Can worker codetermination stabilize democracies? Works councils and satisfaction with democracy in Germany

Christian Pfeifer ()
Additional contact information
Christian Pfeifer: Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre

No 420, Working Paper Series in Economics from University of Lüneburg, Institute of Economics

Abstract: Many citizens are relatively dissatisfied with the democratic regimes they live in, which can be a threat to political stability. This paper reports empirical evidence that workers in firms with works councils are on average significantly more satisfied with the democracy as it exists in Germany than workers in firms without such a participatory workplace institution. This result holds in regressions for subsamples, in panel regressions accounting for unobserved individual heterogeneity, and in endogenous treatment regressions. It gives support to the “spillover thesis” that participatory workplace characteristics have a broader effect on society. Consequently, strengthening worker codetermination might help to increase the overall satisfaction with the democratic regime and foster political stability.

Keywords: democracy; codetermination; satisfaction; “spillover thesis”; works councils (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D02 D72 J58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2023-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-des, nep-lab and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.leuphana.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Fors ... df/wp_420_Upload.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lue:wpaper:420

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series in Economics from University of Lüneburg, Institute of Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Wagner ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).