Political Science Faculty

Michael Hartney

Associate Professor

Biography

Michael Hartney joined the ֱ College political scienceֱin fall 2017. Professor Hartney’s main research and teaching interestsinclude: state and local politics, interest groups, and public policy. Hisscholarship has been published in leading academic journals such as the AmericanJournal of Political Science, the American Political Science Review,Perspectives on Politics, and Public Administration Review andhas garnered coverage in the Economist, New York Times, WashingtonPost, and Wall Street Journal.

In 2022, the University of Chicago Press published his firstbook: How Policies Make Interest Groups: Governments, Unions, and AmericanEducation. The book explains the rise of teachers unions to their currentplace of status and influence in the United States, detailing how state andlocal governments adopted policies that subsidized—and in turn strengthened—thepower of unions in education politics.

At ֱ College, Hartney teaches courses on the politicsof education, environmental policy, and US state and local politics. He is alsoa research affiliate at Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy andGovernance (PEPG), and, in 2020-21, a national fellow at Stanford University’sHoover Institution.

Prior to academia, Hartney worked as a policy analyst fortheNational Governors Association Center for Best Practices. At NGA, heprovided policy analysis togovernors on a wide range of K–12 schoolreform issues, from teacher andprincipal quality to high school redesign.Hartney holds a Ph.D. in politicalscience from the University of NotreDame and a bachelor’s degree, also inpolitical science, from VanderbiltUniversity.


Select Recent Publications

“Teachers Unions and School Board Elections: A Reassessment,”Interest Groups and Advocacy, January 2022.

“Off-Cycle and Off-Center: Election Timing and Representation in Municipal Government” with Adam Dynes and Sam Hayes,American Political Science Review, Vol. 115, No. 3 (August 2021) pp. 1097-1103.

“Off-Cycle and Out of Sync: How Election Timing Influences Political Representation,” with Sam Hayes,State Politics and Policy Quarterly, March 2021.

“Politics, Markets, and Pandemics: Public Education’s Response to Covid-19,” with Leslie Finger,Perspectives on Politics, June 2021.

“Financial Solidarity: The Future of Labor Unions in the post-Janus Era,” with Leslie Finger,Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 19, No. 1 (March 2021) pp. 19-35.

“Closures and Consequences,” with Renu Mukherjee,City Journal, December 8, 2021.

“What determined if schools reopened? How many Trump voters were in a district,” with Leslie Finger,Washington Post, November 10, 2020.

School Reopening Decisions Linked to Trump Vote Share and Catholic School Presence,” with Leslie Finger,Education Next, October 29, 2020.

“Stop Playing Politics with School Re-openings,”Newsweek, October 16, 2020.

“Teachers Unions in the post-JanusWorld,” with Daniel DiSalvo,Education Next, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Fall 2020).

“Show Who the Money? Teacher Sorting Patterns and Performance Pay across U.S. School Districts,” with Michael Jones,Public Administration Review,77(6): 919-931.

“Racial Inequality in Democratic Accountability: Evidence from Retrospective Voting in Local Elections,” with Patrick Flavin,American Journal of Political Science,61(3): 684-697.