Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

Study: Pro-worker ideas in political platforms resonate with voters

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new paper co-written by a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign expert who studies the intersection of labor unions and politics found that political parties whose manifestos contained a greater percentages of pro-worker ideas were more appealing to voters.

The study, spanning 54 countries and more than 1,100 political parties, uncovered predictors of industrial relations ideas that resonate with voters, said J. Ryan Lamare, a professor of labor and employment relations at Illinois.

“This paper deals with something that’s pretty hard to quantify, which is how ideas about industrial relations, labor unions, and pro-worker and anti-union sentiments filter into the greater political discourse,” he said.

Political party manifestos are ideological documents that codify where political parties stand on certain issues. They help politicians, policymakers and the public better understand the party’s platform and values.

“Ideas are difficult to analyze in large-scale studies, but political manifestos offer a unique lens through which to examine how ideas in support of workers or in opposition to workers have changed over time – and whether they are rewarded by voters,” Lamare said.

The study, co-written by John W. Budd, of the University of Minnesota, analyzed 75 years’ worth of data from the Comparative Manifesto Project. The researchers culled from a database of more than 4,500 political manifestos to find predictors of industrial relations ideas, including party characteristics, responses to other parties, and economic and political conditions.

“We’re able to discern this pattern without being beholden to any specific country or where a certain era’s political winds were blowing at the time. This provides a broad-based mechanism for understanding the way that ideas enter into these manifestos,” Lamare said.

The researchers found that seven of the 56 topical categories analyzed in the paper correlated with greater vote share. Pro-worker mentions were one of the seven most important topics for voters, according to the paper. The full list of categories ranged from government spending, economic nationalism and tariffs to softer categories such as patriotism, nationalism and pride of citizenship.

“We found that voters overwhelmingly prefer pro-worker policies, pro-worker political platforms and pro-worker ideas, and reward the parties that espouse those ideas with more votes,” Lamare said. “That’s pretty significant to be one of seven categories that are consistently rewarded with more votes.”

The researchers also found evidence of an enduring use of pro-worker ideas in manifestos, in contrast to more episodic deployments of anti-union ideas by parties.

“There were periodic spikes in anti-union sentiments, but those were short-lived and not sustained,” Lamare said. “Far-right parties, for example, were significantly less likely to incorporate pro-worker ideas into their manifestos than other parties, which was not too surprising. But overall, pro-worker sentiments endure and voters reward parties that promote them in their platforms.”

The effect still holds when political parties are the minority party in power, Lamare said.

“Even if the party isn’t in the majority, it’s still a viable way for parties to influence employment relation issues and shape voters’ attitudes toward unions,” he said. “It’s a competition of ideas and it’s not just that the incumbent party is the one that gets to set the agenda for political discourse.”

The results of the research suggest that political systems are important not just in shaping attitudes toward unions and industrial relations, but also in affecting political parties’ positions on work and workers.

“It not only suggests that political parties are ideational actors, but that voters are potentially receptive to and persuadable on pro-labor ideas, which might influence a country’s labor policies in the future,” Lamare said.

The paper was published in the journal Industrial Relations.

Editor’s notes: To contact J. Ryan Lamare, call 217-244-6241; email rlamare@illinois.edu.

The paper “The relative importance of industrial relations ideas in politics: A quantitative analysis of political party manifestos across 54 countries” is available online.

DOI: 10.1111/irel.12296

Read Next

Health and medicine Life sciences Veterinary medicine Two men in a lab. The seated man holds a hologram projection of a brain.

Mutation increases enzyme in mouse brains linked to schizophrenia behaviors

Researchers found a key role for an enzyme regulating glycine in the brain while investigating a rare genetic mutation found in two patients with schizophrenia.

Honors A photo collage featuring all three Sloan Fellowship awardees.

Three Illinois professors named Sloan Research Fellows

Three Illinois scientists are among 126 recipients of the 2025 Sloan Research Fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. According to the foundation, the awardees represent “the very best of early-career science, embodying the creativity, ambition, and rigor that drive discovery forward.” This year’s Illinois recipients are chemistry professors Angad Mehta and Lisa Olshansky, and materials science and engineering professor Yingjie Zhang.

Life sciences Graphic with the title "42nd Insect Fear Film Festival" in a scary font and with a picture of a tarantula.

Insect Fear Film Festival to feature ‘hairy, scary’ tarantulas

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The 2025 Insect Fear Film Festival at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will feature “Tarantulas: Hairy, Scary Spiders” as its theme and a Hollywood bug wrangler who works with the 8-legged creatures as a special guest. The festival, which is hosted by the Entomology Graduate Student Association and is in its 42nd […]

Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

507 E. Green St
MC-426
Champaign, IL 61820

Email: stratcom@illinois.edu

Phone (217) 333-5010