Political Consequences of Economic Inequality in America
"My book received respectful reviews, but it cannot be said to have had much influence. Now a strikingly similar conclusion has been reached by three scholars - Nolan McCarty (Princeton), Keith Poole (University of California, San Diego) and Howard Rosenthal (New York University) - whose work is much harder to ignore. Their new book, Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches, researches voting patterns in Congress to document what most people would accept anecdotally, that the behaviour of politicians has indeed become sharply polarised. Republicans have become much more conservative, and Democrats have become somewhat more liberal.
In summary, with the full panoply of social science and in a narrative illustrated by showers of graphs, coefficients and equations, the three scholars demonstrate pretty conclusively that political polarisation is indeed related to economic inequality. They show how ideological polarisation and income inequality fell together from 1913 . . . until 1957; and that both inequality and polarisation have been rising again since 1977.

The three political scientists' most important finding, though, is that the connection between economic and political polarisation remains. Their work has several incidental but thoughtful conclusions, including disagreement with analyses of the 2004 elections that focused on "moral values", and with Republican strategists' belief in the importance of "terror" to voters. As they point out: political scientists observe that those who said fighting international terror was "very important" voted disproportionately for Bush, but it is also true that they were 'whiter, richer, more male and more Republican.'
Nolan McCarty, Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal are cautious, even perhaps ultra-cautious, when it comes to extrapolating from their own analysis. They go out of their way to congratulate their compatriots for the steps that were made towards greater equality in the 1950s, half a century and more ago. "
A couple of things are interesting here and they emerge in this interview with Nolan McCarty. First, our political polarization results predominantly not from Democrats getting more liberal but because Republicans have been moving steadily and sharply to the right. This finding, as Hodgson intimates, falls into 'the grandma knows that' category. But it nonetheless is nice to see that Nolan, Keith and Howard establish it systematically.
Second, this polarization is exacerbated because many of those in the poorer majority are immigrants who are disenfranchised, either temporarily (if not yet naturalized) or permanently (if illegal) and so unable to contribute to an effective electoral check on this shift. Here is some of what is at stake in current debates! Immigration, as it currently takes place, in a sense dilutes the constituency for progressive or even moderate political-economic policy.
Finally, there is the "caution" to which Hodgson refers and that, knowing the authors, I find un-surprising. One source of this is surely their commitment to apolitical social scientific analysis (a commitment I applaud). But what about drawing more explicit implications once the analysis is complete? I think the source of reticence on this score might reflect the political views of the authors themselves - at least two of whom are reasonably (I mean that both in terms of relative political position and in terms of personal demeanor) conservative. If political polarization in Congress is both excessive and has negative consequences, what (to echo Lenin) is to be done?

At the end of my earlier post I recommended a set of books on inequality in America. It seems that I should now plug Hodgson's book - More Equal Than Others (Princeton UP, 2004) - as well as McCarty, Poole & Rosenthal. Inequality has consequences and many - perhaps most - of them are detrimental to the large majority of Americans.
Labels: Inequality, polarization, political economy, Poole
2 Comments:
Dare I mention the decline of unions, or perhaps the erosion of workers rights to form unions as a possible factor in all this?
The Amerrican Rights at work group has good information on that http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/
though they have recently launched another site exposing anti-union forces called "The Anti Union Network". Things are quite complicated for those looking on the web for information in this area, as another site "The Center for Union Facts" is actually an anti union site promoting the decline of unions. How are interested parties supposed to get good information you might ask!
Nice point and thanks for the guidance re: web pages. I do not know, but perhaps the resurgence of mass immigraiton, especially if a significant portion of it is illegal, would have an effect on the decline of unions too?
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