Roundtable on Alexander Hertel-Fernandez's "State Capture"

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

This “Author Meets Critics” panel will focus on Alexander Hertel-Fernandez’s new book, entitled “State Capture: How Conservative Activists, Big Businesses, and Wealthy Donors Reshaped the American States—and the Nation” (Oxford University Press, January 2019).

Over the past forty years, conservatives have mastered the art of pursuing policy change across the states, while similar liberal efforts have floundered. Since 2010 in the United States, the Republican Party began their ascendancy in state-level elections, and by 2016 had solidified their dominance. The party now fully controls 26 state legislatures and governorships—one of the largest advantages either party has had since the New Deal.

In State Capture, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez uses a diverse array of original evidence, including interviews, previously-unexamined archival records, and new surveys to explain why and how conservatives developed cross-state political clout while progressives did not. As Hertel-Fernandez shows, this occurrence is the result of a right-leaning “troika” of powerful interest groups: the Koch Brothers-run Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and the State Policy Network (SPN).

Hertel-Fernandez follows the histories of each group across their victories but also their missteps—and where liberals went wrong in trying to counter the trio over the years. In so doing, the book sheds light on broader themes in American political development and helps us to better understand longstanding issues about how businesses and wealthy donors shape policy and politics. But it is about more than this. It also teases out how conservative-corporate mobilization has fostered epochal shifts in the American political economy: the decline of unions, party polarization, and the skyrocketing concentration of income and wealth.

A timely and accessible book that tackles important long-term shifts in American politics, State Capture is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the intersection between private power and democracy. The research on which State Capture is based received the 2017 Harold D. Lasswell Prize for best dissertation in the field of public policy from the American Political Science Association.

The panel will bring together a diverse group of well-regarded scholars to engage the substantive themes of the book with an eye towards connecting those themes to a larger discussion about new frontiers in research on political parties, lobbying, federalism, and representation in an era of increasing inequalities of income and wealth.

The following scholars will participate:

Author: Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Assistant Professor of Public Affairs, Columbia University 

Chair: Steve Teles, Professor of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University

Presenters 

Sarah Anzia, Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, UC-Berkeley
Kathleen Bawn, Professor of Political Science, UCLA
Matt Grossmann, Associate Professor, Michigan State University
Paul Pierson, Professor of Political Science, UC-Berkeley

The presenters represent a group of leading scholars on the issues raised by State Capture, including labor and state politics (Anzia), interest groups and political parties (Bawn and Grossmann), and inequality, interest groups, and business power (Pierson). Together with the chair (Teles), an expert on the study of conservative political mobilization, the five participants are sure to cultivate a wide-ranging and topical discussion about the contributions of State Capture specifically and the broader themes it raises for the discipline and for understanding public policy and American politics. This should be a well-attended panel that adds significant value to the annual meeting.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 55: Class and Inequality

Chair

• Steven M. Teles

Presenters

• Alexander Warren Hertel-Fernandez Columbia University

• Sarah F. Anzia University of California, Berkeley

• Kathleen Bawn University of California, Los Angeles

• Matt Grossmann Michigan State University

• Paul Pierson University of California, Berkeley