PIPE Workshop: Vlad Kogan (Ohio State U)

Traditional theories of democracy posit that elected officials (the principals) seek to control appointed bureaucrats (the agents) to ensure oversight and accountability. In a seminal article published nearly two decades ago, however, Terry Moe (2006) argued that these models get the causal arrow backwards: “In democratic systems, the political authorities are elected—and this simple fact means that even the most ordinary bureaucrats, by taking collective action in elections and other realms of politics, may be able to exercise political power in determining who their bosses are and what choices the latter will make in office.”

Our study combines nearly two decades of Ohio administrative data—tracking every person employed in the state’s public schools during this period—with detailed individual-level records of validated election turnout. We confirm two of Moe’s original findings: that teachers participate in local school board elections at much higher rates than the average voter, and that they are especially likely to vote when employed by the same school district in which they live. We also show that similar pattern hold for other household members who live with school employees but, strikingly, not for teachers who work in charter schools, which are publicly funded but not governed through elections.

In addition, by leveraging differences in the precise timing of job transitions, we show that increased political participation reflects, at least in part, causal effects of public-sector employment rather than merely selection into such jobs. Despite sizeable individual-level turnout differences, we nevertheless confirm that public school employees represent a vanishingly small share of voters—even in very low-turnout, off-cycle elections—and find no evidence that election timing dramatically moderates the political influence of these employees or explains the overwhelming success of teachers’ union–endorsed candidates in such elections.

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