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

It 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 co...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Becher, Michael, Stegmueller, Daniel
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2020
País:España
Institución:IE
Repositorio:Repositorio IE
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.ie.edu:20.500.14417/3445
Acceso en línea:https://doi.org/10.1017/S153759272000208X
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14417/3445
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:59 Ciencia Política::5904 Instituciones políticas
ODS 10 - Reducción de las desigualdades
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spelling Reducing Unequal Representation: The Impact of Labor Unions on Legislative Responsiveness in the U.S. CongressBecher, MichaelStegmueller, Daniel59 Ciencia Política::5904 Instituciones políticasODS 10 - Reducción de las desigualdadesIt 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.yesPublishedCambridge University PressFrench National Research AgencyNational Research Foundation of Koreahttps://ror.org/02jjdwm75202520252020info:eu-repo/semantics/articleapplication/pdfapplication/pdfhttps://doi.org/10.1017/S153759272000208Xhttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14417/3445reponame:Repositorio IEinstname:IEInglésIE School of Politics, Economics & Global AffairsANR-17-EURE-0010NRF-2017S1A3A2066657IE UniversityComparative PoliticsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessoai:repositorio.ie.edu:20.500.14417/34452026-06-15T12:40:57Z
dc.title.none.fl_str_mv Reducing Unequal Representation: The Impact of Labor Unions on Legislative Responsiveness in the U.S. Congress
title Reducing Unequal Representation: The Impact of Labor Unions on Legislative Responsiveness in the U.S. Congress
spellingShingle Reducing Unequal Representation: The Impact of Labor Unions on Legislative Responsiveness in the U.S. Congress
Becher, Michael
59 Ciencia Política::5904 Instituciones políticas
ODS 10 - Reducción de las desigualdades
title_short Reducing Unequal Representation: The Impact of Labor Unions on Legislative Responsiveness in the U.S. Congress
title_full Reducing Unequal Representation: The Impact of Labor Unions on Legislative Responsiveness in the U.S. Congress
title_fullStr Reducing Unequal Representation: The Impact of Labor Unions on Legislative Responsiveness in the U.S. Congress
title_full_unstemmed Reducing Unequal Representation: The Impact of Labor Unions on Legislative Responsiveness in the U.S. Congress
title_sort Reducing Unequal Representation: The Impact of Labor Unions on Legislative Responsiveness in the U.S. Congress
dc.creator.none.fl_str_mv Becher, Michael
Stegmueller, Daniel
author Becher, Michael
author_facet Becher, Michael
Stegmueller, Daniel
author_role author
author2 Stegmueller, Daniel
author2_role author
dc.contributor.none.fl_str_mv French National Research Agency
National Research Foundation of Korea
https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
dc.subject.none.fl_str_mv 59 Ciencia Política::5904 Instituciones políticas
ODS 10 - Reducción de las desigualdades
topic 59 Ciencia Política::5904 Instituciones políticas
ODS 10 - Reducción de las desigualdades
description It 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.
publishDate 2020
dc.date.none.fl_str_mv 2020
2025
2025
dc.type.none.fl_str_mv info:eu-repo/semantics/article
format article
dc.identifier.none.fl_str_mv https://doi.org/10.1017/S153759272000208X
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14417/3445
url https://doi.org/10.1017/S153759272000208X
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14417/3445
dc.language.none.fl_str_mv Inglés
language_invalid_str_mv Inglés
dc.relation.none.fl_str_mv IE School of Politics, Economics & Global Affairs
ANR-17-EURE-0010
NRF-2017S1A3A2066657
IE University
Comparative Politics
dc.rights.none.fl_str_mv Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
rights_invalid_str_mv Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
eu_rights_str_mv openAccess
dc.format.none.fl_str_mv application/pdf
application/pdf
dc.publisher.none.fl_str_mv Cambridge University Press
publisher.none.fl_str_mv Cambridge University Press
dc.source.none.fl_str_mv reponame:Repositorio IE
instname:IE
instname_str IE
reponame_str Repositorio IE
collection Repositorio IE
repository.name.fl_str_mv
repository.mail.fl_str_mv
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