The minimal effects of union membership on political attitudes

Alan Nigel Yan
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Alan Nigel Yan: UC Berkeley

No zabrq, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Union membership has been long believed to liberalize a range of political attitudes from partisanship to racial prejudice. This paper considers the theoretical preconditions necessary for such influence and argues that it is unlikely. Union members may not receive, may ignore, and may deprioritize their union's message compared to other considerations. Previous research faced empirical challenges with causal inference, limited sample sizes, and limited outcomes. I collect 12 panel surveys from 1956 to 2020 with 20,392 respondents and use advances in difference-in-differences designs to evaluate whether union membership causes political, economic, and racial attitudes to liberalize across 59 outcomes. I find that gaining union membership has no meaningful immediate or medium-term persuasive effects. I also show that a prominent previous liberalizing result was fragile. These results suggest a reconsideration of the role of labor unions in political behavior.

Date: 2023-10-27
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:zabrq

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/zabrq

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