solid labor constituent base,while Right-leaning governments will favor relatively low ILM levels to help keep the business constituent base together.7 2.3.Unions and their moderation effects In the process of partisan manipulation of labor mobility,some mediating political economy factors also need to be considered;specifically,labor unions at various levels can play important roles in aggregating and representing the economic demands and political preferences of labor owners as well as having their independent impact on labor markets and government policies,thus they can help shape the labor market equilibria, especially in capitalist democracies. Alvarez,Garrett and Lange argued that when there are left governments coupled with centralized labor movement,or when there are right governments with weak labor movement,the macroeconomic performance of the country will be better than in other combinations(Alvarez et al.1991).Garrett further developed the idea of encompassness of labor movement and argued that macroeconomic performance will be good when the political economies are coherent,that is,either when left-wing governments are allied with encompassing labor market institutions or when right-wing governments are 7 One concern of using the intuition and logic of the Jones model to reveal the relationship between labor mobility and labor cohesiveness is that there are usually different groups of workers in the labor market and their mobility at sector level may be different from the aggregate national labor mobility on which the previous discussions rely.It may be that groups of workers enjoy different cross-sector mobility (often determined by skill levels)so that high national ILM may not equate high mobility for all workers and thus high labor class solidarity.The concern is that sectors that benefit from limited cross-sector mobility may lobby the government not to (continue to)pursue high aggregate labor mobility,so that even if high ILM levels are desirable,governments may not actually pursue them.In addition to a major intervening factor identified in the next section,we offer two possibilities to address this concern.First,this concern hinges on the willingness and capacity of interest groups to pursue their specialized interests,yet it is not clear that all interest groups in all countries can and will seek special treatment or protection as expressed in this concern (Wade 1993).Realization of special interests preferences also depends critically on the configuration of a country's political institutions and its geography (McGillivray 2004),that not all countries can claim to have a favorable environment for the protection for sale model to work.Second,even if we do allow the special interest groups to have direct access to government policy making,it is not clear that they will lobby for a coherent set of policies regarding ILM.It may well be that some groups(sectors)prefer high aggregate ILM,while others prefer low ILM,and on net these diverging influences may cancel each other out so as not to have much impact on government policy making. Hence in this paper we focus on the aggregate cross-sectoral labor mobility levels.solid labor constituent base, while Right-leaning governments will favor relatively low ILM levels to help keep the business constituent base together. 7 2.3. Unions and their moderation effects In the process of partisan manipulation of labor mobility, some mediating political economy factors also need to be considered; specifically, labor unions at various levels can play important roles in aggregating and representing the economic demands and political preferences of labor owners as well as having their independent impact on labor markets and government policies, thus they can help shape the labor market equilibria, especially in capitalist democracies. Alvarez, Garrett and Lange argued that when there are left governments coupled with centralized labor movement, or when there are right governments with weak labor movement, the macroeconomic performance of the country will be better than in other combinations (Alvarez et al. 1991). Garrett further developed the idea of encompassness of labor movement and argued that macroeconomic performance will be good when the political economies are coherent, that is, either when left-wing governments are allied with encompassing labor market institutions or when right-wing governments are 7 One concern of using the intuition and logic of the Jones model to reveal the relationship between labor mobility and labor cohesiveness is that there are usually different groups of workers in the labor market and their mobility at sector level may be different from the aggregate national labor mobility on which the previous discussions rely. It may be that groups of workers enjoy different cross-sector mobility (often determined by skill levels) so that high national ILM may not equate high mobility for all workers and thus high labor class solidarity. The concern is that sectors that benefit from limited cross-sector mobility may lobby the government not to (continue to) pursue high aggregate labor mobility, so that even if high ILM levels are desirable, governments may not actually pursue them. In addition to a major intervening factor identified in the next section, we offer two possibilities to address this concern. First, this concern hinges on the willingness and capacity of interest groups to pursue their specialized interests, yet it is not clear that all interest groups in all countries can and will seek special treatment or protection as expressed in this concern (Wade 1993). Realization of special interests preferences also depends critically on the configuration of a country’s political institutions and its geography (McGillivray 2004), that not all countries can claim to have a favorable environment for the protection for sale model to work. Second, even if we do allow the special interest groups to have direct access to government policy making, it is not clear that they will lobby for a coherent set of policies regarding ILM. It may well be that some groups (sectors) prefer high aggregate ILM, while others prefer low ILM, and on net these diverging influences may cancel each other out so as not to have much impact on government policy making. Hence in this paper we focus on the aggregate cross-sectoral labor mobility levels