Does participation in the workplace spill over into political participation? A latent class analysis approach to patterns of political behavior

Purpose: This study examines Pateman's “spillover thesis” that democratic participation in the workplace will “spill over” into political participation. It applies a latent class analysis (LCA) to identify patterns of political behavior and uses workplace participation and political efficacy as predicting variables of political behavior patterns. Design/methodology/approach: This study analyzed the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) in 2014 General Social Survey (GSS) data. This study applied a LCA to identify distinct patterns in people's political behaviors and did a multinomial regression analysis to predict the patterns with workplace participation and political efficacy. Findings: The study found partial support for the spillover thesis. Among three distinct political behavior patterns, two active patterns were associated with political efficacy. However, the mediation from workplace participation to political participation through political efficacy was not supported. Respondents involved in workplace units that collectively make work-related decisions were more likely to be active in political behaviors, but only one set of political activities. Higher political efficacy was found to lead to more active overall political participation of both patterns. Originality/value: Unlike the previous studies of democratic spillover, which treated political behaviors either as independent types of behaviors or as a summative index of such binary coded variables, this study addressed such shortcomings of the previous studies by providing a more complex picture of political behavior patterns and their relationship with workplace participation. Future research can build on this unique methodological endeavor to explore a holistic picture of how workplace practices can influence politics and democracy through individual workers.