Barry Eidlin (2016) Why Is There No Labor Party in the United States? Political Articulation and the Canadian Comparison, 1932 to 1948, American Sociological Review 81(3):488–516.
Abstract: Why is there no labor party
in the United States? This question has had deep implications for U.S.
politics and social policy. Existing explanations use “reflection”
models of parties, whereby parties reflect preexisting
cleavages or institutional arrangements. But a comparison with Canada,
whose political terrain was supposedly more favorable to labor parties,
challenges reflection models. Newly compiled electoral data show that
underlying social structures and institutions
did not affect labor party support as expected: support was similar in
both countries prior to the 1930s, then diverged. To explain this, I
propose a modified “articulation” model of parties, emphasizing parties’
role in assembling and naturalizing political
coalitions within structural constraints. In both cases, ruling party
responses to labor and agrarian unrest during the Great Depression
determined which among a range of possible political alliances actually
emerged. In the United States, FDR used the crisis
to mobilize new constituencies. Rhetorical appeals to the “forgotten
man” and policy reforms absorbed some farmer and labor groups into the
New Deal coalition and divided and excluded others, undermining labor
party support. In Canada, mainstream parties excluded
farmer and labor constituencies, leaving room for the Cooperative
Commonwealth Federation (CCF) to organize them into a third-party
coalition.
