Trade unions,not tribunates: Contrasting two proposals of anti-oligarchic democratic innovation

Abstract

Political theorists concerned with addressing oligarchic capture have increasingly engaged with the proposal of a people's tribunate as a promising anti-oligarchic democratic innovation. However, there are a range of issues with the proposal which put doubt on its capacity to address the diagnosed pathologies. Against the backdrop of recent talk of a trade union comeback, I argue that reviving (bottom-up, participatory, and oppositional) trade unions is more desirable and straightforward in this regard. I first identify five functions attributed to the tribunate in the literature and call into question its ability to sufficiently deliver on these functions. I then highlight how trade unions, in contrast, can fulfil each of them similarly well or better. In a second step, I give three independent reasons why trade unions should be prioritized. First, the trade union proposal takes more seriously the interrelation between the distribution of social and political power; second, it has the additional advantage of facilitating material redistribution; and third, it faces fewer feasibility concerns. Finally, I argue that this proposal is consistent with tribunate proponents’ political analysis and theoretical commitments such that they should, in principle, be open to it.

Introduction

Political theorists concerned with addressing oligarchic capture of contemporary democracies have increasingly engaged with the proposal of a tribunate as a promising anti-oligarchic democratic innovation (Arlen and Rossi, 2021: 40–41; Austrup, 2024; Hamilton, 2014; Harting, 2023: 844, 2024; McCormick, 2011: 187; Prinz and Westphal, 2024; Vergara, 2020). Oligarchic capture of democratic institutions refers to the fact that money and social power translates into political power and that the (super-)rich have disproportionate influence over policy-making despite achievements such as formal political equality (Arlen, 2019; Arlen and Rossi, 2021; Bagg, 2018, 2024). ¹ The problems of unequal responsiveness, representation, and participation along the lines of class and of the concentrated power of socio-economic elites are both part of the issue. The tribunate is inspired by Roman republican history and proposed as a further constitutional body endowed with a range of oversight and contestatory powers. It is reserved for ordinary, non-wealthy people selected by lot and thus a class-specific institution excluding socio-economic and political elites (Harting, 2023). Despite the value of the literature on tribunates in diagnosing oligarchic capture, I cast doubt on these proposals’ capacity to effectively address the problem. In particular, I question the likelihood of the tribunate to fulfil its expected functions. To be sure, criticism has already been levelled against the proposal. However, it has so far mainly addressed the specificities of institutional design, for example, its size or eligibility criteria (Arlen and Rossi, 2021; Harting, 2023, 2024; Prinz and Westphal, 2024). A more fundamental discussion of the adequacy of the tribunate proposal in light of the underlying political analysis is largely missing (but see Bagg, 2022).

Building on tribunates’ alleged anti-oligarchic functions, I propose a constructive alternative. Against the backdrop of recent talk of a trade union-comeback, I argue that reviving trade unions is more desirable and straightforward when it comes to fighting oligarchic capture. ² Moreover, I show that this proposal is consistent with the political analysis and theoretical commitments of tribunate proponents. Concretely, I argue that it takes some of their grounding insights concerning the political relevance of the inequality of social power more seriously. Note that my argument does not imply that the two institutions, tribunates and trade unions, are of the same kind. For one, whereas the tribunate would be part of the constitutional set-up of the polity, trade unions are independent civil society organizations. Even when they are constitutionalized, as in the German institution of Tarifautonomie in Article 9 of the German Grundgesetz, their impact on the legislative process is less direct than a tribunate's impact would be. Nonetheless, and as I will demonstrate, their indirect impact does not diminish their political relevance but may in fact represent an advantage vis-à-vis the tribunate proposal. Moreover, I do not argue that trade unions and tribunates are mutually exclusive. Insofar as they have quite distinctive modes of operation as well as domains, they could in principle complement each other, one focusing on the politics of work, the other on legislative and constitutional politics. But when it comes to countering oligarchic capture today, I argue that trade unions should be prioritized.

My argument develops as follows. After briefly illustrating the core idea and some criticisms of the tribunate proposal, I make the alternative case for particular kinds of trade unions in two steps. Having developed my vision of trade unions, I identify five functions attributed to the tribunate in the literature: (1) equalizing citizen participation, (2) strengthening non-wealthy citizens’ class-consciousness, (3) improving ordinary people's political knowledge, (4) facilitating solidarity and collective agency, and (5) establishing a counterweight to elite-dominated institutions. Here, I question the tribunate's ability to sufficiently deliver on these functions in a realistic way and highlight how trade unions, in contrast, can fulfil each of them similarly well or better. In a second step, I claim that reviving trade unions is more desirable than introducing tribunates in addressing the problem of oligarchic capture, providing three independent reasons. First, the trade union proposal takes more seriously the interrelation between the distribution of social power and political power; second, it has the additional advantage of facilitating material redistribution; and third, it faces fewer feasibility concerns.

The tribunate

Based on the ancient Roman experience, the tribunate is envisioned as part of a “new mixed regime” (Arlen, 2019), where class-specific—“plebeian”—institutions work side by side with established ones based on formally equal eligibility. ³ In the now-classic, Machiavelli-inspired “heuristic proposal” by McCormick (2011: 183–184), the tribunate is made up of 51 non-wealthy citizens selected by lot for one-year terms, and able to initiate impeachment proceedings against one corrupt politician, veto one piece of elite-biased legislation, and call one referendum. It is intended to address two shortcomings which he sees in contemporary representative democracies, both related to a diagnosed lack of political equality: “(1) the absence of extra-electoral means by which the general citizenry renders political elites accountable […]; and (2) the lack of a quasi-formal distinction between economic-political elites and common citizens” (McCormick, 2011: 178–179).

The tribunate, then, is supposed to facilitate “popular control of elites” (McCormick, 2011: 173, 183) and to formally institutionalize the class distinctions that have informally shaped the political process. The divide between ordinary people and the elite is to be given more prominence in the set-up of the polity without compromising formal political equality (Arlen and Rossi, 2021: 41; Prinz and Westphal, 2024: 61, 66). ⁴ In the face of unequal responsiveness of democratic institutions and concentrated power along the lines of class, class conflict must be institutionalized politically (Arlen and Rossi, 2021: 40–42; McCormick, 2011: viii, 187), not disguised by the semblance of class neutrality. Therefore, socio-economic and political elites cannot be part of the tribunate—a feature which Harting calls the “exclusion condition” of class-specific institutions (2023: 846).

This proposal has been widely discussed and modified, often based on a range of criticisms mounted against details of the institutional design. Some versions of the tribunate suggest a system of plebeian assemblies tasked with reviewing specific oligarchy-prone policy areas such as office-holding, lobbying, private ownership of mass media, and philanthropy (Arlen and Rossi, 2021: 41), or extend the tribunate's tasks to include, for example, popular veto-powers (Jörke, 2016) or agenda-setting capacities (Prinz and Westphal, 2024). Motivated by the critique that tribunates give “plebeians” too little authority, others add the tribunate as another plebeian counter-power to the more crucial network of local assemblies (Vergara, 2020: 232). Similarly, the range of tribunate proposals have been criticized for covering only one aspect of egalitarian empowerment—that of oversight and contestation—at the expense of direct legislative working-class inclusion (Austrup, 2024: 2). Moreover, the danger of democratic gridlock in such a “new mixed regime” has been noted, insofar as parliament may work strategically to make the tribunate a toothless tiger (Austrup, 2024: 12; cit. Hamilton, 2014: 204; Smith and Owen, 2011: 213; Vergara, 2020: 232). The worry is that parliament may simply create legislation intended to prompt the tribunate's reaction, such that the tribunate has to “waste” its annually restricted powers on preventing such a piece of mock legislation.

A more fundamental direction of criticism concerns the class-specific character of the tribunate, which has been challenged from two opposing sides. First, some commentators reject the decisiveness of the socio-economic cleavage and discard the “exclusion condition” from their version of the “plebeian tribunate” (Prinz and Westphal, 2024; Vergara, 2020: 227–228). In effect, their tribunate only faintly resembles the agenda which the tribunate was originally intended to contribute to, namely, to tackle exactly the class dimension of current democratic pathologies. Secondly, class-specificity has been criticized by those who hold that class distinctions can only ever be transitionally legitimate and should be aimed at making themselves redundant eventually (Harting, 2023: 858). In this view, proponents should prove that the tribunate helps to overcome class divisions toward a just society. However, it appears that expecting from institutions intended to mitigate some pathology the “ability to contribute to eroding the unjust conditions that triggered the need for them” (Harting, 2023: 862) may risk overburdening them. And the concrete measure suggested for giving the tribunate a “transitional rationale,” namely “periodic convention[s]” to review whether it “has helped eliminate wealth-generated political privilege” (Harting, 2023: 861), buttresses this impression.

A last direction of criticism—not pronounced in the literature but stressed here—is the issue of feasibility. Even though at least some tribunate proponents are explicitly concerned with improving democracy here and now (e.g. Arlen and Rossi, 2021; Prinz and Westphal, 2024), there is little engagement with whether the proposal has more than a faint chance of being realized. Given the concern for the repercussions of oligarchic capture, this is especially surprising, insofar as captured political systems are structurally unlikely to instantiate progressive constitutional reform. ⁵ Early commentators on McCormick's proposal already raised the issue, stating that “[w]hether the People's Tribunate represents the best option for institutional reform hangs not simply on the relevant political goods that it helps realise but also on its comparative feasibility with respect to other plausible options” (Smith and Owen, 2011: 214). Accordingly, the debate on the tribunate is lacking a comparative evaluation of its desirability. That is, there has so far not been any engagement with the question of whether more viable alternative institutions or practices could functionally outperform the tribunate.

The case for trade unions

I argue that there is indeed another more feasible option for realizing the invaluable political goods attributed to the tribunate, namely, trade unions. ⁶ To do so, I will synthesize these goods into five functions, engage with some of the comparative shortcomings of the tribunate, and highlight how trade unions can fulfil each of them similarly well or better. In the following section, I will provide additional reasons for why reviving trade unions is a superior solution in mitigating the pathologies the tribunate is intended to address, which does not run into some of the tribunate's problems criticized in the literature. As already stressed, this is not to say that trade unions and tribunates are institutions of the same kind or that trade unions fulfil exclusively the delineated functions of the tribunate. Instead, I contrast them as two potential “institutional avenues for promoting popular participation and for securing elite responsiveness” (McCormick, 2011: 190) in the face of oligarchic capture. While they are compatible in principle, I argue that there are good reasons to prioritize trade union revitalization and that, when successful, redundancy issues may arise.

I am aware that trade union politics are heterogeneous and that some are more desirable from a democratic point of view than others. In the background of this elaboration is thus a specific vision of trade unions, namely a member-led, bottom-up, oppositional conception, not a “service model” run by officials in which members do little more than paying fees. Since the 1970s, many unions have come to resemble the latter rather than the former model and have attracted the accusation of being undemocratic. Consequently, some put their hope instead into loose social movements or instances of grassroots mobilization, as favored by radical democrats skeptical of any formalized organization (Harting, 2023: 844). My vision of trade unions, not hostile to long-term organizational forms, is informed by the union revitalization movement as well as current research in labor studies. Both highlight the need for rank-and-file participation and an oppositional orientation if unions are to live up to their democratic credentials and to (re)gain strength (see Blanc, 2025; McAlevey, 2016). The idea is to empower workers to develop a strategy themselves and to take the lead in their industrial struggles. And tactics such as organizing are emphasized as instruments for unionizing crucial new and more precarious sectors like the service economy, which do not benefit from a long union tradition, and which are structurally harder to unionize. Crucially, I take trade unions to be potentially representative of a large section of the population and open to a wide range of occupations, from highly precarious workers to upper-middle-class professionals. ⁷ Not only is membership available also for non-workers such as pensioners or the unemployed, and unions advance their agenda as well, but they also foster social justice more generally and thus benefit society at large (O'Neill and White, 2018: 267).

Currently, such a vision of trade unions is far from broadly realized. But it is a tangible proposal actively pursued by an increasing number of workers and unionists. It is also less vulnerable than the “service model” to the venerable criticism that unions constitute just another form of domination of workers (see e.g. Honneth, 2024: 170–171; Umbers, 2023: 1423). In fact, it is a criticism voiced by McCormick (2011: 173) as well when he considers the modifying influence of different union-state arrangements on the political inclusion of different social groups, particularly labor. He expects unions to “facilitate ‘domination by one's own’” due to the severe power differentials between union elites and members, which is why he takes the tribunate to be more reliable in “plac[ing] ‘rank-and-file’ plebs in positions of political authority on a regular basis” (2011: 173; cit. Michels, 1966). I challenge this conclusion below.

Five anti-oligarchic functions

As a first step in making the case for trade unions over tribunates, I contrast the two as different “institutional avenues” for fulfilling a range of anti-oligarchic functions highlighted by tribunate proponents. While contributors stress different aspects of what the tribunate is expected to achieve, there are common themes which can be synthesized into five functions. The tribunate is supposed to mitigate oligarchic capture by establishing non-elite countervailing power and by facilitating popular control over elites. More specifically, tribunates are expected to (1) equalize citizen participation, (2) strengthen non-wealthy citizens’ class-consciousness and (3) improve ordinary people's political knowledge as first steps to achieve these goals, and to (4) facilitate solidarity and collective agency as a precondition for (5) establishing a counterweight to elite-dominated institutions. All of these functions are imagined as working together, and they intersect to some degree. For each function, I will first explain how proponents expect the tribunate to fulfil it, advance considerations that doubt their capacity, and explore how trade unions may functionally outperform them.

When it comes to the first function of equalizing citizen participation, the decisive rationale of the tribunate is to empower ordinary citizens and to establish them as a countervailing power against the backdrop of the wealthy's unequal political influence on the political process (Arlen and Rossi, 2021: 27; McCormick, 2011: 11). For this to happen, the non-wealthy first need to be included into participatory politics and be represented in collective decision-making on a more equal basis. Therefore, the tribunate, by bringing ordinary people into a constitutional body, is seen as crucial for addressing the political inequality that exists in representative democracies despite their adherence to formal political equality. No matter its exact size and composition, the tribunate is considered to improve the inclusivity and representativeness of political offices as well as to foster popular participation (Harting, 2023: 847–848; McCormick, 2011: 173, 183, 190).

Going back to McCormick's criterion, I want to question the extent to which the tribunate would indeed be reliable in “plac[ing] ‘rank-and-file’ plebs in positions of political authority on a regular basis” (2011: 173). While it is true that the tribunate brings ordinary people into the policy-making process and is likely to improve responsiveness, the number of people in the tribunate remains limited (see also Vergara, 2020: 229). First of all, there is thus the problem of scope. While the lottocratic element of the tribunate ensures that any ordinary, non-wealthy citizen can be selected once, the amount of people participating “on a regular basis” is nevertheless bounded, as McCormick himself acknowledges (2023: 11). Trade unions, on the other hand, have at least the potential to increase the political participation of a large number of ordinary people on various levels, that is, beyond internal union engagement.

What is more, tribunates foster a restricted kind of political participation. As Austrup argues, a “new mixed regime” needs to include not only the “editorial” dimension of monitoring and contesting the legislative process, as with the tribunate, but also the “authorial” dimension of direct legislative inclusion (2024: 10–16; cit. Pettit, 2006). He therefore calls for democratic renewal proposals “beyond contestation” and, drawing on Hamilton (2014), suggests working-class seat or party-list quotas (Austrup, 2024: 12–15). Vergara (2020: 232) similarly finds the authority the tribunate gives to working-class citizens too limited, but she ends up primarily suggesting editorial measures herself. While she does call for a wide network of local plebeian assemblies in combination with an oversight anti-corruption tribunate, these assemblies also only embody “those who ‘do not rule’” (Vergara, 2020: 243, 245). Insofar as McCormick motivates his account by criticizing electoral democracies for not facilitating “popular rule” and radical democrats for aiming, not for the rule of the people, but to avoid rule as such, it is noteworthy that he focuses more on elite accountability than on putting ordinary citizens in positions of rule (Jörke, 2023: 269; McCormick, 2011: vii, 15–16).

In contrast, trade unions can function as facilitators of an authorial dimension of working-class citizens’ participation as well, and not only within the realm of work. Contrary to Austrup's suggestion of establishing working-class seats or party-list quotas, the mechanism of how they accomplish this is less direct, but also more robust, as the following empirical observations highlight. Generally, there is a range of evidence that trade unions foster ordinary citizens’ political participation. And this participation-enhancing function is particularly crucial with regard to those furthest away from democratic decision-making. In these cases, it is facilitated especially by community unions (Fine, 2005) and those engaging in organizing (McAlevey, 2016). As such, unions are considered pivotal for “motivating, organizing and supporting working-class citizens to engage in politics” (Elsässer and Schäfer, 2022: 1378; see also Ahlquist, 2017; Carnes, 2018; Flavin, 2016: 1075; Kerrissey and Schofer, 2018). One well-reported effect—across nations and time—is that union strength increases voter turnout (O'Neill and White, 2018: 257; cit. Ahlquist, 2017: 420–422; Flavin and Radcliff, 2011).

Even more crucial here is that trade unions contribute to a more egalitarian elite recruitment in encouraging working-class citizens to pursue a political career themselves (Ahlquist, 2017: 420–421; Carnes, 2018: 151; Elsässer and Schäfer, 2022: 1371, 2023: 472–473; O'Neill and White, 2018: 260–261). Historically, they have been a key facilitator of working-class descriptive and substantive representation within parliaments (O’Grady, 2019: 547–548, 550), thus mitigating elections’ aristocratic tendencies (Manin, 1997). This is achieved through union-party-connections, through material support, information provision, through fostering a strengthened collective identity which motivates members to get active, or direct help in processes like registering to vote or pursuing a candidacy (O'Neill and White, 2018: 260–261, 256–257; cit. D'Art and Turner, 2007). Another avenue may be that they “foster a sense of efficacy in the workplace that carries over into other areas such as electoral politics” (O'Neill and White, 2018: 256–257), commonly discussed as the “spill-over thesis” in relation to democratic workplaces (Pateman, 1970).

The second function of the tribunate is to strengthen the class-consciousness of ordinary people. Here, the idea is that institutionalizing non-wealthy citizens’ power in a class-specific institution such as the tribunate will amplify their socioeconomic identity by “dramatizing the socioeconomic faultline that cuts across the polity” and separates a broad plebeian cohort from a narrow elite (Arlen and Rossi, 2021: 29, 44; Green, 2016). And “increas[ing] the visibility of (ideological) […] conflict lines” is assumed to raise non-wealthy citizens’ consciousness of their joint interests (Prinz and Westphal, 2024: 74; O'Neill and White, 2018: 254; Smith and Owen, 2011: 206). This, in turn, is seen as a precondition for developing solidarity as a counterweight to elite power (Harting, 2023: 847), which is why class neutrality is considered a hindrance to elite accountability. It is to “remind common people of their subordination to socioeconomic and political elites” so as to foster a “vigor” in them to change the situation (McCormick, 2011: 12, 16–17, 180–181). Without acknowledging and institutionalizing the distinction between the non-wealthy and the wealthy, apathy among ordinary citizens rises and the wealthy can “dominate common citizens in quasi-anonymous and largely uncontested ways” (McCormick, 2011: 17, 179). Thus, the “‘them and us’ orientation” (Smith and Owen, 2011: 206) of the tribunate is expected to work against the ideological power of the wealthy and to be beneficial for tribunate-internal deliberations.

First of all, it is unclear that the tribunate would suffice to create productive class-consciousness. Bagg argues that “encourag[ing] a productive tension between the many and the few” cannot already be achieved by “craft[ing] institutions which reflect that tension” (2022: 408, my italics). For such institutions to be beneficial, the targeted tension between plebeians and patricians must already be salient, as was the case in ancient Rome, where he grants that the tribunate played a helpful role in stabilizing and pacifying the tension (Bagg, 2022: 408). But today, where class-consciousness—in the sense of self-identifying as part of a particular but broad socio-economic class, not in the sense of populist anti-establishment attitudes—is not pronounced, this is a different story (Bagg, 2022: 408). And indeed, the mechanism of how tribunates foster class-consciousness beyond assembling non-wealthy citizens and letting them deliberate remains unspecified. Secondly, even if we grant that membership in the tribunate can create class-consciousness, say, insofar as this involves being collectively engaged in the endeavor of checking political decision-making, it is less clear that this would spread beyond the tribunes themselves. This points back to the general problem of scope, namely the question of how the benefits potentially experienced by tribunate members can have a more broad-based effect.

There is a more explicit mechanism of creating wider-scope class-consciousness in the case of trade unions, where working-class members’ collective identity is amplified through collective struggles in the workplace and a concrete, more tangible oppositional orientation. Members experience their oppositional stance in relation to employers not only through learning of their diverging interests, but also through first-hand experience of how employers behave in the context of industrial disputes and react to the workers’ demands. Historically, trade unions and the labor movement have been the main institutions for creating and increasing class-consciousness and learning about one's commonalities despite numerous differences (e.g. Seeliger, 2019: 6–7). The weakening of trade unions notwithstanding, their potential here remains unchanged, especially against the backdrop of attempts to revitalize trade unions through participatory bottom-up techniques such as organizing (Bagg, 2024; Blanc, 2025; McAlevey, 2016). In fact, much hope is put into organizing for revitalizing the labor movement precisely because it is seen as a singular method for increasing people's awareness of their socioeconomic identity—all to foster their agency and collective action capacities. In contrast to McCormick, I thus doubt that the constitutional set-up of the polity is most decisive when it comes to “the contemporary absence of healthy class-consciousness” (2011: 17). Instead, attention should be directed (back) to trade unions.

A related point concerns the question of how to delineate “class,” usually understood here in “plebeian” terms, in the first place. In the case of tribunates, the question of who is eligible for membership is being determined on a theoretical level of who can be considered a plebeian today. A prominent suggestion is that plebeians are those who do not count as “socioeconomic elites” and fall “above a certain wealth threshold,” say, the upper 10 percent (Arlen and Rossi, 2021: 41). ⁸ Granting the potential arbitrariness of this demarcation-effort, however, McCormick suggests that the distinction between the wealthy and non-wealthy should account for context variations and should be “determined democratically” (2011: 185, 190). In the case of trade unions, these questions do not arise in a similar fashion and can be answered pragmatically: those who must work or rely on social security for their subsistence are potential union members. While there have always been struggles around the question of who can join which kind of union, the problem is less one of theoretical design than of historical struggles.

One could argue that trade unions do not represent a broad enough section of the population and thus cannot capture the “plebeian experience” (Green, 2016) in its entirety. But, besides referring to my broad conception of who can be a union member, I would argue that the more sectional set-up of trade unions, occupation or industry-based as they usually are, is indeed conducive to fostering class-consciousness. Unions contribute to a heightened class identity from the bottom up, meeting people where they are, and from there help them understand the universality of their position. In the case of the tribunate, my worry is that it may fail to intensify class-consciousness exactly because it blurs together many different forms of disempowerment and too quickly assumes feelings of commonality. ⁹

Similarly, trade unions are less burdened with the normative and practical problems surrounding the tribunate's “exclusion condition” and its relation to formal political equality. ¹⁰ As industrial relations take place outside the collective decision-making processes of the political center and trade unions are straightforwardly partisan in this context, “excluding” the other side, that is, employers, is normatively less disconcerting. At the same time, they address the conflict between labor and capital more directly than tribunates, that is, in the immediate context of work. And this also means that trade unions’ mode of conflict is less vulnerable to the threat of legislative gridlock and strategic workarounds than the tribunate's (Austrup, 2024: 12; cit. Hamilton, 2014: 204; Jörke, 2016: 333; Smith and Owen, 2011: 213).

The issue of the ideological power of the wealthy connects the second with the third function attributed to the tribunate: improving non-elite political knowledge. As the literature on oligarchic capture outlines, “wealthy elites get their way in part by shaping the beliefs and preferences of ordinary people” (Bagg, 2024: 102). And this highlights that “[w]ithout affecting the ideological dimension, the dispersal of concentrated power would seem to be impossible” (Prinz and Westphal, 2024: 77). This point has been made most emphatically by Arlen and Rossi who stress that “failures of citizen competence intersect with the problem of disproportionate elite influence: that is, [… that] the ‘epistemic challenge’ to democracy intersects with the ‘oligarchic challenge’” (2021: 28). Accordingly, even though the tribunate is, of course, not entirely isolated, separating ordinary people from the elite in the tribunate is considered beneficial because the direction of debate is thus less shaped by the latter's ideological power. It is beneficial also because elites cannot win over other tribunate members by potentially superior skills, for example, rhetoric, thanks to a privileged education and socialization (Harting, 2023: 847). Instead, non-elite citizens can learn among themselves about the issues they want to address and develop a political analysis more consistent with their preferences (Arlen and Rossi, 2021: 29, 41; Bagg, 2024: 102; Jörke, 2023: 374). Smith and Owen summarize that the tribunate approximates “what the public would think, had it a better opportunity to consider the question at issue without the adverse influence of the wealthy” (2011: 210, original italics).

Tribunate proponents neatly work out the relevance of improving ordinary people's political knowledge for countering oligarchization. In particular, they highlight the relationship between class-consciousness and non-elite political knowledge. They also stress that emphasizing formal political equality, not systematic social inequality, can be a hindrance to political knowledge since the wealthy's ideological dominance thus remains unchallenged. Further, they show that, to address the related epistemic and oligarchic challenges, the wealthy's ideological power needs to be countered not least by creating spaces where they play less of a role. However, I doubt that the effect of the tribunate would suffice in this regard. Excluding the wealthy from the tribunate may surely have beneficial epistemic effects internally. But, again, it is questionable whether this effect translates to the broader citizenry, since the bulk of ordinary people outside the tribunate remain objects of the wealthy's ideological domination.

This is different in the case of trade unions, which potentially include and reach far greater numbers of ordinary people, also in relation to their epistemic benefits. Most generally, there is evidence of trade unions’ ability to facilitate political knowledge and encourage less ideologically-tinted and more epistemically-valid political analyses (see O'Neill and White, 2018; Seeliger, 2019: 6–7 for an overview). They are shown to achieve this, for instance, through direct information provision and facilitating discussions of politics at the workplace as part of their inner public sphere (Ahlquist, 2017: 420; Levine, 2001: 569; Macdonald, 2021). Both elements are emphasized also in the debate about proletarian counter-publics, which points to the epistemic dimension and emancipative repercussions of the sphere of work (Negt and Kluge, 1993). Steven Klein highlights that “[u]nion collective deliberation can also better inform workers about their interests and the larger economic constraints that inform their choices and decisions” (unpublished: 16). As a result, they help to increase their members’ political judgement and render them more likely to vote “correctly,” that is, consistent with their preferences (Macdonald, 2021: 137–138). And through increasing their political knowledge and civic experience, unions foster members’ capacity to hold their representatives accountable.

The connection between trade unions and political knowledge is championed also by proponents of trade unions inspired by associative democracy, who lament the weakened “informational basis on which ‘middle-class’ citizens approach politics” due to union decline (O'Neill and White, 2018: 255; cit. Hacker and Pierson, 2010; see also Cohen and Rogers, 1992; White, 1998). Similarly, secondary associations’ epistemic relevance is stressed by Lisa Herzog, who highlights two epistemic dimensions of trade unions: they facilitate inter-personal coordination through which members can learn that others share their views and would also act on them, and they “serve as knowledge reservoirs about how to engage in successful action” (2023: 236–237, original italics; see also Umbers, 2023: 1421). Crucially, there is a direct relation between knowledge and action such that members not only learn but learn to act upon their knowledge (Bagg, 2024: 226; Levine, 2001: 568–569). This ties in with recent proposals to rejuvenate trade unionism, which stress the relevance of an adequate power analysis for successful collective action, whereby workers learn to identify those responsible for problems (McAlevey, 2016: 6). Note also that this mode is diametrically opposed to populist scapegoating (see Prinz and Westphal, 2024: 64).

This brings me to the fourth function of facilitating solidarity and collective agency, which is crucial for establishing the non-wealthy as a countervailing power and “maximizing their control over political institutions” (Harting, 2023: 847–848). Constitutionalizing the non-wealthy's collective power in a body like the tribunate which “can act on behalf of plebeian interests” is presumed to foster their capacity for acting “in a representative but not plebiscitarian mode” (Arlen and Rossi, 2021: 29). And through exercising the constitutional powers of the tribunate, ordinary people can experience themselves as capable of resisting domination. This experience of self-efficacy is considered to be decisive for constituting the non-wealthy as a countervailing power in bringing forth a sense of solidarity (Harting, 2023: 847; Prinz and Westphal, 2024: 61). Not least the history of the labor movement shows that solidarity is required for collective agency to arise, and the tribunate is understood to be a setting in which precisely the creation of non-elite-solidarity can take place. ¹¹ The class-specific character of the tribunate, by itself, is assumed to increase the solidarity of the non-wealthy (Harting, 2023: 847, 2024; McCormick, 2012: 92; Prinz and Westphal, 2024: 61; see Bagg, 2022: 408; cit. Vergara, 2020).

As with the previous functions, there are reasons to doubt the tribunate's capacity to sufficiently deliver on facilitating solidarity and collective agency. As mentioned above, I agree with Bagg (2022: 409) that a class-specific institution like the tribunate alone, which merely reflects the tension between the wealthy and ordinary citizens, is not best suited for creating solidarity. This relates back to the first function of amplifying ordinary people's socioeconomic identity. Bagg argues that, to this end, transformative experiences are crucial: “building solidarity and collective power requires patient, long-term relational work, in the context of a durable union or community organization, along with powerful experiences of struggle in pursuit of concrete victories” (Bagg, 2022: 408; cit. McAlevey, 2016; Woodly, 2021; see also Sabl, 2002: 268; Laurence, unpublished a). And it is not apparent that the experience of being a tribunate member is akin to such overarching transformative experiences gained in long-term collective struggle.

Thus, I think that some commentators expect too much from the tribunate with regard to broader societal change. It is unclear, for instance, how the tribunate can be a “catalyst—for a larger process of change, which would eventually need to lead to transformed beliefs and self-understandings in the population” (Prinz and Westphal, 2024: 75). Besides the fact that there is a lack of experience in this regard, the mechanism of how such a process is to come about has not been elaborated sufficiently (Harting, 2024: 6f.). Harting, a welcome exception, offers an elaboration of how tribunates’ class-specificity enhances solidarity (2024: 9). Notably, he does so by way of analogy to trade unions as existing class-specific solidarity-enhancing actors and by explicating in how far tribunates resemble them (2024: 10–11). Where the analogy does not hold, he suggests that tribunates have their own mechanisms of solidarity creation, for example, opportunities for deliberation, activist-led education programmes, or constitutional directives asking members to behave solidaristically and in a manner conducive to anti-oligarchy (2024: 10–11). I am less optimistic about these options. For instance, habitual interactions and day-to-day engagement seem to have better prospects for solidarity-creation than quarterly or even monthly occasions of face-to-face deliberation. Similarly, fighting oligarchic actors in general does not seem to have the same solidarity-enhancing effect as local struggles with concrete employers (2024: 10). Most importantly, Harting does not engage what I take to be the key mechanism of solidarity creation in unions, namely the experience of concrete, long-term collective struggle, to which I see no robust equivalent in tribunates.

Moreover, the problem of scope arises again. Even if we grant that deliberation within a tribunate may foster a sense of shared identity and interests, it is unlikely to transfer back to the majority of ordinary people outside of the tribunate. And when it comes to solidarity and collective agency, it seems crucial that larger numbers of people are involved. Trade unions, especially as part of a broader labor movement, have the potential of scaling this effect up and to transform many more “citizens into reliable defenders of plebeian interests” (Bagg, 2022: 409, 2024: 232; see also Klein, unpublished: 18–19). While I therefore agree with Bagg that “building collective power among ordinary people” requires a “different institutional form,” I consider trade unions, not mass political parties, most adequate for “developing solidarity around shared plebeian interests” in the current moment (2022: 409, original italics). ¹²

Arguably, trade unions’ main function is to facilitate solidarity and collective agency (see Seeliger, 2019: 6–7). Klein elaborates the power of unions, in contrast to that of corporations, as arising predominantly from “solidarity and collective action, and only secondarily through state-enforced labour law” (unpublished: 17, 2022: 35). To be successful, unions have to “alter the motivations and intentions of workers” accordingly (Klein, unpublished: 4; see also Umbers, 2023: 1421). The idea is not that solidarity comes automatically with joining a union, but that it has to be created through ongoing collective action, through developing a sense of community, and through the experience of self-efficacy, of winning victories in collective struggles (see also Laurence, unpublished a; Offe and Wiesenthal, 2018). Union revitalizationists, therefore, urge for a reorientation away from communication and lobbying work back to confrontational industrial struggles involving strikes (e.g. McAlevey, 2016). In combination with organizing tactics of bottom-up structure-building and the tedious work of changing hearts and minds, conflict-orientation and a focus on winning concrete victories are considered decisive for “creat[ing] rather than presum[ing]” class-based solidarity (Bagg, 2022: 409).

Finally, and most directly related to the overall goal of mitigating oligarchic capture, is the fifth function attributed to the tribunate, namely countering “elite-dominated institutions” (Arlen and Rossi, 2021: 29, 41). Austrup splits this function into the two elements of “oversight” and “contestation” (2024: 11), highlighting the tribunate's ability to detect and counter political corruption and elite-biased legislation. Insofar as “existing (electoral) accountability mechanisms” fulfil the central democratic activity of enforcing accountability of elites insufficiently, the tribunate is considered crucial for realizing an ideal of democracy as “a form of anti-oligarchic counter-power” (Arlen and Rossi, 2021: 33; Harting, 2023: 847; see also Bagg, 2018, 2024). As elements of a “new mixed regime,” they would directly check legislative decision-making-processes and counterbalance “more ‘patrician’ institutions like the US Senate” (Arlen and Rossi, 2021: 44). Due to their veto- and oversight-competences, they are seen as having “a considerable potential to disperse concentrated power” and to “contest” it (Prinz and Westphal, 2024: 61, 76). Crucially, the implicit assumption is that an additional constitutional body which can directly intervene in the legislative process is needed to facilitate this goal (see Jörke, 2023: 262; McCormick, 2011: vii).

The tribunate's status as a counterweight to elite-dominated institutions seems to be firmly established. But there is a question as to whether it is particularly well-suited or uniquely able to deliver on the related promise of enforcing accountability and control of elites, dispersing concentrated power, and contributing to more egalitarian policy outcomes. In response, I elaborate why trade unions can also count as promising counterweights to oligarchic capture, and call into question the assumption that an additional constitutional body is necessary for this purpose. To start with the latter, it is unclear that the constitutional set-up is the best level to prioritize for achieving “properly institutionalized class conflict” (McCormick, 2011: viii). On the contrary, various scholars stress the relevance of social context factors in understanding current democratic pathologies. Bagg, for instance, argues that a conventional representative system would well be able to accommodate plebeian interests if people themselves build collective power and solidarity within “a long-term oppositional struggle” (2022: 408–409, see also 2024: 25–30). Similarly, Bech-Pedersen (forthcoming) critically engages with the seminal claim by Manin (1997) that elections have an inherent oligarchic bias and demonstrates that this, instead, is empirically variable, to which trade unions’ equalizing effect on legislative membership points to as well. Crucially, as associative democrats have stressed, “inattention to associational factors may lead reformers either to overstate the problems with established forms of representation or to overstate the gains from proposed innovations” (O'Neill and White, 2018: 255).

Arguing then that trade unions also fulfil the function of establishing a counterweight to oligarchic tendencies and have the related benefits of enforcing control of elites, dispersing concentrated power, and contributing to more egalitarian policy outcomes, it is clear that they do so more indirectly than the tribunate. But there is an important relation between unions’ countervailing power in the economic context and the political process (Seeliger, 2019: 6–7). Evidently, trade unions offer a counterweight to organized wealth (D'Art and Turner, 2007: 108; Sojourner, 2013: 484), primarily to the management of corporations and employer associations, but also to other organizations representing the interests of the wealthy. As such, they are able to “contest and disperse concentrated power” (Prinz and Westphal, 2024: 76) in the economic realm. Generally, there is a strong correlation between union strength and “a more egalitarian distribution of private power and organizational capacity” (Bagg, 2024: 232; cit. i.a. Ahlquist, 2017; Becher and Stegmueller, 2021). O’Neill and White see unions as “sources of countervailing political power” to oligarchic political tendencies and portray union power as “shift[ing] the mixed constitution [of capitalist democracy] in a less oligarchic direction” (2018: 267). They open up the possibility of understanding trade unions as part of a “new mixed regime” broadly conceived (see also Klein, 2025).

Next to these broad effects on the balance of social power, trade unions have a more immediate bearing on the political process, as well. For one, they foster members’ democratic character, which arguably helps to facilitate countervailing power by motivating individuals to engage in politics and to hold representatives accountable (Bagg, 2024: 231; cit. Ahlquist, 2017; O'Neill and White, 2018). Some studies have also found a correlation between unionization and the consideration of citizens’ opinions in policymaking, fostering its responsiveness (Flavin, 2016: 1087; O'Neill and White, 2018: 261–262). Against the backdrop of capital interests commonly dominating political debates due to organizational and financial advantages, evidence that trade unions give voice to working-class interests and intervene in political debates as well as decision-making, for example, through “lobbying and direct campaigning,” is well received (O'Neill and White, 2018: 261). Something similar can be said for direct action campaigns, which are often executed in alliance with civil society groups and used to put pressure on politicians to pay attention to workers’ and communities’ concerns (O'Neill and White, 2018: 261; cit. Fine, 2005). This indicates that the countervailing power of individual trade unions can be enhanced through alliances with other unions, civil society organizations, or parties, which then constitute a broader labor movement (Klein, unpublished: 17–19; O'Neill and White, 2018: 261). Civil society organizations, in turn, benefit from connections to trade unions because unions are singularly able to fund themselves without relying on governments, companies or philanthropists (Klein, unpublished: 18–19; Levine, 2001: 567; McAlevey, 2016). With the strike, they also have a unique instrument for winning concessions (Gourevitch, 2018; Lambert, 2005).

Additional reasons for trade unions

Having demonstrated that trade unions can fulfil the anti-oligarchic functions attributed to the tribunate arguably better than, and at least as well as, the tribunate, I now further justify why reviving trade unions should be prioritized when it comes to addressing the problem of oligarchic capture. I put forward three considerations in favor of trade unions, which concern the distribution of social power, material redistribution, and issues of feasibility and implementation.

The interrelation between the distribution of social power and political power is the first point to consider. A diverse literature from scholarship on oligarchic capture to associative democracy and labor studies converges on the assessment that contemporary phenomena such as citizens’ political apathy, ignorance, or irrational voting-behavior cannot be addressed solely by reforming the constitutional set-up of the polity. This literature highlights that, insofar as civic association and particularly trade union decline has been pivotal for the emergence of the “oligarchic shift,” the “associational background” of political institutions must be considered in proposals to address it (O'Neill and White, 2018: 252, 255; see also Bagg, 2024: 241–242; Hacker and Pierson, 2010; McAlevey, 2016; Sabl, 2002: 18; Skocpol, 2003; White, 1998). It is in line with research—upon which many tribunate proponents ground their political analysis—which illustrates that the overall balance of social power is more decisive than the design of “standard liberal political institutions” (Harting, 2023: 852) for countering oligarchic capture (Arlen and Rossi, 2021: 27; Bagg, 2018: 902, 2024: 6, 25, 215, 240; Jörke, 2016: 321–323, 332–333; Klein, 2022; O'Neill and White, 2018). Tribunates take the inequality of social power as a given and try to remedy its political repercussions, but they do not tackle it head on. In contrast, trade unions directly address the distribution of social power. And since strengthening unions as a counterweight to elite influence in the social realm also feeds back into formal decision-making on the polity level, tribunate proponents should, in principle, be open to the trade union proposal.

A related point concerns redistribution. While trade unions, just like the tribunate, are focused on managing class conflict (Arlen and Rossi, 2021: 45), and not on transitioning from conflict to consensus (Prinz and Westphal, 2024: 83) or from a class-structured to a class-less society (Harting, 2023: 862), they more directly tackle the underlying division itself. They foster material redistribution mainly through winning concessions from employers, which primarily concern wages, but also pensions, unemployment insurance, or other risk-decreasing mechanisms. And due to their redistributive function, strong unionization is related to “lower income inequality, more redistribution, and a more expansive ‘decommodifying’ welfare state” (Levine, 2001: 536; O'Neill and White, 2018: 261–262). Here again, tribunate proponents should arguably appreciate this redistributive potential. A range of democratic theorists acknowledge that reducing the amounts of money in the discretion of the wealthy decreases the problem of capture “to a more manageable size” (Bagg, 2024: 137 and Ch. 6, 2018, 901–902; Herzog, 2023: 282). McCormick himself takes as his inspiration for the tribunate “Machiavelli's forgotten lesson that the resources of wealthy citizens and the wide discretion enjoyed by officeholders pose the principal threats to liberty […]—not the purported ignorance, apathy, and caprice of common citizens” (2011: viii–ix). Similarly, Harting: brings up economic redistribution as an additional requirement for countering oligarchization and tasks the tribunate with advancing expropriation measures (2023: 849, 860, 2024, 14). While this is certainly a theoretical possibility, trade unions’ redistributive function appears to operate less disruptively since it plays out in the economic realm pre-distributively and does not similarly necessitate organizing broad political support for direct expropriation.

Finally, to come back to a crucial point raised initially, there remain questions regarding the tribunate's feasibility, especially against the backdrop of potential legislative capture. ¹³ Here, I take proponents seriously in their commitment to the tribunate as a viable solution to oligarchic capture and understand their theoretical project to be concerned with actual social change here and now, which is why raising feasibility concerns seems appropriate. McCormick, for instance, holds “tribunician institutions” in general to be worth establishing, even though the details of his initial proposal regarding its feasibility or costs need further specification (2011: 183, 218). There are, however, structural barriers to instantiating tribunates in current circumstances, most prominently the political reality of oligarchic capture of those institutions required for constitutional change, as demonstrated by tribunate proponents. And what Smith and Owen discuss as “‘from here to there’ strategic question[s]” (2011: 213) are not prioritized in the literature. McCormick (2011: 181) considers compensating the wealthy for giving up their democratic rights of voting, standing for office, or donating to political purposes through tax reliefs. But in light of the ample possibilities of indirect oligarchic influence, for example, on public opinion, this seems like a detrimental suggestion, not least because it would buttress the socioeconomic divide of the demos, threatening democratic stability. It also does not seem very likely that economic incentives would motivate elites to agree to this proposal (Smith and Owen, 2011: 213). More recent contributions do not provide a more compelling case for how establishing tribunates could viably be accomplished.

There is then a general point about prioritization (see Bagg, 2024: 9) which concerns the expected effort it takes to establish either of the two institutions and the probable effect of their instantiation. If we grant that establishing a tribunate was possible under current circumstances, one imaginable route would be via a (citizens’) initiative calling for constitutional reform, organizing majorities, potentially using citizens’ assemblies or referenda. This procedure would require relentless dedication, skill, and effort to get people on board. Possibly, after a long and tedious process of coordination and revisions, a version of a tribunate would be embraced. But this would assumedly not be a progressive, but rather a watered-down version, despite the effort it took to get it through. Certainly, this also implies that less authoritative versions of the tribunate, for example, issue-specific mini-publics like Arlen's citizen tax juries (2022), may face fewer feasibility concerns since they less directly constrain legislative power. However, Arlen himself grants that, even in the case of citizen tax juries, the “authorization dilemma” of how to get legislative elites to accept institutions which empower ordinary citizens arises (2022: 216). In contrast, while trade union revitalization would require similar amounts of skill, dedication, and effort, the result would be stronger. This is because the effort would flow mostly into organizing people, with which comes power automatically—the power of numbers. While the tribunate would take at least the same amount of effort to be instantiated, its anti-oligarchic effect would assumedly be smaller.

There is yet another point about prioritization. Why should we focus on (re-)establishing a pre-modern political institution to address the problems of current capitalist democracies when we have a modern institutional form which has developed specifically in response to the diagnosed pathologies? Not only does this avoid risks related to transferring a premodern institution into a modern context, but it is also more in line with a commitment to feasibility. The merits of the historical predecessor of the tribunate proposal cannot simply be assumed to hold also in modern conditions, since the social-political contexts of the two are divergent. Even those sympathetic to the proposal question whether translating the tribunate “into a contemporary democratic state is the most salient method through which a liberty-preserving and equality-supporting class agonism can be instituted” (Smith and Owen, 2011: 214; see also Jörke, 2023: 280). In contrast, trade unions are a specifically modern phenomenon with a rich historical record of their merits as well as disadvantages and related risks.

While arguing for prioritizing trade union revitalization does not exclude the possibility of further constitutionalizing ordinary people's power, it takes seriously the historical lesson that a form of organized plebeian power is often decisive for bringing an institution like the tribunate about. Given our current political predicament as delineated by tribunate proponents, organizing bottom-up countervailing power seems to be a key first step for achieving further anti-oligarchic reform. ¹⁴ Therefore, I do not pursue the project of theorizing potential synergy effects between trade unions and tribunates, as could be suggested against my trade union focus. ¹⁵ This is not to deny the theoretical possibility of such mutual reinforcement or to argue for their principled mutual exclusivity, not least because addressing oligarchic capture requires a multidimensional approach. But even though beneficial modes of coexistence and cooperation between trade unions and tribunate-like bodies are imaginable, there remain redundancy issues insofar as trade unions mostly also fulfil the delineated functions (see also Bagg, 2022: 408). As demonstrated above, a range of the anti-oligarchic benefits attributed to tribunates would have already been taken care of.

Moreover, I am sceptical that, once trade union countervailing power has been established, a tribunate would be the most obvious pathway for stabilizing and coordinating the union movement. Harting (2023) suggests the traits of the labor movement as a further condition for tribunates’ overarching success, referencing the argument from social movement research that democratic innovations require progressive social movements’ support. While he rightly assumes that such movements also rely on formal bodies “to stabilize the political resistance of social movements” (2023: 849), the tribunate is not the only option here. In the case of the labor movement, trade unions—as formal organizations—already fulfil this stabilizing function to an extent. And further institutionalization, for example, through trade union federations and corporatist arrangements, also stabilizes and coordinates union politics. Such arrangements were the historical pathways towards stabilization, and a democratic theory of trade unions certainly needs to investigate their respective prospects in more detail. But what history as well as our present political moment also demonstrate is that there is no certain solution against oligarchization and democratic backsliding. This also holds for constitutional protections of progressive politics, not least because they can be reversed or disregarded. And in the case of trade unions, which rely on cooperative forms of power more than coercive power (Klein, 2025: 599), constitutional standing does not preclude them from withering away silently.

Of course, reviving trade unions faces implementation problems of its own, but arguably these are of a different quality. While the question of how to strengthen, rejuvenate, and democratize unions is a challenging issue which I cannot delve into here, their instantiation and success are not as dependent on a political will potentially subject to oligarchic capture (see Bagg, 2024: 135). And there are a range of feasible and actionable proposals, organizing being one of the frontrunners (Bagg, 2024; Blanc, 2025; McAlevey, 2016). Through bottom-up participatory and confrontational practices, unions can defy even the strongest employers and persevere in the most adverse legal circumstances. What is more, a bottom-up vision of trade unions, while demanding enough, provides action guidance not only for political leaders but for ordinary people more generally. And due to their direct appeal to members’ immediate material interests, they may have a motivational advantage over other proposals for democratic reform. When it comes to egalitarian institutional design, considering “what institutions are most likely to protect individuals from extreme injustice, domination, and oppression” (Klein, unpublished: 4, 19) here and now is in order. I argue that trade unions are the more promising road to take in this regard.

Conclusion

In this article, I took issue with the proposal of a tribunate as a promising anti-oligarchic democratic innovation and argued that trade unions are a more immediate, feasible, and effective measure to address oligarchic capture. For this purpose, I delineated five invaluable anti-oligarchic functions attributed to the tribunate: (1) equalizing citizen participation; (2) strengthening non-wealthy citizens’ class-consciousness, (3) improving ordinary people's political knowledge, (4) facilitating solidarity and collective agency, and (5) establishing a counterweight to elite-dominated institutions. I then highlighted that the alternative proposal of reviving trade unions has the potential to functionally outperform the tribunate and, in a second step, gave additional reasons why trade unions should be prioritized. First, the trade union proposal takes more seriously the interrelation between the distribution of social power and political power; second, it also facilitates material redistribution; and third, it faces fewer implementation problems. I argue that these considerations are broadly in line with tribunate proponents’ theoretical commitments. To conclude, I want to come back to McCormick's framing of the tribunate as a “heuristic proposal intended for critical but not necessarily practical purposes” (2011: 183). This is exactly where its value lies: it highlights some crucial elements of anti-oligarchic democratic reform, namely the functions attributed to it and delineated here. As such, it paved the way for bringing trade unions into the debate. Now the task is to work out the details of their anti-oligarchic credentials as part of a more encompassing democratic theory of trade unions.