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Reducing Unequal Representation: The Impact of Labor Unions on Legislative Responsiveness in the U.S. Congress

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dc.contributor.authorBecher, Michael
dc.contributor.authorStegmueller, Daniel
dc.contributor.funderFrench National Research Agency
dc.contributor.funderNational Research Foundation of Korea
dc.contributor.rorhttps://ror.org/02jjdwm75
dc.date.accessioned2025-01-14T12:32:54Z
dc.date.available2025-01-14T12:32:54Z
dc.date.issued2020-07-21
dc.description.abstractIt has long been recognized that economic inequality may undermine the principle of equal responsiveness that lies at the core of democratic governance. A recent wave of scholarship has highlighted an acute degree of political inequality in contemporary democracies in North America and Europe. In contrast to the view that unequal responsiveness in favor of the affluent is nearly inevitable when income inequality is high, we argue that organized labor can be an effective source of political equality. Focusing on the paradigmatic case of the U.S. House of Representatives, our novel dataset combines income-specific estimates of constituency preferences based on 223,000 survey respondents matched to roll-call votes with a measure of district-level union strength drawn from administrative records. We find that local unions significantly dampen unequal responsiveness to high incomes: a standard deviation increase in union membership increases legislative responsiveness towards the poor by about six to eight percentage points. As a result, in districts with relatively strong unions legislators are about equally responsive to rich and poor Americans. We rule out alternative explanations using flexible controls for policies, institutions, and economic structure, as well as a novel instrumental variable for unionization based on history and geography. We also show that the impact of unions operates via campaign contributions and partisan selection.
dc.description.peerreviewedyes
dc.description.statusPublished
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dc.identifier.citationBecher, M., & Stegmueller, D. (2021). Reducing unequal representation: the impact of labor unions on legislative responsiveness in the US Congress. Perspectives on Politics, 19(1), 92-109. https://doi.org/10.1017/S153759272000208X
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1017/S153759272000208X
dc.identifier.issn1541-0986
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14417/3445
dc.issue.number1
dc.journal.titlePerspectives on Politics
dc.language.isoen
dc.page.final109
dc.page.initial92
dc.page.total18
dc.publisherCambridge University Press
dc.relation.departmentComparative Politics
dc.relation.entityIE University
dc.relation.projectIDANR-17-EURE-0010
dc.relation.projectIDNRF-2017S1A3A2066657
dc.relation.schoolIE School of Politics, Economics & Global Affairs
dc.rightsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
dc.rights.accessRightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.rights.uri https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.titleReducing Unequal Representation: The Impact of Labor Unions on Legislative Responsiveness in the U.S. Congress
dc.typeinfo:eu-repo/semantics/article
dc.version.typeinfo:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion
dc.volume.number19
dspace.entity.typePublication
relation.isAuthorOfPublication64459ea7-0faa-4600-9041-a4f317ab9579
relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery64459ea7-0faa-4600-9041-a4f317ab9579
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