Belonging to unions across the world: Macro and micro dynamics

Abstract

This study examines global unionization dynamics by analyzing how macro-level contexts and individual characteristics interact. Employing multilevel models on data from 75 countries, we demonstrate that democracy’s effect on union membership operates primarily through its interactions with individual characteristics: democracy strengthens the effect of left-wing orientations on unionization while attenuating class-based disparities, enabling workers in precarious positions to narrow the membership gap with more advantaged workers. Economic integration, by contrast, depresses unionization mostly among lower-class workers—widening class-based inequalities—while narrowing ideological gaps by pushing membership down across the political spectrum. These results indicate that macro- and micro-level factors do not operate independently; rather, political and economic contexts condition how class position and ideology shape workers’ decisions to unionize. The findings refine “conflict follows capital” argument by showing that while capital mobility repositions potential sites of conflict, it is political openings that structure whether this conflict crystallizes into unionization, and for whom.