TY  - RPRT
A1  - Matzat, Johannes
A1  - Schmeißer, Aiko
T1  - Do unions shape political ideologies at work?
T2  - CESifo Working Paper
N2  - Labor unions’ greatest potential for political influence likely arises from their direct connection to millions of individuals at the workplace. There, they may change the ideological positions of both unionizing workers and their non-unionizing management. In this paper, we analyze the workplace-level impact of unionization on workers’ and managers’ political campaign contributions over the 1980-2016 period in the United States. To do so, we link establishment-level union election data with transaction-level campaign contributions to federal and local candidates. In a difference-in-differences design that we validate with regression discontinuity tests and a novel instrumental variables approach, we find that unionization leads to a leftward shift of campaign contributions. Unionization increases the support for Democrats relative to Republicans not only among workers but also among managers, which speaks against an increase in political cleavages between the two groups. We provide evidence that our results are not driven by compositional changes of the workforce and are weaker in states with Right-to-Work laws where unions can invest fewer resources in political activities.
KW  - labor unions
KW  - political ideology
KW  - campaign contributions
KW  - worker-manager relations
Y1  - 2023
SN  - 2364-1428
SN  - 1617-9595
IS  - 10301
PB  - CESifo GmbH (Münchener Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wirtschaftswissenschaft)
CY  - München
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Thonig, Richard
A1  - Del Rio, Pablo
A1  - Kiefer, Christoph
A1  - Lazaro Touza, Lara
A1  - Escribano, Gonzalo
A1  - Lechon, Yolanda
A1  - Spaeth, Leonhard
A1  - Wolf, Ingo
A1  - Lilliestam, Johan
T1  - Does ideology influence the ambition level of climate and renewable energy policy?
BT  - Insights from four European countries
JF  - Energy sources, part B: economics, planning, and policy
N2  - We investigate whether political ideology has an observable effect on decarbonization ambition, renewable power aims, and preferences for power system balancing technologies in four European countries. Based on the Energy Logics framework, we identify ideologically different transition strategies (state-centered, market-centered, grassroots-centered) contained in government policies and opposition party programs valid in 2019. We compare these policies and programs with citizen poll data. We find that ideology has a small effect: governments and political parties across the spectrum have similar, and relatively ambitious, decarbonization and renewables targets. This mirrors citizens' strong support for ambitious action regardless of their ideological self-description. However, whereas political positions on phasing out fossil fuel power are clear across the policy space, positions on phasing in new flexibility options to balance intermittent renewables are vague or non-existent. As parties and citizens agree on strong climate and renewable power aims, the policy ambition is likely to remain high, even if governments change.
KW  - political ideology
KW  - climate policy
KW  - energy policy
KW  - europe
KW  - european
KW  - Union
KW  - renewable energy
KW  - flexibility
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1080/15567249.2020.1811806
SN  - 1556-7249
SN  - 1556-7257
VL  - 16
IS  - 1
SP  - 4
EP  - 22
PB  - Taylor & Francis Group
CY  - Philadelphia
ER  -