":"Laura E. Evans","doi":"10.1017/S0898588X21000080","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X21000080","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract U.S. national policies toward Native Americans followed a zig-zag path of change from 1889 to 1970. How do we explain policymakers’ unsteady attraction to the rights of Native Nations? I argue that in precarious circumstances, Native Americans forged interest-based political coalitions with non-Native American western rural interests. At times, this cross-racial, interest-based coalition successfully challenged the power of non-Native American eastern ideologues. These findings advance our understanding of the interplay of race and federalism. Also, these findings illustrate the unique importance of Native Nations for American political development. This article presents quantitative and qualitative analyses of a new dataset on federal Indian policy. It also reviews existing historical scholarship.","PeriodicalId":45195,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Political Development","volume":"37 1","pages":"89 - 110"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48372914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-22DOI: 10.1017/S0898588X22000281
Susanne Schwarz
Abstract The end of the Civil War brought freedom to 3.9 million formerly enslaved people. Yet, almost immediately following the war, Southern states started to incarcerate freedpeople at unprecedented rates in an effort to reinstate racial hierarchies in the post-Emancipation era. Not before long, Southern states introduced new carceral institutions, most notably the convict-lease system, under which prisoners were leased out as laborers to private contractors for the duration of their sentence. The emergence of convict leasing has often been portrayed as a programmatic attempt by the Southern whites to find an alternative to antebellum chattel slavery.1 Paying special attention to the sequencing of political events during Reconstruction, I revisit this story by highlighting the role that state capacity and public finance played in the introduction of the policy. As conviction numbers swelled after Emancipation, the carceral capacity of Southern penitentiaries was quickly overwhelmed, prompting Reconstruction legislatures and governors to search for alternatives to conventional imprisonment. I argue that convict leasing emerged from these capacity challenges as a cost-effective solution that initially enjoyed broad bipartisan support. Over time, leasing grew more profitable, both for the state governments and the lessees, and abolition efforts were stalled for decades, even when the system became increasingly abusive. Using a range of archival materials, I illustrate these carceral developments in an in-depth case study of the origins of convict leasing in Georgia.
{"title":"“The Spawn of Slavery”? Race, State Capacity, and the Development of Carceral Institutions in the Postbellum South","authors":"Susanne Schwarz","doi":"10.1017/S0898588X22000281","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X22000281","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The end of the Civil War brought freedom to 3.9 million formerly enslaved people. Yet, almost immediately following the war, Southern states started to incarcerate freedpeople at unprecedented rates in an effort to reinstate racial hierarchies in the post-Emancipation era. Not before long, Southern states introduced new carceral institutions, most notably the convict-lease system, under which prisoners were leased out as laborers to private contractors for the duration of their sentence. The emergence of convict leasing has often been portrayed as a programmatic attempt by the Southern whites to find an alternative to antebellum chattel slavery.1 Paying special attention to the sequencing of political events during Reconstruction, I revisit this story by highlighting the role that state capacity and public finance played in the introduction of the policy. As conviction numbers swelled after Emancipation, the carceral capacity of Southern penitentiaries was quickly overwhelmed, prompting Reconstruction legislatures and governors to search for alternatives to conventional imprisonment. I argue that convict leasing emerged from these capacity challenges as a cost-effective solution that initially enjoyed broad bipartisan support. Over time, leasing grew more profitable, both for the state governments and the lessees, and abolition efforts were stalled for decades, even when the system became increasingly abusive. Using a range of archival materials, I illustrate these carceral developments in an in-depth case study of the origins of convict leasing in Georgia.","PeriodicalId":45195,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Political Development","volume":"37 1","pages":"181 - 198"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43339867","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-27DOI: 10.1017/S0898588X2200027X
J. Schroedel, Melissa Rogers, Joseph Dietrich
Abstract During the 2020 election, voting by mail greatly expanded due to concerns with COVID-19. While voting by mail is relatively easy for most individuals, who have United States Postal Service (USPS) residential mail service, it is much more difficult for those with nonstandard mail service. In this article, we examine how decisions made by the USPS in the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have resulted in deeply entrenched structural inequities in the access to mail services on the Navajo Nation in Arizona when compared to rural nonreservation communities. Most (89 percent) of current Post Offices were established during the settler colonial period, during which sites were chosen primarily to advance military objectives and serve the interests of Anglo-American settlers. The resulting inequitable pattern of postal access remains, resulting in inferior mail service on the Navajo Nation and adversely impacting many aspects of life. Post Offices are fewer and farther from each other on reservation communities; there are fewer service hours; and we show in a mail experiment that letters posted on reservations are slower and less likely to arrive. This research fits within the growing body of American political development research on path-dependent processes and “spatial racism” within geography.
{"title":"Structural Racism, the USPS, and Voting by Mail On- and Off-Reservation in Arizona","authors":"J. Schroedel, Melissa Rogers, Joseph Dietrich","doi":"10.1017/S0898588X2200027X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X2200027X","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract During the 2020 election, voting by mail greatly expanded due to concerns with COVID-19. While voting by mail is relatively easy for most individuals, who have United States Postal Service (USPS) residential mail service, it is much more difficult for those with nonstandard mail service. In this article, we examine how decisions made by the USPS in the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have resulted in deeply entrenched structural inequities in the access to mail services on the Navajo Nation in Arizona when compared to rural nonreservation communities. Most (89 percent) of current Post Offices were established during the settler colonial period, during which sites were chosen primarily to advance military objectives and serve the interests of Anglo-American settlers. The resulting inequitable pattern of postal access remains, resulting in inferior mail service on the Navajo Nation and adversely impacting many aspects of life. Post Offices are fewer and farther from each other on reservation communities; there are fewer service hours; and we show in a mail experiment that letters posted on reservations are slower and less likely to arrive. This research fits within the growing body of American political development research on path-dependent processes and “spatial racism” within geography.","PeriodicalId":45195,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Political Development","volume":"37 1","pages":"111 - 126"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44818678","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-19DOI: 10.1017/S0898588X23000020
K. Rader
Abstract The exclusion of agricultural workers from the 1935 Social Security Act and Wagner Act is frequently cited as one of the significant limitations of the New Deal social and economic program. Standard explanations for this exclusion point to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's and other New Dealers’ deference to the interests of powerful Southern Democrats in Congress, particularly their opposition to civil and labor rights. However, these explanations fail to recognize the important roots of this exclusion in earlier New Deal policy debates extending beyond the influence and interests of Southern Democrats. This article focuses on important political-economic debates that emerged in debates over the 1933 industrial and agricultural policy, which ultimately resulted in the exclusion of agricultural workers. Further, these debates and resulting policy changes shed light on the challenges and opportunities for building coalitions of labor unions and racial advocacy organizations to fight for broad economic restructuring. Exploring these strains of political-economic ideas provides a more complete explanation for agricultural workers' exclusion from the New Deal economic programs.
{"title":"Delineating Agriculture and Industry: Reexamining the Exclusion of Agricultural Workers from the New Deal","authors":"K. Rader","doi":"10.1017/S0898588X23000020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X23000020","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The exclusion of agricultural workers from the 1935 Social Security Act and Wagner Act is frequently cited as one of the significant limitations of the New Deal social and economic program. Standard explanations for this exclusion point to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's and other New Dealers’ deference to the interests of powerful Southern Democrats in Congress, particularly their opposition to civil and labor rights. However, these explanations fail to recognize the important roots of this exclusion in earlier New Deal policy debates extending beyond the influence and interests of Southern Democrats. This article focuses on important political-economic debates that emerged in debates over the 1933 industrial and agricultural policy, which ultimately resulted in the exclusion of agricultural workers. Further, these debates and resulting policy changes shed light on the challenges and opportunities for building coalitions of labor unions and racial advocacy organizations to fight for broad economic restructuring. Exploring these strains of political-economic ideas provides a more complete explanation for agricultural workers' exclusion from the New Deal economic programs.","PeriodicalId":45195,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Political Development","volume":"37 1","pages":"146 - 163"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44178405","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-16DOI: 10.1017/s0898588x23000019
{"title":"SAP volume 37 issue 1 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0898588x23000019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0898588x23000019","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45195,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Political Development","volume":"37 1","pages":"f1 - f3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43248502","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-09DOI: 10.1017/S0898588X22000256
Eva Bertram
Abstract Conflicts over the employment status of Uber, Lyft, and other gig workers have made headlines in recent years. I argue that the conditions facing these workers and other independent contractors today are in many respects the result of policy decisions made seventy-five years ago, in hard-fought battles over which workers would—and which would not—be protected by New Deal social programs and labor laws for employees. In 1947–48, New Deal Democrats were poised to establish a more expansive definition of “employee,” extending eligibility to a range of workers excluded by more restrictive common law standards. The Republican-led 80th Congress thwarted the attempt to expand coverage, however, by blocking administrative initiatives, reversing court rulings, and redefining employment-based eligibility for federal labor and social protections. Their actions redirected policy on employment relations, restricting the reach of New Deal protections in the post–WWII economy and shaping the terms of subsequent conflicts over employment status in ways that have left broad power and discretion in the hands of employers.
{"title":"Whose Work Counts? Congressional Republicans and the Battle over Employment Status, 1947–48","authors":"Eva Bertram","doi":"10.1017/S0898588X22000256","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X22000256","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Conflicts over the employment status of Uber, Lyft, and other gig workers have made headlines in recent years. I argue that the conditions facing these workers and other independent contractors today are in many respects the result of policy decisions made seventy-five years ago, in hard-fought battles over which workers would—and which would not—be protected by New Deal social programs and labor laws for employees. In 1947–48, New Deal Democrats were poised to establish a more expansive definition of “employee,” extending eligibility to a range of workers excluded by more restrictive common law standards. The Republican-led 80th Congress thwarted the attempt to expand coverage, however, by blocking administrative initiatives, reversing court rulings, and redefining employment-based eligibility for federal labor and social protections. Their actions redirected policy on employment relations, restricting the reach of New Deal protections in the post–WWII economy and shaping the terms of subsequent conflicts over employment status in ways that have left broad power and discretion in the hands of employers.","PeriodicalId":45195,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Political Development","volume":"37 1","pages":"164 - 180"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49041039","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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