Abstract
Perhaps it is unfair to claim that the potentially most interesting discussion in this empirically incredibly rich and well-structured volume is not about its immediate focus on formal and informal links between left-of-centre parties and trade unions as such – so I won’t. However, the study’s ‘alibi’, as it were, is what the authors themselves label ‘the so-what question’. Do the types of relationship parties and unions develop ‘make a difference in real-world politics?’ (p. 332). As the book stands, it is full of detailed and excellent analyses in 10 case study chapters and four general ones, but in an ideal world it would have been interesting if the authors had been able to elaborate a little more on the ‘so-what’ – which could probably have been developed into a more elaborate research puzzle than the current one. Still, the authors are able to conclude that ‘(u)nions with weaker links to parties appear to find it difficult to stop those parties trying to push through policies they regard as inimical’ (p. 335).
The book’s aim is to take stock of previous research about the fate of party–union links and the purported common wisdom that ‘today’s left-of-centre parties and unions are virtually separated’ (p.4). This is an important question about political life in many developed industrialized democracies, which forms the book’s main focus. That cross-national variations exist has in fact been suggested elsewhere (Hyman and Gumbrell-McCormick, 2010), but in Left-of Centre Parties and Trade Unions in the Twenty-First Century the editors Allern and Bale, plus a string of contributing country experts, make a solid and creative contribution to actually show it.
After an initial literature overview a large number of hypotheses are formulated, based on the fundamental research question ‘whether the strength of contemporary party-union links is correlated to the size of benefits “exchanged”’ (p.15). Prime among the hypotheses is the one concerning the extent of link variation between countries. Others deal with actor-level conditions in relation to the strength of links (left-of-centre party ideology/office experience/size; union member vote; union size; donations/support for left-of-centre parties) and with country-level aspects (union density/fragmentation; left-of-centre party fragmentation; degree of corporatism; levels/rules concerning party funding). The selected countries appear to provide a reasonable palette of cases in order to provide the intended context variation (a minor objection would be on how democratic Switzerland was pre-1971 when women did not have the right to vote).
A challenge the authors acknowledge is the ‘mismatch between a large number of country-level variables and a limited number of country cases’ (p. 34). Therefore, no regressions are made and the foundation of 10 country cases calls for some caution regarding the results, but the overall findings are clear enough to be taken seriously. The country chapters are organized around the same overarching data logic, which is a strong feature. At the same time the chapters tend to become partly individually organized essays. This is quite charming and probably necessary. Still, some of the subsections cover huge questions on quite limited space, for example, when the Swiss chapter tries to explain ‘stability and change over time’ on less than a full page (cf. the chapter on Australia) or when some chapters present what appear to be interesting general sub-themes, which are not mirrored elsewhere. The country chapters are well written and informative, although the flurry of acronyms in the Austrian and French chapters is a challenge.
A strong feature is the systematic empirical investigation and the data presentation logic. The authors look into both party and union aspects and include formal as well as informal links. Moreover, they include data from all the historically established left-of-centre parties and on all types of unions. That both central party organizations and legislative party groups are included allows the authors to elaborate two-pronged sets of ‘dyads’, that is, pairs of relationships across sets of parties and unions in each country.
Three types of data based on formal documents are presented: (1) overlapping organizational structures – regulated in party and/or union statutes (similar), (2) inter-organizational links, that is, reciprocal, durable, one-way occasional or reciprocal occasional party–union arrangements, and (3) individual-level links, that is, personnel overlaps and informal arrangements. Moreover, key party and union representatives/informants have been interviewed regarding the character and the strength of links. Although some missing data hollow out the impressively ambitious undertaking, sufficient information is garnered for authoritative conclusions about the degree of variation.
The results manage to reject some of the previous ‘myths’ about the reasons for strong/weak party–union relationships. For instance, the decline in class voting or class composition does not necessarily translate into weaker organizational links. Instead, ‘(l)eft-of-centre party-trade union links are stronger where trade unions are larger, denser, and more unified, and where parties are less able to rely on the state to finance their organizational activities and electoral campaigns’ (p.337). In the end, the authors manage to prove authoritatively that there is indeed variation among countries. This may sound self-evident but it takes a strong and systematic research effort to actually show it, which has been done here.
A slight weakness concerns the fact that although much of the book’s logic relates to developments over time, the collected data either are from a recent time point or cover a limited period (2008–2013). Commentary regarding a wider time frame might be treated with some caution.
Finally, with hindsight (always a dangerously comfortable prerogative), it is tempting to put in perspective the 2017 UK election, which remarkably saw the Labour party go from 30% to 40%. Almost unique among traditional social democratic parties, Labour had formulated a left-of-centre election manifesto rather than yet another centre-based one. Some sister parties had instead met with poll disasters, such as the Dutch and the French. In Bale and Allern’s combined data on union–party affinity, UK Labour scores are quite high, while both the Dutch and French scores are rather low. Not a bad contribution to have provided systematic data to help us begin to disentangle why some parties might stand a better chance than others to avoid the relentless punching by the voters that seems to be an ever more common phenomenon in modern politics.