Thin Blue Advantage: Police Exceptionalism and the Two-Tier System of Public Sector Collective Bargaining

This site is intended to provide a companion to my article, The Thin Blue Advantage. That article, which is available on SSRN, explores whether the state-based rules of public union bargaining are different for police unions than for every other type of public employee organization and whether that difference could this explain the outsized power of those unions. Based on a sample of 29 states and a review of nearly 5,000 state administrative decisions, the article concludes that in the United States there is a two-tiered system of public sector bargaining. This website provides state-by-state detail for readers who want to dig deeper into a particular state system. The fact that some states are not included in the 29-state sample means that those states did offer sufficient information to compare the treatment of police and non-police unions. However, over time, this site will be expanded to include basic information about all 50 states.

The Thin Blue Advantage is not yet published, and accordingly, this website is still not fully complete. It is publicly accessible now because the information contained here may be useful to state-based advocates and policymakers.