TY - UNPB
T1 - The Importance of Political Systems for Trade Union Membership, Coverage, and Influence: Theory and Comparative Evidence
AU - Budd, John W.
AU - Lamare, J. Ryan
PY - 2020/6/5
Y1 - 2020/6/5
N2 - Ideological connections between the state, political systems, and industrial relations have long been important. But the influence of the structural nature of a country’s political system on trade union membership, coverage, and influence has been largely overlooked. We uniquely theorize three channels through which a political system can shape unionization in the workplace independent of ideology: incentives for inclusionary governance, legislative body composition, and policy enactment. Empirically, we use multiple European data sets to test the relationship between political and employee representation using multivariate analyses across more than 25 countries. We find that increased political representativeness, measured by lower disproportionality and the presence of multiparty coalitions, is a statistically significant predictor of a greater likelihood of individual trade union membership, coverage, and influence, while competitive fragmentation, measured by greater numbers of political parties, is associated with weakened collective voice.
AB - Ideological connections between the state, political systems, and industrial relations have long been important. But the influence of the structural nature of a country’s political system on trade union membership, coverage, and influence has been largely overlooked. We uniquely theorize three channels through which a political system can shape unionization in the workplace independent of ideology: incentives for inclusionary governance, legislative body composition, and policy enactment. Empirically, we use multiple European data sets to test the relationship between political and employee representation using multivariate analyses across more than 25 countries. We find that increased political representativeness, measured by lower disproportionality and the presence of multiparty coalitions, is a statistically significant predictor of a greater likelihood of individual trade union membership, coverage, and influence, while competitive fragmentation, measured by greater numbers of political parties, is associated with weakened collective voice.
KW - labor unions
KW - disproportionality
KW - electoral systems
U2 - 10.2139/ssrn.3425452
DO - 10.2139/ssrn.3425452
M3 - Working paper
BT - The Importance of Political Systems for Trade Union Membership, Coverage, and Influence: Theory and Comparative Evidence
ER -