Stephen Amberg in American Political Science Review

The American Political Science Review; Mar 2000; Stephen Amberg

The Unions and the Democrats: An Enduring Alliance. By Taylor E. Dark. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press/Cornell University Press, 1999. 233p. $37.50.

The coalition between unions and the Democratic Party is stronger than ever, according to Taylor Dark. Pronouncements made over the last twenty years that the New Deal has ended are seriously mistaken. Democrats in Congress and the White House work cooperatively daily with leaders of organized labor. The right-wing reconstruction of American politics since Reagan has been unable to dislodge entirely the power of the AFL-CIO in economic policymaking and its influence in electoral politics. Dark makes these surprising claims in a valuably argumentative and well-written analysis that combines rational choice and historical institutional approaches. He focuses on the bargaining relationships between the leaders of organized labor and the Democratic Party from the 1960s to the 1990s within the context of the institutional structures of American unionism and the larger political regime. As with all such exercises, critics can challenge the parameters for bargaining as well as the characterization of the substance of the relationship. What will withstand such challenges and what is enduring is the ongoing and growing exchange of resources between the leadership cadre of both organizations.

Dark connects his analysis to large parts of the American and comparative literatures on labor to make an original contribution to our understanding of contemporary politics. The relationship between organized labor and the Democratic Party has long been problematic for political scientists conceptually and practically. The peculiarities of American unionism are at the heart of debates about American exceptionalism, the New Deal, the welfare state, interest group liberalism, and the transformations of the party system since the 1960s.

Dark conceives unions as interest groups of an especially potent type, namely, those with the ability to shut down significant parts of the economy, and his study focuses on how the leaders of the AFL-CIO plus the dozen most active federation member unions have adapted to changes in the political, economic, and ideological environment in the last 35 years. Dark also roots his analysis in comparative debates about the governing of capitalist societies, among the most notable projects of which was John Goldthorpe's Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism (1984), which recently has been reassessed by Herbert Kitschelt et al. in Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism (1999). Although Dark does not make a comparative analysis, his stress on institutional structure and party alignments parallels one line of development in that literature.

Major variables in the 1980s debate that recur in The Unions and the Democrats are the importance of centralization or fragmentation of bargaining capacity, the significance of nationally specific political institutions, and the shifting character of policy problems, from growth to inflation, after the 1960s. Many countries employed corporatist techniques with some success, one outcome of which was growing union membership. On each variable, the American value predicted failure to employ corporatism and weak unions. What Dark points out, however, is that these are properly matters of degree rather than binary alternatives: American unions lost much of their position in private industry, but organization increased in the public sector, and the political role of organized labor in the 1990s is virtually unchanged from 50 years ago.

The heart of Dark's explanation is the claim that union leaders and elected officeholders are rational actors who seek to maintain their leadership position, in part by exchanging valuable resources with one another to protect themselves from opponents. He draws on rational choice analyses of bargaining regimes, elections, and the legislative process to elaborate alternative models of union-party relationships, which he calls "centralized pluralism" and "fragmented pluralism." The ability to establish and sustain exchange depends on the degree of centralization in the AFL-CIO Executive Council and the party unity of the Democrats in Washington. Both the labor federation and the federal government exhibit famous constraints on centralization and unity. Nonetheless, leadership strategies can mitigate the fragmenting qualities of institutions, in part by the leaders of the respective organizations helping each other with their internal problems. In the mid-1960s-Dark's starting point-George Meany and Lyndon Johnson were able to assert substantial control over their respective organizations in order to carry on high-level negotiations over a wide range of subjects. This centralization helped provoke a "crisis of representation" in the union federation and in the Democratic Party in the late 1960s and 1970s as insurgents challenged the leaders. The crisis resulted in the fragmentation of bargaining capacity, growing distrust, and a breakdown of exchange relationships. Yet, Dark marshals evidence to support his claim that in the 1980s much of the bargaining capacity was rebuilt by Lane Kirkland and Jim Wright when the latter became Speaker of the House in 1987 and has continued with their successors. The book is substantially devoted to presenting fascinating case studies of union/Democratic leadership relationships and of legislative cooperation and conflict involving organized labor.

The close attention to bargaining over legislative and bureaucratic policies is achieved at a cost, which may be high or low depending on what is most important to explain. Dark notes early on that the first purpose of unions is to bargain with employers, but he almost completely ignores labor-management relations. This lacuna allows him to skim the problem of declining union membership (a relative decline after 1955 and an absolute decline from the mid-1970s until 1998) and faltering collective bargaining policy. Treating unions as economic interest groups is not unusual, and the period on which Dark focuses provides ample support for the claim, but there is a reason we also use the locution labor movement, which is not used for employers. Indeed, the inequality of the bargaining position of employees and employers is basic to labor-management relations as well as to the political bargaining on which Dark focuses. When Dark cites "disruptions of economic production" as one of the "bargaining chips" of unions that politicians seek "to either avoid or obtain" (pp. 36-7), we might ask when a politician has ever wanted economic disruption.

A distinguishing quality of the New Deal was that the Democratic Party promoted collective bargaining and made it and the unions, which were its embodiment, part of its project for governing the economy. In short, the New Deal was about restructuring the employee-employer relationship. That began to change in the 1960s, just when Dark picks up the narrative. It is no longer true that the Democratic Party promotes unionization and collective bargaining as a primary element of governance, although the majority will protect the status quo of union rights. One might reconceive the labor/Democratic alliance by focusing on the "crises of representation" as part of a restructuring motive. That might help make sense of Dark's final speculation about whether the AFL-CIO can go on much longer cementing its exchange relationship with the Democrats when the party will not help it with its first purpose.

--Stephen Amberg

The University of Texas at San Antonio