We examine how general and specific beliefs about unions influence the union-voting intentions of professional employees. Previous research, mainly on nonprofessionals, has found that both beliefs are significant in predicting voting behavior, but that specific beliefs have the stronger effect. Using a structural equation model, we found a causal relationship between general and specific beliefs, and that the total effect of general beliefs is nearly three times as strong as that of specific beliefs.T         "  "  "   "    , and how such beliefs influence the voting intentions of professional employees. General beliefs concern impressions about labor unions in a very broad sense-for example, the benefits of a free labor movement in a democratic society or the market imperfections brought about through collective bargaining. Specific beliefs are micro level: What will I gain if my workplace becomes unionized? Previous research has found that both types of beliefs are important in predicting how an individual will vote in a union election, but with specific beliefs having the stronger effect (Fiorito, Gallagher and Greer 1986;Wheeler and McClendon 1991).While previous research has recognized the importance of both general and specific beliefs, most researchers have not examined the possibility of a causal relationship between the two types of beliefs. A few studies have * The authors' affiliations are, respectively,

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This article analyses the linkage between trade unions and the US Democratic Party and the UK Labour Party in the twentieth century. A typology suited to longitudinal analysis of labour movement union-party linkages is proposed to help characterise and explain historical development of these two national movements through earlier types of linkage, into 'New Labour' and 'New Democratic' forms. The paper suggests that, from similar starting points, differences through time in the range of types of linkage in the two movements can be explained by a combination of factors of political economy and electoral strategy, a combination that today points towards weaker relationships.The struggle of working people for control over the immediate rules under which they are obliged to sell their labour, and their wider struggle to obtain some degree of influence over the government policies to which they and their employers are subject, is as old and as ubiquitous as capitalism itself, indeed older. What is less general, but still remarkably common in long-established industrial societies, is the centrality to both those struggles of the linkage between what are often rhetorically referred to as the 'two wings of the labour movement': the linkage, that is, between major trade unions and the main political party appealing to the working class. On occasions that linkage has been one between revolutionary parties and

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The facts presented in this study and the observations and viewpoints expressed are the sole responsibility of the authors. They do not necessarily represent positions of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.