Employment effects on socio-politically extreme beliefs: Cross-national evidence from Europe

Abstract

While it is well-known that spillovers occur between the workplace and wider civic society, examinations of these spillovers are largely limited to how individual and collective voice correlate with neutral civic participation. The spillover from broader work experiences to more extreme socio-political beliefs and attitudes is less established, even as organizations are recognized as important political arenas for workers amid rising extremism. We theorize that work experiences can reduce individual-level socio-political extremism primarily via control loss mitigation and exposure to new perspectives. We also posit heterogeneous effects depending on the type of work experience. We start by using European Social Survey data from 31 European countries in 2020-2021 (Round 10). Multivariate analysis reveals multidirectional but largely negative correlations between positive employment practices and socio-political extremism, which hold after conditioning on numerous confounders, including political ideology, job characteristics, and beliefs outside work, and are robust to using earlier ESS data. We then conduct two original experiments to reinforce key findings and address endogeneity. Our outcomes have implications for the wider social and political consequences of work and suggest that positive employment practices may help dampen socio-politically extreme beliefs.

Biography

Ryan Lamare is Professor of Employment Relations and Human Resource Management at the London School of Economics (LSE). Prior to joining LSE, he was the Reuben G. Soderstrom International Labor Relations Professor in the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has held previous positions at Penn State University, the University of Manchester, and the University of Limerick. He received his PhD in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University. Ryan’s main research interests are in quantitative empirical analyses of the interactions between institutions and ER/HR actors. His research consists of two main projects connected to this theme: the relationships between workplace actors and the political arena, and the use of private workplace conflict management systems at organizations. In related projects, he examines the ties between institutions and employee voice at multinational firms, and the ways in which macro-level shocks affect workplaces. He has published widely on these issues at outlets like British Journal of Industrial Relations, ILR Review, and Industrial Relations, as well as top journals in HR and management, work sociology, law, and political science. He is currently Editor-in-Chief at British Journal of Industrial Relations.