State Structures and Social Movement Strategies: The Shaping of Farm Labor Protections in California

Miriam J. Wells and Don Villarejo
Additional contact information
Miriam J. Wells: Department of Human and Community Development, University of California, Davismjwells@ucdavis.edu
Don Villarejo: California Institute for Rural Studiesdonfarm@pacbell.net

Politics & Society, 2004, vol. 32, issue 3, 291-326

Abstract: This article aims to explain the declining efficacy of California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Act over the past quarter century. It argues that the origins, terms, and outcomes of the Act emerged from an interplay between state and society: between the capacity of the state to initiate and implement social reform policy and the capacities of key social classes to tilt outcomes to their benefit. In contrast to both “state-centered†and “society-centered†views of the relationship among social classes, state structures, and public policies, an historical-institutional theoretical frame reveals that social forces and political institutions are reciprocally constitutive, and that policy outcomes emerge from their interaction. Whereas labor union decline and policy failure are usually attributed to shifts in the political climate, in this case shifts in class leverage effected by the strategic choices of the farm labor union movement were at certain points more influential.

Keywords: Agricultural Labor Relations Act; United Farm Workers; social movements; labor-protective legislation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0032329204267296 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:polsoc:v:32:y:2004:i:3:p:291-326

DOI: 10.1177/0032329204267296

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Politics & Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().