Features
- Cover Type: Hard Cover with 328 pages
- Published by: Princeton University Press April 7, 2008
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0691136637
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0691136639
-
Book Dimensions:
9.2 x 6 x 1.3 inches
- Weighs: 1.4 pounds
Product Review
Unequal Democracy is the sort of book to which every political scientist should aspire--it is methodologically rigorous, conceptually serious, and above all, it addresses urgent concerns of our fellow citizens. As Bartels shows, much of what we think we know about the politics of economic inequality is dead wrong. Bartels's perplexing and often unexpected discoveries should help refocus the gathering public debate about inequality and what to do about it.
(
Robert D. Putnam, author of "Bowling Alone" )
Product Description
Unequal Democracy debunks many myths about politics in contemporary America, using the widening gap between the rich and the poor to shed disturbing light on the workings of American democracy. Larry Bartels shows that increasing inequality is not simply the result of economic forces, but the product of broad-reaching policy choices in a political system dominated by partisan ideologies and the interests of the wealthy.
Bartels demonstrates that elected officials respond to the views of affluent constituents but ignore the views of poor people. He shows that Republican presidents in particular have consistently produced much less income growth for middle-class and working-poor families than for affluent families, greatly increasing inequality. He provides revealing case studies of key policy shifts contributing to inequality, including the massive Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 and the erosion of the minimum wage. Finally, he challenges conventional explanations for why many voters seem to vote against their own economic interests, contending that working-class voters have not been lured into the Republican camp by "values issues" like abortion and gay marriage, as commonly believed, but that Republican presidents have been remarkably successful in timing income growth to cater to short-sighted voters.
Unequal Democracy is social science at its very best. It provides a deep and searching analysis of the political causes and consequences of America's growing income gap, and a sobering assessment of the capacity of the American political system to live up to its democratic ideals.
Reader Reviews
Democrats are better for the economy, says Larry Bartels, and they're better for the poor. He backs this up with an arsenal of data on rates and causes of inequality over the last 50 years under Republican and Democratic presidents. Inequality systematically increases under Republicans and decreases under Democrats. Bartels doesn't linger much over the mechanism which might make this true; he hypothesizes that Republicans emphasize inflation-lowering policies that help mostly businessmen, while Democrats fight unemployment that largely afflicts the poor. So if Republicans are bad for the majority of us, why do they win elections? A good part of the answer, says Bartels, is that Americans have short memories: they respond much more intensely to economic gain in the year right before an election than they do to economic loss in the preceding three. And American political opinion suffers from an unfortunate inconsistency: people claim to be in favor of reducing inequality at the same time that they support policies which further it. No matter how you frame it, for instance, Americans have overwhelmingly supported ending the estate tax since the 1930's, even though it demonstrably only affects the wealthiest 1% or 2% of the population. And this inconsistency doesn't go away with education: virtually every way you cut the data, clear majorities support doing away with the tax on inherited estates. "Unequal Democracy" is, unfortunately, a highly academic book: it seems very concerned to establish ideas rigorously that the rest of the world has long since taken for granted, out of the sheer analytical joy of doing so. Thus we wait 250 pages to see Bartels announce: "I find that senators in this period were vastly more responsive to affluent consistuents than to constituents of modest means." This is why we pay political scientists the big bucks. And yet to read Bartels, political science as a discipline only understands democracies as a collection of autonomous equals. So "Unequal Democracy" constitutes an *advance*. So much the worse for political science. I have my doubts that anyone outside of political science will get much from the book. In particular -- once again, assuming Bartels has summarized the literature propertly -- political science seems to have missed out on the collective-action problem in economics. As Mancur Olson noted in "The Logic of Collective Action" in 1965 (and I don't think he was the first), there's a problem when policies stand to benefit one group while they spread their harms across the whole population: the group will lobby intensely for the policy, while the rest of the population stands mute. Compact interest groups are really important, if only for this reason. Yet Bartels doesn't even start to discuss their effect on policy. He also never stops to touch on the disfranchisement of the poor. This was a large part of "The Conscience of a Liberal": Krugman asserts that our nation's growing inequality stems in large part from weakened labor unions, which used to help bring the poor to the polls. In short, Bartels is looking at the American political scene from a high statistical level, never descending to the foundations. And his book will not help us change the situation. In a world where "The Conscience of a Liberal" and Paul Farmer exist, I can't recommend "Unequal Democracy".
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