Doctoral Dissertation Research: Private Social Benefits and Working Class Politics: A Comparative-Historical Analysis

New York University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

SES-1002813 Vivek Chibber Michael McCarthy New York University Current controversies surrounding American working-class voting preferences and political behavior underscore a historical puzzle: why is it that industrial workers in the US never supported a working-class political party to the extent that they did elsewhere? Unlike previous work on this question, this project aims to understand the role of private social provisions adopted by large firms around the turn of the 20th century. While other advanced capitalist countries developed public social welfare policies by this time, America?s unique approach to welfare was, and is, characterized by private social benefits. Does increased income and risk inequality and increased worker-employer cohesion generated by firm-based benefits help account for the relative weakness of the industrial working-class? electoral support for working-class parties in the US? Does the uneven adoption of private social provisions across US industrial municipalities help account for the development of some class-based politics in the US in the early 20th century? This project will answer these questions through comparative-historical analysis at two levels of scale. First, the researcher compares the development of private and public social provisions and industrial working-class politics in America, Britain, and Germany between 1870 and 1929. Then, the researcher analyzes the development of public and private social provisions and industrial working-class politics in two Pennsylvania steel-towns, New Castle and Bethlehem in the same time period. The former saw the emergence of a radical working-class movement that supported the American Socialist Party, while the working class in the latter remained politically divided along ethno-religious lines. Such a project will offer an alternative explanation for industrial working-class political conservatism in the US vis-à-vis its European and Australasian counterparts. In doing so, this study seeks to fill an important gap. Past research is unable to explain internal variation in the US at the municipal level. Broader Impacts While this project will explain why most industrial workers did not adopt class-based politics around the turn of the 20th century, it will also show why they did in select industrial municipalities. However, if the project?s hypotheses are proven correct, it will also demonstrate that private social provisions are causally related to stronger employer preferences for working through the firm, rather than the state, for economic needs. By doing so, the research will provide useful concepts for understanding current controversies concerning working-class and union political behavior.