Publication: Local Union Organization and Law Making in the US Congress
Loading...
Date
2018-04
Authors
Advisor
Court
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The University of Chicago Press
Defense Date
Metrics
Citation
Abstract
The political power of labor unions is a contentious issue in the social sciences. Departing from the dominant focus on membership size, we argue that unions’ influence on national law making is based to an important degree on their local organization. We delineate the novel hypothesis that the horizontal concentration of union members within electoral districts matters. To test it, we draw on administrative records and map the membership size and concentration of local unions to districts of the US House of Representatives, 2003–12. We find that, controlling for membership size, representatives from districts with less concentrated unions have more liberal voting records than their peers. This concentration effect survives numerous district controls and relaxing OLS assumptions. While surprising for several theoretical perspectives, it is consistent with theories based on social incentives. These results have implications for our broader understanding of political representation and the role of groups in democratic politics.
Unesco subjects
License
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
School
IE School of Politics, Economics & Global Affairs
Center
Keywords
Citation
Becher, M., Stegmueller, D., & Käppner, K. (2018). Local union organization and law making in the US congress. The Journal of Politics, 80(2), 539-554. https://doi.org/10.1086/694546