Newswise — Election year 2024 is now well and truly underway. But what does political engagement mean for your career? Researchers of Ghent University examined the stigma surrounding the seven main parties through an innovative experiment.
The abundance of international scientific research on labour market discrimination on the basis of, say, gender, ethnicity and religion contrasts sharply with the limited evidence on discrimination on the basis of political preference, which is nevertheless also prohibited in many Western countries. This gap is now being filled by labour economists Eline Moens, Dyllis De Pessemier and Stijn Baert.
"Recently, in a large meta-analysis, we brought together findings from all practice tests conducted worldwide between 2005 and 2020 to get a view on which forms of discrimination are most pronounced. We could not even include discrimination on the basis of political affiliation, because there was only one practice test on this globally in Web of Science, in the US two-party system."
Professor of labour economics Stijn Baert (UGent)
In an innovative experiment, they had real Belgian recruiters rate applicants by personality, attractiveness to work with and attractiveness to recruit. Among other things, these applicants differed in the extracurricular activities section of their CV: no commitment, a commitment as a volunteer or a political commitment as a board member, secretary or treasurer for a particular party. Since these characteristics were assigned to (otherwise) different candidates for each recruiter, they could be sure that an effect of political commitment could be measured purely.
Engagement at right-wing nationalist party? Lower chance of getting hired!
In particular, there are stigmas for applicants who are known to be committed to the right-wing nationalist party (‘Vlaams Belang’). They are attributed lower creativity, open-mindedness and empathy. Moreover, their stress tolerance is estimated to be lower than someone without political commitment. On the other hand, in addition to their assertiveness, their emotional stability is also rated as higher than someone without political commitment.
"Interestingly, the estimation of better emotional stability is also found for all other parties: left-wing socialists, green, social democrats, Christian democrats, liberal democrats and nationalists."
Doctoral researcher labour and welfare economics Eline Moens (UGent)
Those who commit to the right-wing nationalist party are also thought to be less likely to cooperate with employers, customers and colleagues (and less likely to cooperate themselves).
Overall, the probability of recruitment is estimated to be lower for candidates committed to the right-wing nationalist party.
What associations for political engagement with other parties?
For candidates with a commitment to the greens (‘Groen’), the chance of being invited to an interview, as well as the chance of eventually being effectively recruited, is rated higher. They are also thought to be better organised.
Candidates who are committed to the nationalist party (‘N-VA’) are also expected to be better organised, but also to handle stress better. So, mainly positive associations, although these do not translate into a higher (estimated) chance of getting a job.
In turn, those who are board members, secretaries or treasurers of the left-wing socialist party (‘PVDA’) are broadly believed by recruiters that clients will prefer to work with them, but employers less so.
And the recruiters themselves?
The experiment was conducted in May 2023. A total of 1250 fictitious profiles were assessed. The recruiters were selected randomly via the VDAB job database, Flanders’ main job-finding channel.
Interestingly, the political preferences of these recruiters were quite in line with those for the broader population. No interaction was found in the ratings between one's own preference and that of the applicants, unlike in the aforementioned US survey.
The aforementioned survey results were also robust to the measured propensity for socially desirable responses among recruiters.
The authors acknowledge the specificity of the results for the Flemish context, as only Flemish political parties were included, and participants were only professionally active in Flanders. Although the included parties are very similar in ideology to parties elsewhere in the world, especially in Europe, where even groups are formed within the European Parliament based on these ideological similarities, it is possible that the image of these parties can vary from country to country. While the authors do not immediately see reasons that, say, the established stigma regarding personality traits should be very context-sensitive, they are outspoken in asking for replication of our research within: i) other countries with multi-party systems, and ii) contexts with other political systems.
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