Responsible researcher: Bruno Benevit
Authors: Mounir Karadja and Erik Prawitz
Original title: Exit, Voice, and Political Change: Evidence from Swedish Mass Migration to the United States
Intervention Location: Sweden
Sample Size: 1.1 million emigrants
Sector: Political Economy
Variable of Main Interest: Participation in labor movements
Type of Intervention: Emigration
Methodology: OLS, IV
Summary
The migration process between countries can have diverse economic and political consequences. This phenomenon can affect both countries that receive the immigration flow and countries that undergo an emigration process, the latter commonly involving a mass movement resulting from internal issues within the countries. To analyze the mass emigration of Swedes to the United States over the decades, this study verified its impacts on political aspects in Sweden. The results demonstrated that the Swedish emigration process led to an increase in labor party membership, participation in strikes and participation in voting, in addition to the adoption of more inclusive political institutions and increased spending on social welfare programs.
The migratory process simultaneously involves emigration and immigration flows, occurring due to political, economic and social aspects. The Era of Mass Migration, which began in the 19th century, marked a significant period in global history, with approximately 30 million Europeans leaving their home countries in search of opportunities in the United States (KARADJA; PRAWITZ, 2019). This massive movement of people not only transformed the demographic landscapes of the countries involved, but also had profound political and social repercussions.
In countries of origin, mass migration influenced union structure, with evidence that countries with large emigrant populations, such as Italy, Germany, Ireland and Sweden, had higher rates of unionization. Furthermore, mass migration coincided with an increase in democratization, with many European countries adopting democratic institutions and expanding voting rights. These changes suggest that the United States' open borders policy during this period may have played a crucial role in political development in both the New World and the Old World. Additional studies are needed to better understand this complex relationship between mass migration, unionization and democratization.
Sweden experienced severe frosts in the 1860s, resulting in a severe negative shock to its agricultural sector, the country's predominant economic sector (KARADJA; PRAWITZ, 2019). At the same time, during the late 19th century and early 20th century, there was great tension between Swedish economic and political elites and workers around better working conditions and rights. The labor movement was mostly represented by labor unions and the Social Democratic Party, the party that governed Sweden for most of the 20th century. In this context, unions encouraged emigration, imposing pressure on economic and political elites to meet citizens' demands (BEIJBOM, 1995).
Therefore, emigration had great interaction with labor and political aspects in the country, suggesting possible implications arising from such demographic movements. According to the authors, the first waves of emigration potentially led to the possibility of better employment options for subsequent Swedish emigrants as they led to a reduction in movement costs (KARADJA; PRAWITZ, 2019).
The mass emigration experienced by Sweden since the 19th century was a phenomenon that lasted several decades. Based on the mechanisms presented by Kapur & McHale (2005), the study explored four channels to explain the waves of migration from Sweden to the United States:
The study used a series of data sources relating to the period between the 1860s and 1940s, where the country's economy, mostly agrarian at the beginning of the 19th century, underwent strong industrialization throughout these years. The sources used included data from the State Church in Sweden, shipping companies, the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, the Socialist Movement Archive, the Swedish National Archive and various government reports.
The data covered municipal-level aspects of emigration, voting participation, labor movement, strike participation, daily climate data, agricultural harvest performance, public social spending and type of political institutions. Additionally, mortality rates of children and mothers were considered, in addition to demographic microdata on sex, marital status, family structure and occupation aggregated at the municipal level. Emigration data from the State Church in Sweden were compared to those recorded by shipping companies, indicating reliability in the data considered. The study's final sample contained a total of 1.1 million emigrants between 1867 and 1920.
This study sought to estimate the impact of the first waves of emigration from Sweden to the United States, verifying whether this initial flow provided better employment options for subsequent Swedish emigrants. Thus, an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) model was used to estimate the impact of the logarithm of accumulated emigration in relation to the year 1867 on the political outcome variables.
Simultaneously, the effect of local frost shocks in Sweden experienced between 1864 and 1867 on the Swedish emigration process and its implications on the country's political environment was estimated. To this end, the standard deviation of temperature levels was used as an identification strategy for frost shocks during emigration, and was subsequently considered an instrument for the interaction of frost shocks with the distance to the two closest emigration ports. Using the interaction term as an instrument allows emigration to be estimated, preventing the direct effects of economic shocks from affecting the results.
As the main outcome variable of the political environment in Sweden, it was observed how membership in the local labor movement was affected, defined as a single variable identifying the number of trade union members and the number of members of the Social Democratic Party between 1900 and 1920 In addition, impacts on social welfare spending and the type of political institutions (direct or representative democracy) were also estimated.
In order to corroborate the mechanism presented by the authors, the effects of frost on agricultural productivity in Sweden were verified. As a robustness strategy, the balance between pre-determined covariates was verified, placebo tests were carried out considering other periods for frost shock events, and models were considered controlling possible impacts of municipalities' access to ports (in terms away).
The results found presented robust evidence of a positive effect of emigration on various political aspects in Sweden. The preferred estimate identified suggested that a municipality that doubles its emigration over a 30-year period increases local labor movement membership by 2.3 percentage points (pp). This impact corresponds to moving a municipality from the average to the 90th percentile of the distribution of membership rates. Furthermore, it was observed that this pattern developed increasingly over the years 1890 to 1920, suggesting a relationship with late industrialization in Sweden and the growth of the labor movement resulting from this nascent sector. Related to political tensions between businesspeople and workers, the results also indicated that the increase in emigration significantly increased workers' participation in the 1909 general strike. This effect was higher among unionized workers, indicating that emigration brought persistent effects on participation in labor movements.
Regarding the consequences for the performance of left-wing parties in elections between 1911 and 1921, estimates indicated that a 10% increase in emigration caused an increase of 1.2 pp in the share of votes for left-wing parties, with stronger effects on elections closer to the start of the emigration process. In addition, the results found also indicated that a 10% increase in emigration induced a 0.8 pp increase in voter turnout in this period, marked by the establishment of universal suffrage in 1921. The authors also identified that this effect remained persistent until the elections from 1998 to 2014, albeit on a smaller scale.
In terms of social policies, the results identified that municipal spending on social welfare programs increased 40% above average, as emigration doubled. Additionally, it was estimated that this same scale of increase in emigration caused an increase of 4.7 pp in the probability of adopting representative democracy, institutionally more inclusive in relation to the alternative of direct democracy, commonly captured by elites due to low popular participation.
Regarding the possible mechanisms that explain the political change, the evidence confirming the increase in workers' bargaining power stands out. In this sense, it was observed that places with more migrant networks are more likely to emigrate during years when the difference between the GDP of the United States and Sweden is greater. Furthermore, even as workers across Sweden migrated to other parts of the country to take advantage of higher wages in the industrial sector, this option was apparently not attractive to those who could easily emigrate instead. As a consequence, there was a significant increase in the wages of workers, including those with low qualifications.
This article examined how the large-scale emigration from Sweden to the United States observed in the Era of Mass Migration period affected the political development of the Scandinavian country. Using an instrument based on travel costs and the severe agricultural shocks that initiated migration to the United States, it was found that emigration caused significantly higher rates of labor organization, strike participation, voter turnout, and left-leaning voting. long term. The Swedes' emigration process improved the external options of connected citizens, implying positive effects on the support and implementation of redistribution during a period when Sweden was not yet democratic. The relevance of migration in the establishment of representative democracy and the expansion of labor rights amid nascent industrialization in Sweden highlights the importance of bargaining dynamics between citizens and elites in fostering more inclusive political institutions.
References
BEIJBOM, U. Mot löftets land: den svenska utvandringen . Stockholm: LTs förlag, 1995.
KAPUR, D.; MCHALE, J. Give us your best and brightest: the global hunt for talent and its impact on the developing world . Washington, DC: Center for Global Development, 2005.
KARADJA, M.; PRAWITZ, E. Exit, Voice, and Political Change: Evidence from Swedish Mass Migration to the United States. Journal of Political Economy , vol. 127, no. 4, p. 1864–1925, Aug. 2019.
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