American Democracy and Inequality: A Report from the American Political Science Association
In the fall of 2002, the American Political Science Association appointed a Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy. The fifteen members of the task force are Lawrence Jacobs,...
...If increasing numbers of Americans had not received more education in recent times, the decline in voting might have been even sharper...
...Although electoral participation ticks up somewhat when contests are closely fought and parties make extra efforts to mobilize voters, a number of ongoing trends discourage voting and reinforce inequalities in voter turnout...
...Interest Groups for the Well-Off Citizens express preferences not just by individual acts, but also through the organized groups they support...
...politics in recent times with the erosion of such mass mobilizing organizations as voluntary asDISSENT / Spring 2005 83 INEQUALITY IN AMERICA sociations and unions, a development that may have significant consequences for American governance...
...The most loyal partisans and fringe activists have become more prominent in U.S...
...Our review of research on inequality and political participation as well as other components of American political life demonstrates an extraordinary association between economic and political inequality...
...Using the Internet to participate in politics generally entails knowing in advance that one wants political information, or that one wants to enter a discussion or to make a monetary contribution...
...Figure 2, based on a national survey in 1990, shows that in terms of average family income individuals who identify with and regularly vote for the Democratic Party are substantially less affluent than their Republican counterparts...
...Unequal political voice matters because the advantaged convey very different messages to government officials than do the rest of the citizenry...
...This pattern of stratification has also been documented in a variety of analyses, including those based on census data and validated votes...
...Thirty-eight percent of the well-off participate in informal efforts to solve community problems, compared with only 13 percent of those in the lowest income groups...
...Advantage begets additional advantage...
...A larger and growing proportion of higher educated Americans belong to professional societies, compared with those with less education, who belong to trade unions...
...These disparities in resources and skills are evident in a host of political activities, as shown in Figure 1. DISSENT / Spring 2005 81 INEQUALITY IN AMERICA • Nearly three-quarters of the well-off are affiliated with an organization that takes political stands (such as the American Association of Retired Persons or advocacy groups) as compared with only 29 percent of the least affluent...
...Finally, corporations and professions have created a new generation of political organizations since the early 1970s in response to the rise of citizen organizations, global competition, and developments within American business...
...Many new groups have also formed to expand the representation of consumers, women, environmentalists, and African Americans and ethnic minorities...
...Some argue that the Internet will be a democratizing force because it heralds a new frontier of virtual participation and new forms of citizen-to-citizen communication...
...As we suggest below, there is an urgent need for research that analyzes these interconnections...
...In short, the number of interest groups has grown, and they have become more diverse...
...The privileged are unlikely to have delayed medical treatment for economic reasons or cut back on their spending for food or their children's education...
...Political voice is also unequal because Americans who are very active in politics often have more intense or extreme views than average citizens...
...We should be surprised that the turnout of eligible voters is so low and uneven in the United States at the beginning of the twenty80 DISSENT / Spring 2005 INEQUALITY IN AMERICA FIGURE 1 Percentage active in various political activities: high- and low-income groups Source: 1990 Citizen Participation Study...
...Exercising the rights of citizenship requires resources and skills, which privileged occupations disproportionately bestow on the economically well-off...
...Contributing money to politicians is a form of citizen activity that is, in practical terms, reserved for a select group of Americans...
...In the 2001 Washington Representatives—a publication identifying individuals, firms, and organizations registered as lobbyists—organizations that begin with the word "American" alone numbered more than six hundred...
...democracy...
...See http://www.apsanet.org/ inequality 84 DISSENT / Spring 2005...
...Seven percent of the better-off protest to promote such causes as abortion rights or environmentalism, compared with 3 percent among the poor...
...What is more, political parties ignore parts of the electorate that have not turned out at high rates in past elections...
...Only 12 percent of American households had incomes over $100,000 in 2000, but a whopping 95 percent of the donors who made substantial contributions were in these most affluent households...
...For example, Americans who participate in politics are much less likely than many of their fellow citizens to have known the necessity of having to work extra hours to get by...
...politics by targeting many of their resources on recruiting those who are already the most privileged and involved...
...Put simply, the already privileged are better organized through occupational associations than the less privileged are through unions...
...Over the past four decades, Americans have organized a broader array of interest groups than ever before...
...The intense and unrelenting expressions of "extremists" (combined with the proliferation of interest groups speaking for specialized constituencies) make it harder for government to work out compromises or to respond to average citizens, who may have more middle-of-the-road opinions about a range of important matters, from abortion to tax cuts...
...See Sidney Verba, Kay L. Schlozman, and Henry Brady, 1995, 1990...
...In short, the Internet may "activate the active" and widen the disparities between participants and the politically disengaged...
...by government officials...
...Second, contemporary advocacy groups that focus on social rights or public values (such as environmentalism or the family) tend to be professionally run and focus on appealing to more affluent and educated supporters rather than on mobilizing large memberships...
...Many fewer than half of the Americans who vote in presidential elections take part in more timeconsuming and costly political activities, such as making financial contributions to candidates, working in electoral campaigns, contacting public officials, getting involved in organizations that take political stands, and demonstrating for or against political causes...
...first century...
...Exacerbating Inequalities Most interest groups are the instrument of the few who want to press for particular benefits...
...A short version of their report appeared in the APSA journal Perspectives on Politics, December 2004...
...First, since the 1970s, the proportion of the workforce that is unionized fell by about half to 12.9 percent, due to the decline of unionization in the private sector (where only 8.2 percent are currently unionized...
...The two figures included here come from the 1990 Citizen Participation Study Data Base...
...Average family income of All respondents $40,300 Republicans Democrats Party identifiers $45,400 $36,900 Regular voters $48,000 $38,500 Those asked to work $51,700 $49,800 in a campaign by a fellow partisan Those asked to contribute $56,700 $54,700 to a campaign by a fellow partisan Source: 1990 Citizen Participation Study...
...Just as striking, however, both parties seek campaign workers and campaign contributors among their more affluent adherents...
...Educational levels have also increased, and education cultivates skills and values that encourage voting...
...The skew in political participation toward the advantaged increases the probability of policies that tilt toward maintaining the status quo and continue to reward the organized and already well-off...
...Figure 1, based on a national survey of Americans in 1990, compares the political activity of two income groups (each of which constituted roughly one-fifth of the sample)—those having family incomes below $15,000 and those at the top of the income ladder, with family incomes over $75,000...
...Even voters in presidential elections tend to be from the ranks of the most advantaged Americans...
...Blue-collar trade unions have experienced an especially sharp decline...
...Rising economic inequality may discourage less privileged voters...
...The Half Who Vote Voting is the most obvious means for Americans to exercise their rights of citizenship, yet only a third of eligible voters participate in midterm congressional elections, and only about half turn out for presidential elections...
...Half of the affluent contact public officials, as compared with only 25 percent of those with low incomes...
...The more daunting challenge is to define precisely the relationships between the two...
...Managers, lawyers, doctors, and other professionals enjoy not only higher education and salaries, but also greater confidence and skills to speak and organize than do individuals who sweep floors, clean bedpans, or collect garbage...
...Because government officials today hear more clearly and more often from privileged and highly active citizens, policy makers are less likely to respond readily to the concerns of the majority...
...The problem today is that this mechanism for a broad and inclusive democracy caters to some of the same narrow segments of American society that also disproportionately deploy interest groups on their behalf...
...Our excerpt is from that text, pp...
...655-658, published here with the kind agreement of the editors of Perspectives, members of the Task Force, and the APSA...
...Among these are watchdogs for the previously unorganized—for example, poor children, gays, and the disabled...
...In contrast, the interests and preferences of the better-off are conveyed with clarity, consistency, and forcefulness...
...But even as the number of organizations speaking for underrepresented interests and preferences has grown, corporate managers and professionals have also increased their sway for a number of reasons...
...The full report will be published by Cambridge University Press, and this section is reprinted with their permission...
...It also reflects the decision of many existing corporate and professional organizations to expand their political efforts, often by establishing an independent office in Washington rather than relying on trade associations and lobbyists-for-hire to manage their political affairs...
...Millions of Americans, especially minority men, have been excluded from basic participation in our democracy by such laws...
...Today there are many more voluntary associations and interest-group organizations than in the past...
...Political parties, on the other hand, are the vehicle for reaching and mobilizing the broad public...
...See Sidney Verba, Kay L. Schlozman, and Henry Brady 1999, p.453...
...The selective outreach of the Democratic and Republican parties contributes to the stratification of voting, as we discuss below...
...Yet the dominance of the advantaged has solidified, and their capacities to speak loudly and clearly to government officials have been enhanced...
...This change reflects, in part, a massive mobilization into politics of advantaged groups that had not previously been active in Washington...
...Indeed, the United States invented political parties in the nineteenth century in order to mobilize ordinary citizens and succeeded in ushering in a far higher proportion of eligible voters to the polls than go today...
...What citizens do or don't do in politics affects what happens in the halls of government...
...They tend, for instance, to identify themselves as far more conservative or liberal...
...Turnout declined in the 1960s and has not rebounded since, even though African Americans in the South were brought into the electorate through the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and even though voting has been simplified through a number of legal reforms— from easing residency requirements to making it easier to register and acquire an absentee ballot...
...Both of the major political parties intensify the skewed participation in U.S...
...Figure 1 shows that 56 percent of those with incomes of at least $75,000 reported making some form of campaign contribution, compared with a mere 6 percent among Americans with incomes under $15,000...
...As wealth and income have become more concentrated and the flow of money into elections has grown, campaign contributions give the affluent a means to express their choices that is unavailable to most citizens, thus further aggravating inequalities of political voice...
...Beyond Voting Low and unequal voting is sobering in part because casting a ballot is America's most widespread form of political participation...
...How Government Responds Generations of reformers have understood a simple truth: What government officials hear influences what they do...
...Campaign contributors are the least representative group of citizens...
...All of this organizing amounts to an enrichment and enlargement of U.S...
...Even protesting, which might appear to demand little in the way of skills or money and is often thought of as "the weapon of the weak," is more prevalent among the affluent...
...In addition to the sources specifically cited in this report, we rely upon evidence and citations in a broad review of the social science research prepared by our task force, "Inequalities of Political Voice...
...The fifteen members of the task force are Lawrence Jacobs, chair (University of Minnesota), Ben Barber (University of Maryland), Larry Bartels (Princeton University), Michael Dawson (Harvard University), Morris Fiorillo (Stanford University), Jacob Hacker, chair (Yale University), Rodney Hero (Notre Dame University), Hugh Heclo (George Mason University), Claire Jean Kim (University of California, Irvine), Suzanne Mettler (Syracuse University), Benjamin Page (Northwestern University), Dianne Pinderhughes (University of Illinois, Champagne– Urbana), Kay Lehman Schlozman (Boston College), Theda Skocpol (Harvard University), and Sidney Verba (Harvard University...
...Nearly nine out of ten individuals in families with incomes over $75,000 reported voting in presidential elections, while only half of those in families with incomes under $15,000 reported voting...
...many formerly marginalized Americans have 82 DISSENT / Spring 2005 INEQUALITY IN AMERICA gained some voice in public debates...
...the major parties have both become less likely to personally contact large numbers of less privileged and less active citizens—even though research tells us that personal contact is important in encouraging citizens to vote...
...And part of the decline in voting since the early 1970s results from laws in many states that forbid former (as well as current) prisoners from voting, sometimes for their entire lives...
...An Uneven Playing Field Disparities in participation mean that the concerns of lower- or moderate-income Americans, racial and ethnic minorities, and legal immigrants are systematically less likely to be heard FIGURE 2 Party mobilization for political activity: Who is asked...
...Democrats and Republicans alike have become highly dependent on campaign contributors, and activists and have become accustomed to competing for just over half of a shrinking universe of voters...
...0 NLY SOME Americans fully exercise their rights as citizens, and they usually come from the more advantaged segments of society...
...There is, however, ample research suggesting complex interrelationships between increased economic inequality and changes in American institutions, political behavior, and public policy...
...Those Americans who would be most likely to raise issues about basic opportunities and needs—from escaping poverty to securing jobs, education, health care, and housing—tend to be the least likely to participate in politics...
...In sum, less advantaged Americans vote less because they lack the skills, motivation, and networks that the better advantaged acquire through formal education and occupational advancement...
...we are grateful to Sidney Verba, Kay L. Schlozman, and Henry Brady for permission to reprint them...
...The Internet, however, appears to be reinforcing existing inequalities because it is disproportionately accessible to—and used by—the affluent, non-Hispanic whites, and the highly educated...
...At this point, there is no consistent evidence of simple paths from rising economic inequality to political and policy developments...
...Ens...
...Those who enjoy higher incomes, more occupational success, and the highest levels of formal education are the ones most likely to participate in politics and make their needs and values known to government officials...
...People who are ambivalent about politics or not already involved may not be drawn in simply by the availability of the Internet...
...The less advantaged are so absent from discussions in Washington that government officials are likely to hear about their concerns, if at all, from privileged advocates who try to speak for them...
Vol. 52 • April 2005 • No. 2
