In the APSA Public Scholarship Program, graduate students in political science produce summaries of new research in the American Political Science Review. This piece, written by Samantha Chapa, covers the new article by Soumyajit Mazumder, Independent Scholar, and Alan N. Yan, University of California, Berkeley, “What Do Americans Want from (Private) Government? Experimental Evidence Demonstrates that Americans Want Workplace Democracy“
According to estimates released by the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics, many Americans spend most of their waking time working—either at home or in a traditional work setting. Despite the amount of time we spend at work, socializing with colleagues, collaborating on projects, and engaging with corporate power structures, we rarely investigate places of work as sites of politics. In their recent APSR article, Soumyajit Mazumder and Alan N. Yan bridge this disconnect between work and politics.
Mazumder and Yan ask whether Americans prefer more democracy in their places of work. Although theorists claim that labor markets are largely democratic spaces because employers and employees are free to associate with one another, in practice, labor markets are typically not considered democratic for several reasons. Workers generally have limited bargaining power over employers. The provision of labor has also often been racialized and violent. Moreover, access to important policies—for example, healthcare—is typically only provided through some form of employment. Given the employer-employee relationships in American labor markets, could it be the case that Americans prefer less democracy at work?
Mazumder and Yan find, surprisingly, that this is not the case. Through two experiments, they find that Americans tend to prefer more democratic workspaces, even though introducing more democratic practices can incur significant costs for employees.
In the study, survey respondents were asked to evaluate four pairs of firm profiles, where each pair varied some type of democratic practice. Democratic practices included whether workers sat on corporate boards, whether workers were shareholders, or whether workers elected managers. The authors varied 18 other firm attributes, including firm size, sick leave policy, and gender of owners, among others, to control for additional characteristics that survey respondents might find desirable. Respondents were then asked to choose which firm: they preferred to work for, was better at handling complaints, provided them with more power, and would impose greater responsibilities.
In a second experiment, the authors make the costs of workplace democracy more salient and explore how respondent characteristics, such as partisanship, support for democracy, and class identity affect support for democratic firms. Respondents were asked to read one of four firm policies across the three types of workplace democracies. Three of the four descriptions emphasized different conditions, like more responsibility at the firm, more workplace influence, or both more work and responsibility. Participants then answered a series of questions similar to the first experiment.
“Mazumder and Yan highlight the importance of examining politics in seemingly non-political places. As the authors argue, the study of politics is the study of power.”Mazumder and Yan uncover important findings. First, they find that Americans would largely prefer to work at firms that either place workers on their corporate board, provide employees with ownership opportunities, or allow for the direct election of management positions. Second, they find that survey respondents place economic value on workplace democracy. Substantively, this means that respondents prefer workplace democracy to wage increases as high as $20 an hour, in some instances.
The authors also begin to delve into motivations for these preferences. Respondents indicated that they prefer to work at firms with democratic practices because they intrinsically value power in the workplace. Additionally, the authors find that partisanship also does little to explain motivation. In other words, both Democrats and Republicans value employee stock ownership programs and the election of managers despite holding differing ideologies. Republicans, however, were still less likely to support codetermination, or electing employees to be members of corporate boards, as compared to Democrats.
Mazumder and Yan highlight the importance of examining politics in seemingly non-political places. As the authors argue, the study of politics is the study of power. Expanding theories of politics to broader power relationships can help us understand politics and society better, as this work demonstrates.
- Samantha Chapa is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Houston. Her National Science Foundation-funded research focuses broadly on the political rights and representation of migrants and people of color. Her dissertation examines the impacts of local, urban policies on immigrant and minoritized groups. Her work has been published in the British Journal of Politics and East European Politics and Societies. Prior to graduate school, she worked at BakerRipley—a non-profit—for three years, where she engaged in immigrant legal defense work. She completed her Bachelor’s in English and History at Rice University.
- Article details: HARRIS, ALLISON P. 2023. “Can Racial Diversity among Judges Affect Sentencing Outcomes?”. American Political Science Review
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