Choosing Where to Fight

Choosing Where to Fight studies how organized labor decided to strategically locate its energies in national policy making. The idea that organized interests divide their efforts among different institutional settings is well known. Waltenburg, however, systematically uncovers the determinants of how labor has decided to engage in one particular policy making arena over another. He examines labor's actions between 1948 and 1987 in the National Labor Relations Board, the federal circuit courts, and Congress. Labor's choice of where to act, he argues, is an instance of rational decision making under risk. The basis of labor's expectations and preferences for one of these arenas depends on prior experiences and the presence of allies within the particular institution.