Workers’ Descriptive Representation in the United Socialist Party, 1938–1968

• In Event: 40420 - Section on Political Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 22: Worker Resistance

Abstract

Workers are heavily underrepresented in party politics, a fact that both reflects and perpetuates economic inequality. Workers’ political representation and economic inequality, however, vary across time and place. Using a unique data set (N=2.374) of membership registers supplemented with and verified by archival data from non-party sources and secondary data on Iceland’s working population, this study examines workers’ descriptive representation in the United Socialist Party (USP), 1938–1968. USP is an interesting case to study workers’ descriptive representation because 1) Iceland was, arguably, the world’s most egalitarian modern democracy during the study period, and 2) USP actively recruited and substantively represented workers but was 3) neither a dominant political party nor did USP membership help members get ahead in society in an era of strong political patronage. Overall, results show that workers were relatively well descriptively represented in USP compared with Iceland’s working population during the study period. Workers were also over-represented among USP’s founding members. However, workers’ descriptive and substantive representation in USP declined after the party’s founding. Moreover, workers’ under-representation vis-à-vis the over-represented middle class was consistent and grew over time parallel to Iceland’s middle class growth and working class decline. Workers were also slightly under-represented on USP’s central committee, whereas the middle class was vastly over-represented. These results help paint a more nuanced picture of workers’ political representation across time and national contexts.

Authors

• Skafti Ingimarsson, University of Iceland

• Kjartan Ólafsson, Social Science Institute (University of Iceland)

• Hermann Óskarsson, University of Akureyri

• Guðmundur Oddsson, University of Akureyri