Low industrial conflict can indicate strong, not weak, working-class power.

Evidence

From such a perspective, the power resources approach has been used to analyse levels and changes of industrial conflict in the Western nations. Contrary to what has been argued by many, a high level of industrial conflict in a country need not necessarily reflect a strong working class. In some countries, political parties on the left have been in positions of power which have enabled them to redirect important parts of distributive conflicts from the labour market into democratic politics, thereby making industrial conflict temporarily ‘wither away’ (Korpi, 1978; Korpi and Shalev, 1980). — Walter Korpi, The Iceberg of Power below the Surface, 8

Categorization

• XREF: Shows the same surface-signal inversion the reader is testing: low visible conflict masking high structural capacity.
• QUESTION: Does left-party strength measurably track this relocation of conflict, and could the same relocation hide control deficits in Gilens & Page’s data?