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Theoretical and Empirical Issues in the Comparative Measurement of Union Power and Corporatism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Neil J. Mitchell
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Extract

What aspects of national trade-union movements systematically affect national policy making and economic performance? While there is general agreement that union density, the proportion of the workforce organized in unions, is an important element of union strength, social scientists are only beginning to identify the other critical elements. That union density is not the whole story can quickly be appreciated by comparing the influence of unions in Britain and Germany. For much of the post-war period, union density has been higher in Britain than Germany, although German unions have sustained at least as important a political and economic role as British unions. An influential theory of group-government relations directed our attention to the degree of hierarchy and monopoly present in an interest structure and to the degree of institutionalized access to policy-making circles, wrapping these characteristics together in the concept of corporatism. Yet there is a developing interest, particularly in the analysis of labour movements, in disaggregating corporatism as part of an effort to understand the specific characteristics that produce political and economic influence.

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Notes and Comments
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British Journal of Political Science , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , July 1996 , pp. 419 - 428
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

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23 As the decommodification scores are for 1980 I have used Cameron's figures for average density (1965–80) and, as welfare policy is measured at the national level, number of national–not local or provincial–unions for these countries in 1980, using the Europa Year Book 1981. New Zealand is not included in the analysis, since Cameron does not include it.

24 In the analysis of decommodification the relationship appears to be linear, but Australia is an outlier in Model II. Dropping this case from the analysis improves the adjusted r2 from 0.76 to 0.81. Analysing log transformations of the variables produces broadly similar results. Both the number of unions and density variables remain significantly associated with decommodification, the number of unions is still the more important of the two, and the r2 = 0.53.