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Article Excerpt
The recent history of political participation in the United States poses a particularly striking puzzle. Over the past several decades, the United States has stood out among wealthy capitalist democracies for its high and rising levels of economic inequality. (1) Yet at the same time, the United States has continued to be distinguished by widespread political quiescence, far greater political engagement by the rich than the poor, and, until recently, the absence of even moderately redistributive policies. (2) Students of capitalism and democracy, from Karl Marx to T.H. Marshall to Milton Friedman, have long suggested that rising inequalities would motivate the disadvantaged to exercise their political rights to seek economic redistribution. (3) Yet this prediction seems to falter badly in the United States today.
Even in the 2008 election, despite an extensive mobilization effort by the campaign of Barack Obama and a financial crisis that appeared to threaten Depression-era economic conditions, turnout among the voting-eligible population was only moderately higher than in the 2004 election, and more than 60 percent of voters continued to come from families above the annual median household income of $50,000 (as was the case in 2004). Why? How can we explain the relative electoral quiescence of disadvantaged Americans in the face of sharply rising inequality, weakening social protections, and looming economic threats?
Given the centrality of political behavior as a subfield of modern political science, it is surprising how little analysis has been directed at this question. A great deal is known, of course, about how individual differences in socioeconomic status (SES) affect individual-level patterns of political participation. (4) Yet it is impossible to draw conclusions from such studies about how rising inequality as an aggregate feature of American society matters for political engagement. Indeed, this blind spot has persisted even as the political consequences of economic inequality have emerged as a major focus of concern for students of American democracy. (5)
We face, in short, an analytic conundrum. On the one hand, influential models of societal development predict that rising inequality at the aggregate level will stimulate political engagement among the disadvantaged, but these arguments pay little attention to the individual-level study of political behavior. On the other hand, individual-level models of political behavior predict that disparities in SES will make the disadvantaged less likely to engage in political participation, but these models largely neglect changing levels of economic inequality as aspects of broader societal development.
To adequately explain relative political quiescence in an era of rising inequality, we need an analysis that bridges this divide. In what follows, we advance this agenda by drawing individual differences and societal developments into a single account of structured political behavior. We begin by reviewing in greater depth the individual-level focus of political behavior research and its neglect of societal context and, more precisely, societal change. We then present evidence suggesting that this neglect of context distorts our understandings of political participation and leaves us poorly positioned to evaluate the electoral consequences of rising inequality. In the third section, we present a three-part account of how changes in political context, policy context, and community context help to explain why rising economic inequality in the United States has coincided with deepening class biases in political engagement.
WHERE IS THE CONTEXT?
Differences among Individuals
Social scientists have analyzed a wide array of participatory behaviors in the American polity, ranging from activism in voluntary associations to protesting, letter writing, campaign activism, and, the most common form of all, voting. (6) The primary focus of this research has been the analysis of individual decisions to participate, and the primary research tool has been the random-sample survey (directed variously at adults in the general population, those most likely to vote, or those exiting a voting location). Voting studies typically focus on identifying the types of individuals who vote and the factors that contribute to their voting decisions. They ask, for example, why individuals in some groups are more likely than others to turn out on Election Day. (7) And they ask how votes cast for particular candidates can be traced to factors such as party identification, issue positions, and evaluations of candidate traits. (8)
A clear and consistent finding emerges from this research: although formal political rights are widely distributed in the United States, these rights are exercised far more often by those with higher SES than by those with lower SES. (9) Compared to wealthier citizens, lower income Americans tend to vote at lower rates and to participate less in a variety of other political behaviors, including writing letters to members of Congress and protesting (long considered the tool of the disadvantaged). Even in the 2008 presidential election, amid the Obama campaign's large-scale efforts to mobilize lower income voters, those with higher SES turned out at significantly higher rates. According to the 2008 exit poll, Americans with earnings below the median household income (about $50,000) made up roughly 55 percent of the U.S. population (10) but just 38 percent of voters; Americans with household incomes over $100,000 made up about 16 percent of the U.S. population (11) but approximately 26 percent of voters in 2008.
Efforts to explain why higher income earners participate more than individuals with lower incomes point to a variety of factors. Lower income individuals are less likely to have access to the skills and resources that facilitate political participation. (12) They also have weaker ties to the civic organizations that recruit people into politics and, in the United States, have limited access to the trade unions that mobilize working-class voters in the European democracies. (13) Citizens in the lower half of the income distribution are less likely to be targeted for political mobilization by strategic parties and candidates. (14) They are also more likely to find that political contests are organized around issues that do not speak to their primary needs and interests. (15) And of course, participation by low-income voters continues to be disproportionately constrained by institutional restrictions such as felony disenfranchisement laws, (16) citizen-initiated registration, (17) and workday rather than civic holiday voting arrangements. (18)
To some observers, the greater tendency for individuals with higher SES to participate in politics has appeared to be an insignificant problem, or even a boon, for American democracy. Some evidence suggests, for example, that voters and nonvoters often share political attitudes, policy positions, and candidate preferences. (19) In addition, a long line of political observers (including the Framers of the U.S. Constitution) and political scientists have argued that nonparticipation may be interpreted as a sign of contentment. (20) Moreover, some scholars suggest that citizens with higher levels of income and education are likely to be more supportive of democratic rights and to make better quality evaluations of public issues and political choices. (21)
Against such arguments, scholars have identified at least four reasons to be concerned about systematic class biases in rates of political participation. First, it turns out that the preferences of participants and nonparticipants (as measured by surveys) do differ on important issues. For example, the less well off are more likely than the more affluent to prioritize and support government social welfare programs. (22) Yet the "voice of the people" on social welfare issues tilts strongly toward the priorities of those with higher SES. Indeed, the extent of this bias is larger than many observers realize, because lower income individuals are disproportionately likely to skip survey questions or to answer "don't know," which produces systematic under-representation of their views. (23) Second, there are good reasons to be skeptical about efforts to equate the existing opinions of nonparticipants with the preferences these individuals would hold if they became more active in politics. Participation is an educative activity, (24) and as lower income citizens become engaged, they may encounter new information that leads them to change their preferences on issues related to redistributive programs and the taxes that pay for them. (25) Indeed, mass mobilization efforts typically have an issue basis and expose the disaffected to new arguments and issue frames. (26) Thus, existing survey evidence may seriously understate the degree of difference between currently active political voices and potentially activated political voices.
Third, patterns of electoral participation matter not only for the preferences they convey but also for the ways in which they make groups more or less visible as potential sources of costs and benefits for elected officials. The behaviors of elected officials often follow a logic of anticipated reactions. (27) When participation rates vary strongly along class lines, government officials get clear signals about the groups they can safely ignore without facing a backlash and the groups they need to keep happy if they hope to be reelected. Fourth and arguably most important, there is growing evidence that on issues where the policy preferences of rich and poor diverge, government policy is substantially more responsive to the preferences of more-affluent individuals and groups. (28) Indeed, Larry Bartels finds that the votes of U.S. senators are highly correlated with the preferences of higher income individuals but exhibit virtually no responsiveness to the preferences of the least well off. (29)
Income-related biases in political visibility and responsiveness are compounded in the American polity by their close alignment with educational differences. Higher levels of education are associated with greater
political and civic engagement, not just because they raise absolute levels of skills and knowledge, but also because of social sorting processes that shape the relative position individuals occupy within social and economic hierarchies. (30) Educational credentials, particularly a college degree, function as gateways to advantaged social networks, occupational groups, and residential locations. Indeed, in recent decades, Americans have been sorting themselves into increasingly distinct and homogenous clusters of unequal social privilege and political influence, intensifying the social and political isolation and polarization of neighborhoods. (31)
In short, while democracy is premised on an inclusive and egalitarian political order, studies of American democracy suggest a more troubling reality. Higher and lower income Americans often differ in what they prioritize and want from government; they participate at dramatically different rates as a result of a variety of intersecting factors; and as a result, the voices that government officials hear from and respond to are systematically biased in favor of those with higher levels of income, education, and other closely related attributes.
Rising Economic Inequality
Given the strong connection between SES and political participation, one might expect rising economic inequality in the United States since the 1970s to further widen the class disparity in political participation. In an era in which rights have been extended to incorporate more Americans along racial, ethnic, and gender lines, disparities in income and wealth have risen sharply. Indeed, in recent decades, data from authoritative government and nongovernment sources (especially the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Treasury Department, and Federal Reserve banks) document that income and wealth in American society have become concentrated at levels that are rare among affluent democracies. (32) The economic gap has widened, not just between the rich and poor, but also between the affluent and the middle strata of white-collar and blue-collar workers. In a perfectly egalitarian society, each fifth of the population would receive 20 percent of a country's income. Today, the most affluent fifth of Americans receive about 48 percent of total family income, a sum that is approximately double the proportion received by each of the two quintiles immediately below them (approximately 22.9 percent and 15.3 percent, respectively) and more than fourfold greater than the bottom two quintiles, which each received less than 10 percent of total family income. (33)
Although the rich have always enjoyed more income, their share has increased dramatically over the past three decades. Figure 1 shows that between 1947 and 1973, in the era of "the great compression" in American incomes, the growth of real family income among those in the top fifth was slower than in any of the other four quintiles. Between 1973 and 2000, the rate of income growth in this group was by far the fastest (increasing by 66.9 percent compared to 36.5 percent for the fourth quintile, which enjoyed the second fastest growth rate). (34) Indeed, income inequality grows steeper the farther one moves up the ladder. Within the top 20 percent of income earners, rates of gain were far faster for the richest 5 percent than for the next 15 percent, and rates of gain for the top 1 percent exceeded those of all other groups by large margins. (35) Finally,...
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