Working-Class Underrepresentation Is Not an Iron Law: Organized Labor and Combined Reforms Could Raise Worker Representation
Source: Jared Abbott. "Workers Can Govern, but They Need Power First." October 17, 2026. jacobin.com
The Gist
A new book argues that democracies are built in ways that keep workers out of office, and that little can be done about it. The author says the book's own numbers and history show otherwise. Strong unions working together with parties, plus other reforms that haven't really been tried, could get many more workers elected.
Conclusion
Carnes and Lupu's claim that low working-class representation is an inescapable feature of electoral democracy is too fatalistic for their own evidence. Rebuilding working-class organization, especially union-party partnerships, together with other reforms, could substantially raise the number of workers in office.
Premises
- Carnes and Lupu's own estimates show that public financing (about 5%), high unionization (about 9%), lower inequality (about 7%), working-class-based parties (about 10%), and strongly pro-worker party platforms (about 15%) each correspond to worker shares well above the global average of 2%, so these are not small effects.
- The authors test each factor in isolation and dismiss it for lacking a big enough impact, but they do not pursue the possibility that combinations of country-level factors could together explain or remedy underrepresentation.
- Their own history of the British Labour Party shows that combined factors (a mass union movement funding and sponsoring candidates, union-generated candidate lists, and party dependence on working-class votes) produced a worker share of over a quarter of the Commons by 1929, and no single factor alone would have done so.
- Many of the remedies the authors recommend, such as scholarships, seed money, and candidate schools for working-class candidates, have never been tried at scale in the US, so their limited effect is untested rather than demonstrated.
- The cross-national data is a 2016-18 snapshot taken when unions were weak, inequality was high, and left parties had severed ties with labor, so it understates what is possible when unions are large and powerful inside parties.
- Even modest gains in worker representation would substantially improve the quality of representation, because the candidates who reach the ballot would no longer be only those able to endure the gauntlet liberal democracies impose.
Assumptions
- Variation observed in a 2016-18 cross-section of democracies can be extrapolated to what is possible under very different organizational conditions.
- Factors that are individually small can add up, or interact, to produce large effects.
- Union-party partnerships like Labour's and the SPD's can be rebuilt or adapted today despite the decline of industrial unions and the rise of white-collar unionism.
- Raising working-class representation matters for policy outcomes, and gains short of parity are still worthwhile.
- Organized workers can pressure parties to change their candidate selection rules (the article's title and subhead suggest this).