Interests, Institutions, and Positive Theory: The Politics of the NLRB

Studies in American Political Development

Volumn 2, Issue , 1987, Pages 236-299

  Moe, Terry M ^a  

^a STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84975960792     PISSN: 0898588X     EISSN: 14698692     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0898588X00001784     Document Type: Article

References (123)

1. For an overview of these issues and the surrounding literature, see Stephen D. Krasner, “Approaches to the State: Alternative Conceptions and Historical Dynamics,” Comparative Politics (January 1984): 223–46.
2. Theda Skocpol, “Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research,” in Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); and.
3. James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, “The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life” American Political Science Review 78 (September 1984): 734–49.
4. Among other classic pluralist works, see David B. Truman, The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1971); and.
5. Robert Dahl, Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961).
6. March and Olsen, “The New Institutionalism.”
7. George J. Stigler, “The Theory of Economic Regulation,” Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science 2 (Spring 1971): 3–21, and.
8. “Free Riders and Collective Action: An Appendix to Theories of Economic Regulation,” Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science (Autumn 1974): 359–65.
9. Sam Peltzman, “Toward a More General Theory of Regulation,” Journal of Law and Economics 19 (1976): 211–40.
10. Gary Becker, “A Theory of Competition among Pressure Groups for Political Influence,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 98 (1983): 371–400, and.
11. “Public Policies, Pressure Groups, and Deadweight Costs” Journal of Public Economics 28 (1985): 329–47.
12. For a thoughtful perspective on the positive theory of institutions, see Kenneth Shepsle, “Institutional Equilibrium and Equilibrium Institutions,” in Herbert F. Weisberg, ed., Political Science: The Science of Politics (New York: Agathon Press, 1986).
13. For a comparison of the economic theory of politics and the positive theory of institutions, see Thomas Romer and Howard Rosenthal, “Modern Political Economy and the Study of Regulation” (Paper presented at the NSF/CMU Conference on Regulation, Airlie, Va., September 12–14, 1985).
14. Seymour Scher, “Congressional Committee Members as Independent Agency Overseers,” American Political Science Review 54 (1986): 911–20.
15. See especially James Q. Wilson, The Politics of Regulation (New York: Basic Books, 1980). Wilson has been most responsible for popularizing this environmental typology, which has found its way into both the economic theory of politics and the positive theory of institutions.
16. On the politics surrounding the creation and early years of the NLRB, see James A. Gross, The Making of the National Labor Relations Board (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974).
17. Irving Berstein, The New Deal Collective Bargaining Policy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950), and.
18. Turbulent Years (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970).
19. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Politics of Upheaval (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960).
20. Christopher L. Tomlins, The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law, and the Organized Labor Movement in America, 1880–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
21. Peter H. Irons, The New Deal Lawyers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982).
22. On the politics leading up to Taft-Hartley, see especially James A. Gross, The Reshaping of the National Labor Relations Board (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981).
23. For an overview of the provisions of the Wagner and Taft-Hartley acts, as well as other aspects of the board's mandate, see Frank W. McCulloch and Tim Bornstein, The National Labor Relations Board (New York: Praeger Press, 1974).
24. Perhaps the most exhaustive account of the NLRB'S tumultuous politics in the Truman and early Eisenhower years is provided by Seymour Scher, “The National Labor Relations Board and Congress: A Study of Legislative Control of Regulatory Activity” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1956). I draw on his account here and in the remaining paragraphs of this section.
25. See J. David Greenstone, Labor in American Politics (New York: Knopf, 1969).
26. Sumner H. Slichter, “Are We Becoming a ‘Laboristic’ State?” New York Times Magazine, May 16, 1948: 11ff.
27. Sumner H. Slichter, James J. Healy, and E. Robert Livernash, The Impact of Collective Bargaining on Management (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1960).
28. David Brody, Workers in Industrial America: Essays on the Twentieth Century Struggle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).
29. On the unions' organizational decline, see, for example, Seymour Martin Lipset, ed., Unions in Transition (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1986).
30. Richard B. Freeman and James L. Medoff, What Do Unions Do? (New York: Basic Books, 1984).
31. On the transformation of labor relations within big business, see Thomas A. Kochan and Peter Capelli, “The Transformation of the Industrial Relations and Personnel Function,” in Paul Osterman, ed., Internal Labor Markets (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984).
32. Clinton S. Golden and Virginia D. Parker, Causes of Industrial Peace under Collective Bargaining (New York: Harper, 1955).
33. George Strauss, “Industrial Relations: Time of Change,” Industrial Relations 23 (Winter 1984): 1–15.
34. D. Quinn Mills, “Management Performance,” in Jack Steiber, Robert B. McKersie, and D. Quinn Mills, eds., U.S. Industrial Relations 1950–1980: A Critical Assessment (Madison, Wisc.: Industrial Relations Research Association, 1981).
35. Audrey Freeman, Managing Labor Relations (New York: The Conference Board, 1978).
36. A nice illustration of the political cleavage between big-business moderates and small-business extremists can be found in Scher, “The National Labor Relations Board and Congress.” See also Sar A. Levitan and Martha R. Cooper, Business Lobbies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984); and.
37. Mark Green and Andrew Buchsbaum, The Corporate Lobbies: Political Profiles of the Business Roundtable and the Chamber of Commerce (Washington, D.C.: Public Citizen, 1980).
38. On the logic of cooperation among self-interested actors, see Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984).
39. See Terry M. Moe, “The Politicized Presidency,” in John E. Chubb and Paul E. Peterson, The New Direction in American Politics (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1985).
40. Note that the repeated-game logic of cooperation applies to the historical emergence of these norms, just as it does to the relationship between business and labor in their struggle for influence. See Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation, for discussion of its widespread applicability to politics. The literature on appointments per se, however, is not oriented by this or any other theory. The most comprehensive overview can be found in G. Calvin Mackenzie, The Politics of Presidential Appointments (New York: Free Press, 1981).
41. See Terry M. Moe, “Control and Feedback in Economic Regulation: The Case of the NLRB,” American Political Science Review 79 (1985): 1094–1116.
42. McCulloch and Bornstein, The National Labor Relations Board; Charles D. Delorme, R. C. Hill, and Norman J. Wood, “The Determinants of Voting by the National Labor Relations Board on Unfair Labor Practice Cases: 1955–1975,” Public Choice 37 (1981): 207–18.
43. William N. Cooke and Frederick H. Gautschi III, “Political Bias in NLRB Unfair Labor Practice Decisions,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 35 (1982): 539–49.
44. Kenneth McGuiness, The New Frontier NLRB (Washington, D.C.: Labor Policy Association, 1963).
45. For accounts of NLRB personnel problems (at all levels) during the early years—along with the political problems they caused—see Gross, The Reshaping of the National Labor Relations Board, and.
46. Scher, “The National Labor Relations Board and Congress.”
47. For an account of the politics surrounding Landrum-Griffin, see Alan K. McAdams, Power and Politics in labor Legislation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964).
48. See, for example, Joseph Goulden, Meany (New York: Atheneum, 1972).
49. For accounts of these turbulent years, see, for example, Levitan and Cooper, Business Lobbies.
50. Green and Buchsbaum, The Corporate Lobbies.
51. The following is based largely on interviews and news accounts. For general treatments of Reagan's appointments strategy, see National Academy of Public Administration, Recruiting Presidential Appointees (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Public Administrations, 1985).
52. and Richard Nathan, The Administrative Presidency (New York: Wiley, 1983).
53. See, for example, Congressional Quarterly, August 28, 1982, 2113–14.
54. See, for example, Business Week, July 6, 1981, 27–28.
55. See, for example, Penn Kemble, “The New Antiunion Crusade: How Reagan's NLRB Is Subverting Industrial Democracy,” New Republic, September 1983, 18–20.
56. Business Week, June 11, 1984, 122.
57. Congressional Quarterly, December 29, 1984, 3168.
58. See, for example, Business Week, March 25, 1985, 34.
59. Quoted in Kemble, “The New Antiunion Crusade,” 20.
60. See, for example, Freeman and Medoff, What Do Unions Do?.
61. Strauss, “Industrial Relations: Time of Change”.
62. Leo Troy, “The Rise and Fall of American Trade Unions: The Labor Movement from FDR to RR,” in Lipset, Unions in Transition.
63. See, for example, Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Politics (New York: Harper & Row, 1957).
64. and Inside Bureaucracy (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1966).
65. James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962).
66. William Niskanen, Bureaucracy and Representative Government (Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, 1971).
67. Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).
68. See Same Peltzman, “Constituency Interest and Congressional Voting,” Journal of Law and Economics 27 (1984): 181–210.
69. Peltzman, “Toward a More General Theory of Regulation.”
70. Becker, “A Theory of Competition among Pressure Groups for Political Influence.”
71. For a review and critique of this literature, see Roger Noll, “Economic Perspectives on the Politics of Regulation,” in Richard Schmalensee and Robert Willig, eds., Handbook of Industrial Organization (Amsterdam: Elsevier, forthcoming).
72. See also Martha Derthick and Paul J. Quirk, The Politics of Deregulation (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1985).
73. James Q. Wilson, The Politics of Regulation.
74. Ronald Coase, “The Problem of Social Cost,” Journal of Law and Economics (1960): 1–44.
75. Coase's theorem, along with its assumption of zero transactions costs, has direct implications—never thoroughly addressed by writers in this tradition, to my knowledge—for the economic theory's perspective on political control and other aspects of institutional politics. It is also inconsistent with Olson's logic of mobilization. These issues will be considered later. For one account (somewhat different from mine) of how transactions costs figure into the economic theory, see Noll, “Economic Perspectives on the Politics of Regulation”.
76. Kenneth J. Arrow, Social Change and Individual Values, rev. ed. (New York: Wiley & Sons, 1963).
77. See Kenneth A. Shepsle, “Institutional Arrangements and Equilibrium in Multidimensional Voting Models,” American Journal of Political Science 23 (1979): 27–60.
78. Shepsle, “Institutional Equilibrium and Equilibrium Institutions”.
79. William H. Riker, “Implications from the Disequilibrium of Majority Rule for the Study of Institutions,” American Political Science Review 74 (1980): 432–47.
80. Kenneth A. Shepsle and Barry R. Weingast, “Structure-Induced Equilibrium and Legislative Choice,” Public Choice 37 (1981): 503–19.
81. In addition to the above cited works, see, for example, Arthur T. Denzau and Robert J. Mackay, “Gatekeeping and Monopoly Power of Committees: An Analysis of Sincere and Sophisticated Behavior,” American Journal of Political Science 27 (December 1985): 1117–34.
82. Barry R. Weingast and William J. Marshall, “The Industrial Organization of Congress,” Working Papers in Economics (Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1986).
83. See, for example, Randall L. Calvert, Mathew D. McCubbins, and Barry R. Weingast, “Political Control and Agency Discretion: The Fallacy of Execution” (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, August 1986).
84. Thomas H. Hammond, Jeffrey S. Hill, and Gary J. Miller, “Presidents, Congress, and the ‘Congressional Control of Administration’ Hypothesis” (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, August, 1986).
85. Robert J. Mackay and Carolyn L. Weaver, “The Power to Veto,” Working Papers in Political Science (Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1986).
86. See, for example, Barry R. Weingast and Mark J. Moran, “Bureaucratic Discretion or Congressional Control? Regulatory Policymaking by the Federal Trade Commission,” Journal of Political Economy 91 (1983): 765–800.
87. Barry R. Weingast, “The Congressional-Bureaucratic System: A Principal-Agent Perspective with Applications to the SEC,” Public Choke 44 (1984): 147–92.
88. Richard Barke and William Riker, “A Political Theory of Regulation with Some Observations on Railway Abandonments,” Public Choice 39 (1982): 73–106.
89. Mathew D. McCubbins and Thomas Schwartz, “Congressional Oversight Overlooked: Police Patrols versus Fire Alarms,” American Journal of Political Science 28 (1984): 165–79.
90. Mathew D. McCubbins, “The Legislative Design of Regulatory Structure,” American Journal of Political Science 29 (1985): 721–48.
91. Morris P. Fiorina, “Legislative Choice of Regulatory Forms: Legal Process or Administrative Process?” Public Choice 39 (1982): 33–66.
92. For an overview with applications to politics, see Terry M. Moe, “The New Economics of Organization,” American Journal of Political Science 28 (1984); 739–77.
93. See also Oliver Williamson, Economic Institutions of Capitalism (New York: Free Press, 1985).
94. Weingast and Marshall, “The Industrial Organization of Congress”.
95. There is an interesting irony at work here: the new economics of organization traces its roots to a seminal article by Coase, in which he argued that organizations arise because of—and therefore are explained by—attempts by rational actors to minimize transactions costs. See Ronald Coase, “The Nature of the Firm,” Economica 4 (1937): 386–405. Thus, the economic theory of politics and the positive theory of institutions are both grounded in classic articles by Coase—but they are different articles that proceed from diametrically opposed assumptions. His “Nature of the Firm” assumes transactions costs are substantial and uses this to explain the emergence of organizations. “The Problem of Social Cost” argues that, in a world of zero transactions costs, individuals can overcome collective action problems through market exchange. There is nothing inconsistent about the two arguments per se. The economic theory tends to adopt a “negligible transactions costs” view of the world, whereas PTI and the new economics of organization tend to embrace a “high transactions costs” view—with very different consequences, obviously, for their explanations of politics.
96. See Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation.
97. Shepsle, “Institutional Equilibrium and Equilibrium Institutions”.
98. McCubbins, “The Legislative Design of Regulatory Structures”.
99. Calvert, “The Role of Reputation and Legislative Leadership” (Mimeo, Washington University, St. Louis, 1986).
100. For a discussion of some of the issues surrounding institutional “inertia,” see Shepsle, “Institutional Equilibrium and Equilibrium Institutions”.
101. Two points should be made here. First, the all-or-nothing nature of majoritarian elections (an institutional property) and candidate strategies (which are institutionally conditioned) imply that virtually identical constituencies might elect politicians with very different support coalitions; even though both politicians might subsequently act as conduits, very different constituency interests would get reflected in their political choices. See Morris P. Fiorina, Representatives, Roll Calls, and Their Constituents (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1974). Second, because transactions costs are so high, constituents cannot achieve a high degree of control over politicians. Were politicians motivated to pursue their own policy preferences (were they ideological, for instance), they would have some flexibility to do so even in the presence of electoral constraints. PTI typically assumes, however, that politicians care only about reelection and that their policy preferences are entirely induced, so these sorts of control issues are rarely explored.
102. For early attempts to do so, see James B. Kau and Paul H. Rubin, “Self-Interest, Ideology, and Logrolling in Congressional Voting” Journal of Law and Economics 22 (1979): 365–85.
103. Joseph Kalt and Mark Zupan, “Capture and Ideology in the Economic Theory of Politics,” American Economic Review 74 (1984): 279–300.
104. For a general discussion of these issues, see Terry M. Moe, “Congressional Control of the Bureaucracy: An Assessment of the Positive Theory of ‘Congressional Dominance’,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 12 (1987): forthcoming.
105. McCubbins and Schwartz, “Congressional Oversight Overlooked.”
106. For an attempt to extend Olson's logic to issues of organization, see Terry M. Moe, The Organization of Interests (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
107. See Kalt and Zupan, “Capture and Ideology in the Economic Theory of Politics.”
108. On these issues generally, see Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation, and.
109. Weingast, “A Rational Choice Perspective on Congressional Norms,” American Journal of Political Science 23 (1979): 245–62.
110. There have been some promising moves in this direction within PTI, but they still get back to notions of direct control. McCubbins, for instance, argues that agencies are largely controlled by virtue of the structural—programmatic, organizational, procedural—constraints imposed by Congress. Once these are in place, Congress “controls” the agency without intense monitoring and all the rest. His assumption, however, is that legislators design these structural constraints for optimal control—this is their purpose. Thus, it is ultimately grounded in a model of conscious, intentional control. See McCubbins, “The Legislative Design of Regulatory Structure.” Much the same can be said of McCubbins and Schwartz, who argue that legislators have little incentive to engage in continuous oversight for control purposes (“police patrol” oversight), that their incentive instead is to intervene in response to constituency “fire alarms.” When these bells go off, however, they wield their various rewards and sanctions to whip bureaucrats back into line. Again, bureaucrats are held in check by direct efforts to control their behavior.
111. See McCubbins and Schwartz, “Congressional Oversight Overlooked”.
112. See especially Weingast and Moran, “Bureaucratic Discretion or Legislative Control?”.
113. This general perspective on professionalism and political control is widely accepted in political science and is not confined to PTI. See, for example, James Q. Wilson, The Politics of Regulation, and.
114. Francis E. Rourke, Bureaucracy, Politics, and Public Policy, 3rd ed. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1984).
115. See Weingast, “A Rational Choice Perspective on Congressional Norms.”
116. See Aaron Wildavsky, The Politics of the Budgetary Process, 3rd ed. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1979).
117. For a discussion of their relevance to PTI and its further development, see Shepsle, “Institutional Equilibrium and Equilibrium Institutions”.
118. See Romer and Rosenthal, “Modern Political Economy and the Study of Regulation”.
119. Most notably, Richard M. Cyert and James G. March, A Behavioral Theory of the Firm Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963).
120. See March and Olsen, “The New Institutionalism,” for a review.
121. See, for example, Robert Keohane, After Hegemony (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
122. R. Harrison Wagner, “The Theory of Games and the Problem of International Cooperation,” American Political Science Review 77 (1983): 330–46.
123. See, for example, Eric Nordlinger, On the Autonomy of the Democratic State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981).