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Journal of Policy History 14.2 (2002) 204-213



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A Response to Bartholomew Sparrow

Andrew A. Workman


Bartholomew Sparrow takes exception to some aspects of my article on the origins of the National War Labor Board (NWLB). Although claiming "no great quarrel" with my argument, research, or the topic of my project, he raises two large points of criticism and follows with a number of minor objections. 1 I'll address each in turn.

Sparrow's first complaint, that we are "mostly talking past each other," arises from a misapprehension of my argument. I do not, as he states, simply "reject the resource-dependence perspective" laid out in his book. 2 Sparrow is correct to state that my argument builds upon the work of J. P. Nettl and Stephen Skowronek, but it is also constructed on the foundation of his own book and two articles by Ira Katznelson and his collaborators. 3 I characterize Sparrow's monograph as "sophisticated" and state that, together with that of Katznelson et al., it provides "a much more complex frame of analysis for understanding state-building during World War II than has hitherto been the case." 4 It was therefore not my intention to write a refutation of Sparrow's work, but rather to go beyond it to answer a set of questions I pose about wartime state-building in the sphere of industrial relations.

In defending his model, Sparrow asserts that it has the virtue of being "parsimonious," "falsifiable," and offers an adequate means both to explain the growth of the American state and to compare this process with other similar instances. 5 Sparrow's work does provide [End Page 204] an opening to explore how the mutual dependence of the state and "societal actors"--unions in this case--affects state-building. I argue, however, that although the resource-dependence perspective can explain general trends, it is too limited to provide a fully satisfying understanding of the National Defense Mediation Board's [NDMB] and NWLB's origin and institutional development. 6 My analysis follows Sparrow's in examining the role of the labor federations in the context of their interdependence with the Roosevelt administration, but looks more closely at the conflicts between and within these organizations. It weighs the importance of a number of other factors--including organized business opposition to union power; congressional politics; internal conflicts and institutional weaknesses within the administration; and the prescriptions of policy intellectuals--in shaping the state-building process. Further, my account is historical and hence sensitive to the way in which plotting and contingency shaped the eventual emergence of the NWLB. The result of this historical institutionalist analysis is not parsimonious, and I'm unsure of how effectively it can be compared to other like events. I assert, however, that it is a much more nuanced and complete account of the origins of wartime industrial relations policy than is possible with resource dependence alone. 7

A review of the points subsidiary to Sparrow's first criticism will highlight our differences as to an adequate explanation of state-building. First, and least important, he writes that our accounts overlap in several respects. Given the foregoing, this should not be unexpected. It is curious, therefore, that he should have me "recognizing," "conceding," or "admitting," common points as if reluctant to grant too much to an opponent. 8 These commonalties exist either as a result of the aforementioned, and explicitly acknowledged, building upon his argument, or because they are facts well established in the broader literature.

In his second point, Sparrow argues that his book provides a superior understanding of Roosevelt's relations with Congress. Based on his model, he expected the executive branch to "act unilaterally vis-a-vis labor" during the war rather than working through Congress. Further, Sparrow writes that my account of congressional politics is not essential to an explanation of the Roosevelt administration's behavior. 9 I disagree. During the defense era, the subject of most of my article, Roosevelt in fact had a good deal of trouble with conservatives in Congress who attempted to use...

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