Political Science Quarterly:
The Unions and the Democrats: An Enduring Alliance, by Taylor E. Dark. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1999. 233 pp. Cloth, $37.50.
Has the power of organized labor in American politics declined since the 1960s? Has it changed in form? Finally, how shall we understand the relationship between labor unions, political parties, and the state? These three questions — broad in scope, and equally challenging in tenor — occupy Taylor Dark's The Unions and the Democrats. It is a wonderful book, not the least because it traverses ground that has so rarely been covered.
Traditionally, academic work on American labor has taken as its point of departure Gompers' assertion that the American union movement is nonpartisan (or ‘voluntaristic') — interested primarily in economic issues and only tangentially in politics. Recent work has challenged this view, showing that the AFL, and Gompers himself, were intimately involved in political machinations (from 1906 or so). Yet, neither historians nor political scientists have examined this question in the contemporary era. The neglect of the former is understandable. For the latter, I can only surmise that labor unions have not been deemed of sufficient significance to warrant extended analysis.
Dark's book should remedy this mis-impression. Dark shows that, contrary to standard wisdom, labor unions have maintained a great deal of power within the Democratic party, within Congress, and within several Democratic Administrations since the 1960s. With an artful blend of historical narrative — drawn from extensive interviews and archival research — and political science analysis, Dark proves beyond a doubt that organized labor has maintained a privileged position within the big tent of Democracy. The AFL-CIO is not just another pressure group clamoring to be heard in the cacaphony of interest group liberalism; it is the most significant block of voters, lobbying savvy, and campaign money in the Democratic arsenal.
Beyond this, the story is more complicated. How much power, exactly, does organized labor have? The problem of judging ‘power' is endemic to virtually any work in which politics and policy are the outcome of interest. (How do we know which groups have contributed what amount of influence over these outcomes?) Dark gets at this question with the best process-tracing material available and a broad historical canvass over which to assess variable outcomes. As I read the evidence, it goes as follows: organized labor is not quite as powerful as it was during its heyday in the Forties, Fifties and Sixties; it is not nearly as powerful as its cousins in Western Europe (this part of the story is wellknown, but bears reiteration); but it is much more powerful than other interest groups within the Democratic party. In short, while the AFL-CIO's power has declined marginally over the past several decades, the interest group community has mushroomed. Labor now shares access with groups representing women, blacks, seniors, gays and lesbians, environmentalists, and many other less readily identifiable groups. But it is still the biggest fish in this rapidly growing pond. Being the biggest fish allows it to play the role of mediator on Capitol Hill, interlocutor at the White House, and all-purpose consultant on the campaign trail. While the steep decline in labor union membership over the past several decades has weakened the political power of organized labor, it remains a potent force.
Several facts will make this general point more concrete. Organized labor is one of the few financial resources for Democratic congressional candidates challenging Republican incumbents. Their weight in campaigns (at all levels) is enhanced by their membership rolls (labor unions are not just check-writing PACs), by their in-kind donations (offices, telephone banks), and by their strength in swing states. Public sector unions (an increasing share of organized labor in the US) have direct, material benefits at stake in the political game, which helps account for the preeminence of AFSCME, the NEA, and the AFT in presidential politics. More broadly, union leadership at all levels has become convinced that their struggle for survival depends upon a favorable political climate — more concretely, on favorable appointments to the NLRB, favorable revision to labor laws, and on favorable trade legislation. It is no surprise that the AFL-CIO and its member unions have committed significant resources — both financial and organizational — to recent congressional and presidential elections.
Dark's book is not merely descriptive. His analytic framework draws on the ‘exchange' metaphor, in which the leadership structure of organized labor and of the political system at large are the central independent variables. Within the constraints of a decentralized constitutional framework and a weak and equally decentralized labor movement, considerable variation occurs in labor strategy and success over the several decades under investigation here. Briefly, Dark shows how organized labor has adjusted — after some rough patches during the 1970s — to the new, hyper-pluralist politics of the current era.
The Unions and the Democrats is a superb rendering of a very difficult subject — of interest to those who study American labor, Congress, the presidency, and recent American history. It should spur renewed study of a long-neglected subject.
John Gerring
Boston University