What explains the variance in how authoritarian regimes treat labor? We advance a theory of why and how some dictatorships coopt workers using nominally democratic institutions, such as legislatures and political parties. When dictatorships need cooperation from society and face a potentially strong opposition, they attempt to coopt workers to reinforce their bases of support. As instruments of cooptation, legislatures and parties are useful in facilitating a political exchange between regimes and labor: dictatorships provide material benefits to workers in exchange for labor's quiescence. As a result, institutionalized dictatorships provide more benefits to workers and experience lower levels of labor protest than their noninstitutionalized counterparts. We find empirical support for these hypotheses from a sample of all dictatorships from the 1946-96 period

Objectives. This article analyzes the causal relationship between political regime dynamics and social insurance expansion. I theorize that the social insurance expansion is the result of the ruling elites' strategic decision about regime change to dispel revolutionary motives. The key testable implication is that social insurance expansion is more likely to happen under a democratic regime, which, in turn, is influenced by the threat of social revolution evinced by strike activities. Methods. Using historical data on social insurance coverage from 12 European countries from 1880 to 1945, I test the hypothesis employing a treatment-effects model that endogenizes democratization. Results. I find a positive association between social insurance expansion and democracy, controlling for other political mechanisms. Furthermore, I find that democratic transition is greatly influenced by the duration and intensity of strikes. Conclusion. This study suggests that social insurance expansion requires a link between a threat of revolution and democratization.

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This article tests the relationship between the ratification of International Labour Organization (ILO) Conventions and the provision of unemployment benefits. Statistical tests focus on two related issues: why countries ratify ILO Conventions on unemployment benefits, and whether ratification influences government spending on unemployment benefits. The main findings are that democracy, region, income, and globalization are the main factors influencing why countries ratify ILO Conventions on unemployment benefits. In turn, the ratification of ILO Conventions is systematically associated with higher spending if countries have ratified more than two Conventions.i ssr_1353 37..56

This paper analyzes class voting in South Korea under neoliberalism. The class voting literature has paid too little attention to cases outside Europe and North America, while the existing studies on South Korea's elections and voting patterns have largely ignored the issue of class. The lack of interest in class voting is due mainly to strong regionalism prevalent in South Korea's electoral politics. However, the rapid and profound neoliberalization after the 1997 financial crisis has generated negative socioeconomic consequences, which may have increased the importance of a class-based bloc as a salient electoral factor. Using Goldthorpe's class schema, I test the validity of class voting in South Korea, employing microlevel survey data of the two recent parliamentary elections of 2000 and 2004. I pay particular attention to entrenched conservatism that is historically rooted in South Korea's electoral and representative systems. I formulate this vital issue in terms of a possible connection between people's decisions on whether to vote (or for that matter, nonvoting) and for whom they vote (their vote choice). The empirical evidence in this paper suggests that people vote according to their class positions in the context of the swift neoliberal restructuring in South Korea.