Speaking of elections….it’s fairly obvious that whether Democratic or Republican politicians control local, state, or federal policy-making has important implications for future outcomes on wide-ranging issues, including employment-related outcomes like labor union strength. But recent research with Ryan Lamare suggests that regardless of which party is in power, the structure of the U.S. electoral system might also shape the strength of labor unions.
In our research we look at three measures of a country’s political system: (1) disproportionality, measuring (the inverse) of representativeness as captured by the discrepancy between votes and seats received, (2) the effective number of political parties, measuring fragmentation in a political system, and (3) whether or not there is a coalitional government. France is an example with high disproportionality scores—for example, President Macron’s party has more than 50 percent of the seats in the French National Assembly even though it only received 28 percent of the votes—while Belgium is an example of a large number of parties—currently, twelve different political parties currently have seats in the Belgian Chamber of Representatives.
Using multiple European data sets at both the individual and establishment level, we generally find that countries that labor unions are stronger and have more members when a political system is more representative, less fragmented, and governed by a coalition—regardless of the ideology of the ruling party or parties.
Why might this be the case? We can’t observe specific reasons in our analyses, but we articulate several possibilities. In more representative and coalitional political systems, it is difficult for any single party to govern or have outsized influence. In such systems, then, inclusionary governance arrangements are often required to attain political power, whereas in less representative and unilateral political systems, parties can be exclusionary in their governance. Under more representative and coalitional systems, unions have greater opportunities to use their extra-parliamentary status to act as consensus-builders, thus enhancing their legitimacy and value. Moreover, because it is difficult for any single party to govern in representative and coalitional electoral systems, employers have an incentive to seek influence as a social partner rather than relying on influence within specific political parties. In other words, there is a greater incentive for employers to embrace a culture of inclusion and compromise that recognizes rather than attacks the legitimacy of labor unions. All of these mechanisms can happen when the ideology of the legislature or ruling coalition is either right- or left-leaning.
On the other hand, when there are a large number of fragmented parties, smaller extremist parties can compete for relatively outsized power, this may make creating a spirit of consensus-building and compromise difficult. Instead we expect a competitive social climate in which unions are attacked. A large number of competitive parties could also create political gridlock, reinforcing an overall culture of competition rather than inclusion.
In an earlier posting, I applied this to last year's UK election, and estimated that if the UK had proportional representation electoral rules, the chances of individual union membership would be higher by 2 to 9 percentage points than is currently the case under its highly disproportional system.
But where does the United States fit in? Numerically, the two-party system suggests a lack of competitive fragmentation, but recent experience suggests a great deal of polarization in spite of only two major parties. So labor unions become a partisan combatant in vitriolic contests rather than a consensus builder. The lack of coalition governments further denies labor unions this avenue for enhancing its legitimacy. In terms of representativeness as captured by disproportionality, the picture is cloudy. The U.S. House of Representatives typically scores favorably (that is, high proportionality / low disproportionality). In 2018, for example, the Democratic candidates garnered 53.4 percent of overall votes and ended up with 54 percent of the seats. But over the previous three elections, Republican Senate candidates received 44 percent of the vote but Republicans control 53 percent of the seats, resulting in a high disproportionality score of 8. And for the presidency, the electoral college can lead to even greater discrepancies. Unfortunately, this complicated U.S. electoral system doesn’t fit well with the European systems we analyzed in our research. But the above-average levels of disproportionality in the Senate and electoral college are consistent with the U.S. political system not being one of compromise and inclusion that our research suggests indirectly benefit the legitimacy of labor unions.
Even though it might be a stretch to our apply our results to the U.S. context, we think it’s important to continue to consider how the nature of a country’s political system may impact issues that are not typically considered, such as the legitimacy of a country’s labor movement. Some have used the 2020 presidential election as a platform for arguing the need to abandon the electoral college. Our research highlights that election rule reforms can have effects far beyond the obvious. Consequently, reforms could be even more valuable than realized...or full of unintended consequences. Only by thinking through these deeper effects can we get a better handle on this.
Source: John W. Budd and J. Ryan Lamare (forthcoming) "The Importance of Political Systems for Trade Union Membership, Coverage, and Influence: Theory and Comparative Evidence," British Journal of Industrial Relations. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12575. [free access to the pre-publication version here]
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