The nature of politics means that most politicians try to appeal to as many voters as possible, which can create the impression that they promise all things to all people. Nonetheless, research from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign suggests that pro-worker policies may carry slightly more bang for their buck than other policies.
The research explored 54 countries and over 1,100 political parties, and found that policies involving ideas around improving industrial relations consistently appealed to voters.
“This paper deals with something that’s pretty hard to quantify, which is how ideas about industrial relations, labor unions, and pro-worker and anti-union sentiments filter into the greater political discourse,” the researchers say.
Assessing priorities
The researchers assessed the manifestos produced by political parties to try and identify the priorities they had and their ideological stance on various issues. They argue that such documents are often crucial to help the public understand the values and the ideas the parties stand for.
“Ideas are difficult to analyze in large-scale studies, but political manifestos offer a unique lens through which to examine how ideas in support of workers or in opposition to workers have changed over time—and whether they are rewarded by voters,” they say.
The researchers trawled through around 75 years’ worth of data from the Comparative Manifesto Project, which gave them access to the manifestos of over 4,500 parties. They were looking for both the characteristics of the party, how they responded to other parties, and the various political and economic conditions they operated in.
“We’re able to discern this pattern without being beholden to any specific country or where a certain era’s political winds were blowing at the time. This provides a broad-based mechanism for understanding the way that ideas enter into these manifestos,” the researchers say.
Voter share
The research found that there were seven out of the 56 core categories that corresponded with higher voter shares, including economic nationalism, government spending, patriotism, and pride of citizenship. Pro-worker policies were also among the most reliable factors that drove voter behavior.
“We found that voters overwhelmingly prefer pro-worker policies, pro-worker political platforms and pro-worker ideas, and reward the parties that espouse those ideas with more votes,” the researchers say. “That’s pretty significant to be one of seven categories that are consistently rewarded with more votes.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, therefore, there was a consistent use of pro-worker policies in party manifestos, with such policies far more common than the more sporadic use of anti-union policies and ideas.
“There were periodic spikes in anti-union sentiments, but those were short-lived and not sustained,” the authors explain. “Far-right parties, for example, were significantly less likely to incorporate pro-worker ideas into their manifestos than other parties, which was not too surprising. But overall, pro-worker sentiments endure and voters reward parties that promote them in their platforms.”
What’s more, this appears to remain true even if the parties are not in government or are a minority partner in a coalition. It remains a strong policy for attracting voters, and the authors believe plays a powerful role in shaping voter attitudes towards unions themselves.
“It not only suggests that political parties are ideational actors, but that voters are potentially receptive to and persuadable on pro-labor ideas, which might influence a country’s labor policies in the future,” the authors conclude.
