Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/287927 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Citation: 
[Journal:] British Journal of Industrial Relations [ISSN:] 1467-8543 [Volume:] 61 [Issue:] 1 [Publisher:] Wiley [Place:] Hoboken, NJ [Year:] 2022 [Pages:] 89-109
Publisher: 
Wiley, Hoboken, NJ
Abstract: 
This article studies the effect of labour unions on policy‐making in six different parts of the welfare state (passive and active labour market policy, employment protection, old‐age pensions, health care and education) in OECD countries after 1980 with a two‐level strategy: At the micro‐level, we investigate union members’ preferences. Ordered logit regression analyses indicate that union members favour generous social policies more strongly than non‐members. Moreover, this effect is stronger for programmes closely related to the labour market than for programmes without a strong labour market link. At the macro‐level, we investigate the conditional effect of unions on left parties expecting the former to push the left towards more generous labour market‐related (but not towards less‐labour market‐related) programmes. Regression analyses essentially provide evidence for such a relationship. Overall, unions have been powerful in promoting their members’ social policy preferences via left parties in government but their power is recently vanishing.
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc-nd Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.