Labor and the democratic party: A report on the 1998 elections

Dark, Taylor E.

doi:10.1007/s12122-000-1036-x

Cited by 12 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…In a qualitative account of the Los Angeles Central Labor Council, Frank and Wong (2004) describe the phenomenon anecdotally and discuss how it fits into a broader political strategy. Work on the economic effects of unions is abundant (Freeman and Medoff 1984;Lewis 1986;Addison and Hirsch 1989;DiNardo and Lee 2004;Hirsch 2004;Mas and Lee 2009) and on unions' political roles in mobilizing voters (Delaney, Masters, and Schwochau 1988;Radcliff and Davis 2000;Freeman 2003;Zullo 2008;Lamare 2010aLamare , 2010b, contributing resources to campaigns, and lobbying (Freeman and Medoff 1984;Masters and Delaney 1987;Delaney, Fiorito, and Masters 1988;Dark 2000;McDermott 2006). In countries with a labor party, the rise of members to public office is common but in the United States, it has not received much attention.…”

Section: How Unions Support Members' Rise To Public Officementioning

confidence: 99%

Do Unions Promote Members' Electoral Office Holding? Evidence from Correlates of State Legislatures' Occupational Shares

Sojourner¹

2013

ILR Review

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. This study calls attention to a neglected effect of unions -they help members rise to elected public office -and assesses its magnitude empirically. This role of unions is part of larger debates over the promise and perils of union political influence playing out in Wisconsin and elsewhere (Mullans and McKinnon 2010, Greenhouse 2011). On one side is concern that unions use political influence to bend policy to serve their own special interests at the expense of the public interest. This concern is particularly salient regarding public-sector unions. The other side views union political influence generally and members serving in public office as socially constructive for three primary reasons: to help unions act as a counter-weight to the policy influence of organized capital; to improve the quality of legislatures' deliberations through increased diversity; and to promote members' personal development.Developing quantitative evidence on the extent to which unions help members rise to elected office is challenging. Using publicly available information, researchers cannot reliably and consistently observe whether a particular elected official has belonged to a union or not. Elected officials choose whether or not to advertise this fact. A failure to report may indicate either nonmembership or political inconvenience. Furthermore, because the probability of any particular person being elected to office is very low, one needs to study large ...

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Section: How Unions Support Members' Rise To Public Officementioning

confidence: 99%

Do Unions Promote Members' Electoral Office Holding? Evidence from Correlates of State Legislatures' Occupational Shares

Sojourner¹

2013

ILR Review

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“…Previous research into union electoral activities demonstrates the historic and current link between labor and Democrats-another liberal cue. Labor' s leadership has traditionally chosen to support Democratic candidates both in presidential elections and in congressional or local elections (Dark 2000;Masters and Zardkoohi 1986). And specifically, labor unions tend to give their strongest support-in forms of cash and campaign support-to the most liberal of candidates (Masters and Zardkoohi 1986).…”

Section: Labor Endorsements As Informational Cuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…And specifically, labor unions tend to give their strongest support-in forms of cash and campaign support-to the most liberal of candidates (Masters and Zardkoohi 1986). Labor also occasionally supports "labor friendly" Republican candidates, with the goal of retaining the few that are in office (Dark 2000).…”

Section: Labor Endorsements As Informational Cuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Not for Members Only: Group Endorsements as Electoral Information Cues

McDermott¹

2006

Political Research Quarterly

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Endorsements by groups in American politics have typically been studied as voting cues only for members of the given organization. Using both the formal theoretical and low-information cognitive voting literatures, this article argues for a broader electoral role for group endorsements. Specifically, if groups that have clear ideological or policy preferences endorse candidates, these endorsements should provide all voters with ideological or issue information about the endorsed candidates. This inferred information should then impact voters’ behavior, especially in low-information scenarios. Using both an experimental test and a test with American National Election Studies (ANES) survey data, this study analyzes the hypothesis in terms of elections to the U.S. House of Representatives. It finds that when the AFL-CIO endorses Democratic candidates, voters behave as though a liberal message has been sent—liberals are significantly more supportive while conservatives are significantly less supportive than they are when no endorsement is given, regardless of whether or not they are union members. At the same time, however, the analysis finds no support that endorsements of Republicans have any ideological impact on voting.

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“…After the disastrous 1994 mid-term elections, organized labor improved its political effectiveness, contributing to better results for congressional Democrats in 1996and 1998(Dark 2000Lefkowitz 1995). The relationship between organized labor and the Clinton Administration improved over the years, and Clinton's failure to deliver pro-union policies later in his second term was largely due to Republican opposition in Congress and Clinton's own political problems.…”

Section: Conclusion: Another Defeat For Labor Law Reformmentioning

confidence: 99%