Political Participation and the Workplace: The Spillover Thesis Revisited Neil Carter Current concern about declining public participation has ignored the potential of workplace democ- racy to encourage citizen involvement in political activities. Yet, Carole Pateman, in one of the classic texts of participatory democratic theory, outlines the ‘spillover thesis’, which posits a direct link between workplace participation, political efficacy and public participation. The lack of strong empir- ical evidence supporting this causal relationship suggests that the processes underpinning the ‘spillover thesis’, particularly between workplace participation and political efficacy, are more complex than Pateman acknowledged. A detailed review of empirical studies of worker co-operatives indicates that the ‘spillover thesis’ needs respecification to take account of seven variables that can shape the relationship between workplace participation and political efficacy. The case for support- ing worker co-operatives as an institutional solution to declining public participation is weak. Introduction Enthusiasm for workplace democracy in the 1970s and 1980s saw many heroic claims made on behalf of the humble worker co-operative. Proponents argued that worker co-operatives could, inter alia, eliminate the exploitation of labour, create jobs, improve industrial relations, raise productivity and reduce worker alienation. More grandly, they were seen variously as a precursor of socialist organisation (Benn 1980), the basis for a market socialist economy (Miller 1989), an instrument for reducing the power of corporate capitalism (Dahl 1985) and a solution to stagflation (Jay 1980). In Britain, however, despite the best efforts of a swathe of Co-operative Development Agencies created during the 1980s, the co-operative sector remained tiny, peaking at about 1,400, mostly small, co-operatives and pro- viding work for approximately 10,000 people (Hobbs and Jefferis 1990). Not sur- prisingly, political and academic interest in workplace democracy has declined in recent years. Contemporary concern about a ‘new’ problem, the apparent decline in public participation in political activities, suggests that it might be time to revisit worker co-operatives. 1 With the political elite currently casting around for institutional innovations that might produce a more active citizenry, little attention has been directed to worker co-operatives. Yet, several of the leading proponents of partici- patory democracy have specifically emphasised the importance of democratising the workplace. In particular, Carole Pateman (1970) argued that participation in workplace decision-making will spill over into wider society by increasing the prob- ability of participation in politics beyond the workplace. Indeed, Ronald Mason BJPIR: 2006 VOL 8, 410–426 © 2006 The Author. Journal compilation © 2006 Political Studies Association doi: 10.1111/j.1467-856x.2006.00218.x