Labor organization and electoral participation in industrial democracies

The literature on the determinants of electoral participation has paid litt le to the role of labor organization-Adopting the familiar heuristic of cos ts and benefits, we argue that aggregate rates of turnout will be affected strongly by the strength of the labor movement. This hypothesis is tested u sing cross-sectional and pooled time series data for nineteen industrial de mocracies and the fifty American states. The results indicate that the grea ter 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 appeal ing to lower- and middle-status citizens farther to the left. The implicati ons for the study of electoral politics, democratic theory, and public poli cy are discussed.