Labor organization and electoral participation in industrial democracies

The literature on the determinants of electoral participation has paid little to the role of labor organization-Adopting the familiar heuristic of costs and benefits, we argue that aggregate rates of turnout will be affected strongly by the strength of the labor movement. This hypothesis is tested using cross-sectional and pooled time series data for nineteen industrial democracies and the fifty American states. The results indicate that the greater the share of workers represented by unions, the greater is the turnout. Further analysis indicates that a portion of this effect occurs indirectly through labor's ability to move the ideological position of parties appealing to lower- and middle-status citizens farther to the left. The implications for the study of electoral politics, democratic theory, and public policy are discussed.