Michael Hartney

Michael Hartney is the Bruni Family Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, an associate professor of political science at Boston College, and a non-resident senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He studies American politics and public policy with a focus on state and local government, interest groups, education policy, and teachers’ unions, and is the author of How Policies Make Interest Groups: Governments, Unions, and American Education.

Teachers’ Unions Remain Powerful as Membership Falls and School Politics Shift

Michael Hartney and Melissa Lyon argue that teachers’ unions remain central actors in American education, but their influence is harder to measure than collective-bargaining law alone suggests. In a Hoover Institution discussion hosted by Tom Church, they describe unions as layered national, state, and local institutions that shape spending, working conditions, strikes, COVID reopening decisions, and now debates over AI and the purpose of schools. Both see unions as durable, but increasingly defined by transparency fights, voluntary membership, and the politics of what schools are meant to do.

Hoover InstitutionJun 3, 202616 min read