McGuinn Hall Room 224
Email: michael.hartney@bc.edu
ORCID
State and Local Politics and Policy, Interest Groups, Education Policy, Political Institutions
Michael Hartney joined the Boston College political science听faculty in fall 2017. Professor Hartney鈥檚 main research and teaching interests听include: state and local politics, interest groups, and public policy. His听scholarship has been published in leading academic journals such as the American听Journal of Political Science, the American Political Science Review,听Perspectives on Politics, and Public Administration Review and听has garnered coverage in the Economist, New York Times, Washington听Post, and Wall Street Journal.
In 2022, the University of Chicago Press published his first听book: How Policies Make Interest Groups: Governments, Unions, and American听Education. The book explains the rise of teachers unions to their current听place of status and influence in the United States, detailing how state and听local governments adopted policies that subsidized鈥攁nd in turn strengthened鈥攖he听power of unions in education politics.
At Boston College, Hartney teaches courses on the politics听of education, environmental policy, and US state and local politics. He is also听a research affiliate at Harvard University鈥檚 Program on Education Policy and听Governance (PEPG), and, in 2020-21, a national fellow at Stanford University鈥檚听Hoover Institution.听听
Prior to academia, Hartney worked as a policy analyst for听the听National Governors Association Center for Best Practices. At NGA, he听provided policy analysis to听governors on a wide range of K鈥12 school听reform issues, from teacher and听principal quality to high school redesign.听听Hartney holds a Ph.D. in political听science from the University of Notre听Dame and a bachelor鈥檚 degree, also in听political science, from Vanderbilt听University.
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鈥淭eachers Unions and School Board Elections: A Reassessment,鈥听Interest Groups and Advocacy, January 2022.
鈥淥ff-Cycle and Off-Center: Election Timing and Representation in Municipal Government鈥 with Adam Dynes and Sam Hayes,听American Political Science Review, Vol. 115, No. 3 (August 2021) pp. 1097-1103.
鈥淥ff-Cycle and Out of Sync: How Election Timing Influences Political Representation,鈥 with Sam Hayes,听State Politics and Policy Quarterly, March 2021.
鈥淧olitics, Markets, and Pandemics: Public Education鈥檚 Response to Covid-19,鈥 with Leslie Finger,听Perspectives on Politics, June 2021.
鈥淔inancial Solidarity: The Future of Labor Unions in the post-Janus Era,鈥 with Leslie Finger,听Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 19, No. 1 (March 2021) pp. 19-35.
鈥淐losures and Consequences,鈥 with Renu Mukherjee,听City Journal, December 8, 2021.
鈥淲hat determined if schools reopened? How many Trump voters were in a district,鈥 with Leslie Finger,听Washington Post, November 10, 2020.
School Reopening Decisions Linked to Trump Vote Share and Catholic School Presence,鈥 with Leslie Finger,听Education Next, October 29, 2020.
鈥淪top Playing Politics with School Re-openings,鈥澨Newsweek, October 16, 2020.
鈥淭eachers Unions in the post-Janus听World,鈥 with Daniel DiSalvo,听Education Next, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Fall 2020).
鈥淪how Who the Money? Teacher Sorting Patterns and Performance Pay across U.S. School Districts,鈥 with Michael Jones,听Public Administration Review,听77(6): 919-931.
鈥淩acial Inequality in Democratic Accountability: Evidence from Retrospective Voting in Local Elections,鈥 with Patrick Flavin,听American Journal of Political Science,听61(3): 684-697.