The effect of voting procedures on union representation elections: The multi-union case

Public choice theorists have shown that choice of voting procedures may affect the outcome when more than two alternatives are on a ballot. The run-off election and the two-part ballot are two alternatives used in representation elections involving more than one union. A comparison of these alternatives under various voting strategies shows that the run-off election used by the NLRB results in fewer union wins if workers vote sincerely or if they engage in strategic behavior. The run-off procedure results in more union wins if workers seek to avoid their least-favored option or if they follow a second-best strategy.     

Majority voting rules and the union success rate in national labor relations board representation elections

This paper simulates how the union success rate in representation elections would be affected if the NLRB reverted from its current simple-majority voting rule to its original majority-in-unit voting rule. Such a rule change would have altered 21 percent of decertification and 16 percent of certification victories over the period 1977–81, resulting in the loss of 180,400 actual or potential bargaining unit members for the union movement. Abstentions play an important role in election outcomes. Under the present voting rule unions have no clear advantage to “get out the vote” in decertification elections, but a clear disadvantage in certification elections. Under a majority-in-unit rule unions hold an advantage when they “get out the vote” in all representation elections. I would like to thank Mike Bognanno, Jim Dworkin, Paul Schumann, two reviewers, and the editor for helpful comments and David Wilson for excellent research assistance. I would also like to thank the NLRB for providing the election data tape.     

Representation elections in higher education: Occurrence and outcomes

This study examines factors related to the occurrence of union representation elections in four-year universities and colleges and the outcomes of those elections (i.e., whether or not faculty opt for collective bargaining). In general, the results indicate that the probability of union victory in an election depends on economic conditions, the structural characteristics of the institution, and union density in higher education. For the most part, however, such indicators of institutional vulnerability are not found to be significant determinants of election occurrences. A major implication of this study is that there is a need to investigate more thoroughly the intraorganizational processes of faculty unions with regard to the allocation of organizing resources in order to understand the spread of faculty unionism. It is also suggested that the findings of this study may cast light on the growth of unionism in other white-collar and professional sectors. The authors are grateful to James L. Perry, Jeffrey Pfeffer, Claudia Bird Schoonhoven, and an anonymous reviewer for comments on an earlier version. The research assistance of Ken Bergstrom is also acknowledged.     

Inefficient committees: small elections with three alternatives

We consider small committees which have to elect one of three alternatives using the simple plurality rule. Committee members have common, state-dependent preferences and receive imprecise private signals about the state of nature prior to the election. We are interested in whether the committee decision is efficient, that is whether the probability with which the committee elects the correct alternative is higher than the probability with which one single individual alone—on behalf of the others—would. It has been shown that there exists a unique efficient equilibrium in elections with two alternatives. We show that this result does not extend to elections with more alternatives. Multiple equilibria may exist for the same committee, and there may be both efficient and inefficient ones. Informative voting may or may not be an equilibrium. Also contrary to two-alternative elections, there exist responsive equilibria in which voters vote ‘against’ their signal. As a consequence, only two alternatives receive positive expected vote shares and the outcome is inefficient.     

Success in multiple union elections: Exclusive jurisdiction vs. competition

We consider union success in certification elections where more than one union appears on the election ballot. While union victory rates in single union elections have remained well below 50 percent over the past ten years, we find that unions have been much more successful in multiple union certification elections, with win rates of as high as 90 percent during certain years. We present two theories of union success in multiple union elections and offer relevant empirical results.     

Social media and elections in Singapore: comparing 2011 and 2015

This article applies a theoretical approach that focuses on the interaction between media, politicians, activists, and citizens to investigate the influence of social media during two recent general elections in Singapore. Taking into account the combination of authoritarian governance and popular elections in this city-state, this article utilizes a mixed methods approach (i.e., a combination of statistics and virtual ethnography) to analyze four aspects of this influence. First, social media are used by the opposition parties because they are the only alternative to use in disseminating information and fostering dialogue. However, the ruling authorities use the same social media to counter the opposition. Second, social media empower the opposition by serving as efficient tools to mobilize, organize, and engage active citizens. However, compared to the traditional grassroots approach, online mobilization is not as effective as expected. Third, social media are able to change the perceptions of ordinary citizens regarding the opinion climate, which could be to either the advantage or the disadvantage of the opposition. Finally, the youngest age group (i.e., 21–30 years) was surveyed in both 2011 and 2015 to investigate their responses to these changes. Because of the complex influence of social media in Singapore, the citizens in this age group are particularly prone to being swing voters.     

Sincere voting in models of legislative elections

An assumption of sincere voting for one's most preferred candidate is frequently invoked in models of electoral competition in which the elected legislature consists of more than a single candidate or party. Similarly, such an assumption is more-or-less implicit in many normative discussions of the relative merits of alternative methods for electing a representative assembly. Voters, however, have preferences over policy outcomes—which are determined by the ex post elected legislature—and not over candidates per se. This paper examines the extent to which the sincere voting assumption is legitimate in a wide class of strategic models of legislative elections. The finding is negative, and this has direct implications for the interpretation of conlusions drawn from models—formal or otherwise—which impose sincere voting as an assumption.This paper is a revised version of CalTech Social Science Working Paper #637, and was written while I was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Much of the paper is a result of the efforts of John Ledyard to understand what I was trying to say about the problem. I am extremely grateful for his help, and for his insistence that I look for a theorem and not simply a set of examples. I am also grateful to Kim Border for providing the structure of a proof for one of the results. Despite their imput, I retain all responsibility for any remaining errors and ambiguities.     

Corruption in the politicized university: lessons for Ukraine's 2010 presidential elections

This article argues that corruption is used on a systematic basis as a mechanism of direct and indirect administrative control from the state level down to local authorities and administrations of public and private institutions of higher education. Informal approval of corrupt activities in exchange for loyalty and compliance with the regime was commonplace in the former Soviet Union. This article explains how corrupt regimes maximize their position in terms of loyalty and compliance using the example of the 2004 presidential elections in Ukraine, which later became known as the Orange Revolution. The 2010 presidential elections and their aftermath pose new challenges to those aspiring to power. This article presents mechanisms by which political bureaucracies politicize universities in order to influence students and channel their electoral power during presidential campaigns.     

Competition for popular support: a valence model of elections in Turkey

Models of elections tend to predict that parties will maximize votes by converging to an electoral center. There is no empirical support for this prediction. In order to account for the phenomenon of political divergence, this paper offers a stochastic electoral model where party leaders or candidates are differentiated by differing valences??the electoral perception of the quality of the party leader. If valence is simply intrinsic, then it can be shown that there is a ??convergence coefficient??, defined in terms of the empirical parameters, that must be bounded above by the dimension of the space, in order for the electoral mean to be a Nash equilibrium. This model is applied to elections in Turkey in 1999 and 2002. The idea of valence is then extended to include the possibility that activist groups contribute resources to their favored parties in response to policy concessions from the parties. The equilibrium result is that parties, in order to maximize vote share, must balance a centripetal electoral force against a centrifugal activist effect. We estimate pure spatial models and models with sociodemographic valences, and use simulations to compare the equilibrium predictions with the estimated party positions.     

Positional Independence in Preference Aggregation: A Remark

In a recent article, Quesada (Soc Choice Welfare 20 363–370, 2003) showed that if, for strict preferences, a unique strongly unanimous Choice Function (CF) is used to aggregate preferences position-wise then the resulting Social Welfare Function (SWF) is dictatorial. We show that this result is still true if one allows the use of different choice functions, one for each position. We also show that allowing choice functions not to be unanimous leads to SCW that are perm-dictatorial or imposed. We also show a way to set a dual problem to the one exposed in Que03, namely only perm-dictatorial and imposed SWFs can be decomposed into several Dual Choice Functions.An anonymous referee is thanked for his useful remarks.     

Determinants of the decertification process: Evidence from employer-initiated elections

There have been relatively few studies on why workers choose to decertify a union as their bargaining unit and virtually no empirical studies on the outcomes of employer-initiated representation elections. Using data from the NLRB monthly election reports (1977–1981), we attempt to analyze the factors that seem to influence the outcomes of employer-initiated representation elections with an incumbent union. Variables in our analysis include size of the election unit, region, industrial classification, type of incumbent union, and the state of the local economy. While the data show a concentration of elections on the West Coast, there is no significant difference in the ability of unions there to “win” decertification elections.     

Representation type and union success in certification elections

Many different variables have been used to predict union certification election success; however, none of the studies has explored the impact of representation type. Using NLRB election data for the period from April 1980 through September 1990, we found that affiliation of a local union with the AFL-CIO was detrimental to the success rate of unions in single union and contested certification elections. We offer preliminary interpretations based on fundamental economic themes often applied to collective choice and conclude with implications for union organizing policy. The authors thank Michael Nelson for helpful suggestions and Matthew Harris for research assistance.     

Generic frame building in the 2008 Austrian elections

Media critics repeatedly refer to the adversarial and trivializing nature of contemporary political journalism, whereas the role of political public relations in the formation of these aspects of public political discourse is widely neglected. To gain empirical insight into the formation of negativity, dramatization, game- and conflict-centeredness in campaign communication in the 2008 Austrian elections, this study introduces a biaxial matrix localizing levels of confrontation (negativity and conflict) and entertainment (game and drama). The analysis rests on the comparative investigation of generic frames in political parties’ PR and the media, and the examination of underlying frame building processes. The role of journalism and political public relations in shaping campaign communication is investigated by utilizing concerted content analyses of newspaper and TV news coverage and party press releases. The study finds that Austrian party and media communication can be predominantly categorized as antagonistic substance, characterized by high levels of confrontation (negativity and conflict) and lower levels of entertainment (game and drama). The empirical investigation outlines that conflict and negativity are prevalent features of the electoral communication of Austrian parties and the media likewise, whereby party press releases are even more marked by confrontation and entertainment framing than the subsequent media coverage. In addition, the media are not the principal and exclusive sponsors of confrontation and entertainment in electoral communication; rather, they even moderately decrease conflict and drama as compared to the impulses set by political PR.     

Intercandidate agenda-setting in presidential elections: Issue and attribute agendas in the 2004 campaign

This study examined the role of political public relations in the process of intercandidate agenda-setting. Specifically, a content analysis of news releases, political speeches, and issue platform statements was conducted to assess the salience of issues and attributes in the 2004 presidential election from the Bush, Kerry, and Nader campaigns. While modest evidence for intercandidate agenda-setting associations regarding issue salience was obtained, more robust support was detected for attribute salience relationships. In light of these findings, the theoretical and practical implications for political public relations are discussed.     

The Google voter: search engines and elections in the new media ecology

This paper explores key Internet search trends for electoral information vis-à-vis the broader media ecology in the UK and the US. An innovative methodology is introduced that maps the informational trajectories of key election events by combining Google Trends data linked to significant news events during the campaigns. While the research found spikes of search that suggested a seemingly trivial event in the US could drive voters to search out deeper information on related policy issues, the study did not find the same phenomenon in the UK. This invites a reflection on the opportunities available to Internet users/voters in the changing informational landscape and how scholars can leverage Google Trends records to better understand how voters seek information in new and evolving media ecologies.     

Diversification and win rate in NLRB certification elections

This research examined industrial diversification patterns and win rates within the 1977–1979, 1983–1985 and 1992–1994 periods for all NLRB certification elections of the 30 most active unions in 1977–1979. We found significant change in diversification and little change in average win rates over the study period. The general trend was less total diversification and more unrelated diversification in 1992–1994 relative to 1983–1985 and 1977–1979. Total diversification and election frequency had no impact on win rates. However, related diversification had a significant positive influence on union win rates for elections recorded outside unions’ core organizing industries.     

Probabilistic voting and platform selection in multi-party elections

The literature on stochastic voting to date has focused almost exclusively on models with only two candidates (or parties). This paper studies multiparty competition with stochastic voting. We look at two different models in which candidates aim to maximize their expected vote, as well as a model where the objective of candidates is rank minimization. The equilibria of these models are derived and characterized. We show that the properties of the equilibria are quite different from those derived in deterministic models. Furthermore, the analysis shows that deterministic voting models are not robust since the introduction of even a minute level of uncertainty leads to a drastic change in predictions. Consequently, we argue that the deterministic model provides a misleading benchmark. Stochastic models provide a much richer framework, and the nature of the uncertainty in voter choice is a key determinant of the qualtitative properties of the equilibria.The authors thank Martin Osborne and Maurice Salles for useful comments and suggestions. The first author would also like to thank the Bankard Fund for financial support.