Walker

Alexis N. Walker

Associate Professor Department of History and Political Science, Saint Martin's University
Areas of Expertise:

Connect with Alexis

(360) 438-4385

About Alexis

Walker studies how public policies shape and constrain citizens and groups’ behavior in American politics with particular concern for how policies can enhance or diminish the quality of our democracy. Her current research examines how public policies have influenced the size, composition and effectiveness of organized labor in American politics. She is also interested in the feedback effects of other policies including electoral rules and social policies.

Contributions | No Jargon Podcast | In the News | Publications

Contributions

How Congressional Lawmakers from both Parties Preempt State Power to Achieve Partisan Policy Goals

  • Mallory E. SoRelle
Key Findings Brief,

How U.S. Labor Laws Have Divided Public and Private Sector Workers and Undermined Union Clout

Basic Facts Brief,

In the News

Opinion: "Both Democrats and Republicans Care about States’ Rights - When it Suits Them," Alexis N. Walker (with Mallory E. SoRelle), The Washington Post, June 23, 2017.

Publications

"Labor's Enduring Divide: The Distinct Path of Public Sector Unions in the United States" Studies in American Political Development 28, no. 2 (2014): 175-200.

Explores how the exclusion of public sector employees from national labor law in the 1930s and 1940s altered the development trajectory of public sector unions. This exclusion delayed public sector union development preventing a large public/private union movement in the middle of twentieth century and resulting in public sector employees' more unequal, vulnerable collective bargaining rights.

"Citizenship" (with Suzanne Mettler), in The Oxford Handbook on Social Policy in the United States, edited by Daniel Beland, Christopher Howard, and Kimberley Morgan (Oxford University Press, 2014).

Provides an overview of the diverse literature exploring the relationship between social rights and citizenship, with particular attention to the ways social policies can promote or diminish inclusion, political participation, and full citizenship.

"The Historical Presidency: ‘The Fibre of which Presidents Ought to be Made’: Union Busting from Rutherford Hayes to Scott Walker" Presidential Studies Quarterly (2016): 194-207.

Examines the robust tradition dating back to the 1870s of conservative presidential hopefuls and presidents advancing and defining their careers through union busting.