Globalization and the Politics of Pay: Policy Choices in the American States

Abstract

Globalization and the Politics of Pay: Policy Choices in the American States. By Susan B. Hansen. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2006. 248p. $24.95. During the past 50 years, U.S. trade negotiators have consistently tried to pry open global manufactured goods and services markets and to transform publicly regulated service sectors into contestable markets. Most analyses have focused on this strategy's effects on wages and work conditions in the target countries. Susan Hansen provides a detailed empirical consideration of what that strategy means back home at the level of U.S. states. The book's primary contribution is to link two research domains—state and local politics (SAL) and international political economy (IPE)—that are usually strictly segregated not only inside American political science departments but also across universities. Unfortunately, however, the author, a SAL specialist, neglects about a decade of helpful findings from the IPE literature.