Empowered for Democracy: Supervisory Role, National‐Level Workplace Democracy and Political Involvement

ABSTRACT Fifty years after Pateman proposed her spillover thesis that workplace experiences affect other areas of life, such as politics, debates continue regarding its validity. Central to this debate is the need to identify the specific job qualities at work that may enhance employees’ political involvement, as well as to understand the mechanisms and contextual conditions through which the spillover effect occurs. This study addresses these issues by investigating how employees’ supervisory roles contribute to political spillovers, focusing on the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions. We propose that employees holding supervisory roles experience higher levels of psychological empowerment, which, in turn, positively influences their political involvement outside the workplace. In contrast, employees without supervisory responsibilities tend to be less psychologically empowered, leading to lower levels of political involvement. Furthermore, we theorize that national‐level workplace democracy moderates this relationship, such that the positive effect of having a supervisory role on political involvement is particularly pronounced in countries with weak workplace democracy, where limited employee representation, participation, and autonomy make the psychological benefits of supervisory roles more significant. By conducting a comprehensive analysis of longitudinal data from the United Kingdom, primary survey data from the United Kingdom and cross‐country data from mainland Europe, we provide empirical support for our arguments and discuss their implications for the broader discourse on political spillover.