There was and continues to be nothing easy about being poor in the Big Easy,
or anywhere else in America for that matter. The callous or incompetent
handling of the evacuation of the poor from New Orleans smacked of Marie
Antoinette's concern for the hungry of Paris, and underscored both the
existence and consequence of income inequality in America.
In 2001, the American Political Science Association (APSA) initiated a Task
Force on Inequality and American Democracy, chaired by Lawrence Jacobs and
then-APSA President Theda Skocpol. The product of their two-year
investigation is available on the APSA web site (www.apsanet.org/section_256.cfm), was discussed in
Perspectives on Politics in December 2004, and was published in
2005 in book form by the Russell Sage Foundation under the title,
Inequality and American Democracy.
Since the Task Force's inception, the subject of income inequality and its
consequences for social and political life has continued to receive
scholarly attention, and has been taken up by the public media as well. The
Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the
New York Times have each recently published series on the
growing economic gap between America's rich and poor.
Attention often begets criticism, and the Task Force report is no exception.
In this issue of PS, the authors of the Task Force report respond
to a collection of critiques and comments on their work. Some criticism is
mild, focusing on what could be added to the report to make it a fuller
analysis. Other criticism takes exception to the report's observations,
conclusions, and perceived ideological message. Andrea Brandolini and
Timothy Smeeding set the stage for the interchange by examining patterns of
inequality in Western democracies. Lawrence Jacobs and Theda Skocpol then
discuss the creation, scope of work, and achievements of the Task Force on
Inequality and American Democracy. The essays that follow alternate between
a commentator's response to the report (Robert Weissberg, Frances Fox Piven,
and Stephen Bennett) and a reply from a Task Force member (Larry Bartels,
Jacob Hacker, and Kay Schlozman). The discussion concludes with Steve Macedo
and Christopher Karpowitz's argument in favor of expanding the scope of
investigations into economic and political inequality. I believe PS
readers will find the exchanges provocative.
I thank all of the contributors to this symposium for their willingness to
take part in the project even in the face of exceptionally unforgiving
deadlines.
The Task Force Report on Inequality and American
Democracy
The Task Force Report on Inequality and American Democracy consists of
three major parts:
1) “American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality” is
relatively short and written in a clear and forceful manner
intended to provoke interest and debate. This reflects the
interest of the Council, Association, and profession in
expanding the public presence of political science in the
broader debates on American and international politics. This
report can be found at www.apsanet.org/imgtest/taskforcereport.pdf.
2) Several critical reviews of political science research on
economic, gender, racial, and ethnic inequalities that are
written in a language and tone accessible to undergraduates,
graduate students, and scholars in different fields and
disciplines. The critical reviews cover these principal areas of
scholarly analysis and can be accessed at www.apsanet.org/content_4040.cfm:
* Inequalities of Political Voice
* Inequality and American Governance
* Inequality and Public Policy
3) Teaching modules on inequality and American democracy. These
provide a “master” guideline for nearly two dozen distinct
topics for instructors to choose among when designing course
syllabi at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Individual
syllabi are also offered as illustration for how this material
might be assembled. The teaching material is available at www.apsanet.org/content_4032.cfm.
In addition, a previous symposium on the Task Force's findings, and
critiques of those findings, appears in the December 2004 issue of
Perspectives on Politics. Finally, much of the Task Force's
work has been published in an edited work, Inequality and American
Democracy (Russell Sage, 2005), available through their web
site at www.russellsage.org/publications/books/050727.785337.
SYMPOSIUM AUTHORS' BIOS
Larry M. Bartels is the Donald E. Stokes Professor of Public and
International Affairs at Princeton University. He directs the Center for
the Study of Democratic Politics, a program in Princeton's Woodrow
Wilson School supporting empirical research on democratic processes and
institutions.
Stephen Earl Bennett is adjunct professor of political science
at the University of Southern Indiana, and emeritus professor of
political science at the University of Cincinnati. Bennett's Ph.D. is
from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His fields of
specialization are American public opinion and political
communication.
Andrea Brandolini is an economist in the Economic Research
Department of the Bank of Italy, the Italian central bank. His research
interests are income and wealth distribution, poverty and social
exclusion, measurement of economic well-being, and labour economics. He
is currently studying long run changes in income inequality in rich
countries.
Jacob S. Hacker is Peter Strauss Family Associate Professor of
Political Science at Yale University. He is the author of numerous
articles and books on American politics and public policy—most recently,
Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of
American Democracy (with Paul Pierson). Currently, he is
heading a Social Science Research Council project on “The Privatization
of Risk.”
Lawrence R. Jacobs is the Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair for
Political Studies in the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute and Department of
Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Jacobs served as
co-chair (with Theda Skocpol) of the American Political Science
Association Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy. He is the
co-editor, with James Morone, of Healthy, Wealthy, and Fair, a
pioneering study of the interconnections of inequality, public policy,
and health, and coauthor, with Robert Shapiro, of Politicians Don't
Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic
Responsiveness (University of Chicago Press, 2000).
Christopher F. Karpowitz is the postdoctoral fellow in democracy
and human values and associate director of the Program in Ethics and
Public Affairs at Princeton's University Center for Human Values. His
research is located at the intersection between political behavior and
political theory, and he has developed special interests in
deliberation, democratic theory, civic engagement, political psychology,
and American political thought. He is a co-author of Democracy at
Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation, and
What We Can Do About It (Brookings, 2005).
Stephen Macedo is Laurance S. Roskefeller Professor of Politics
and director of the University Center for Human Values at Princeton
University. He chaired the APSA's first Standing Committee on Civic
Education and Engagement and is lead author of its collective effort,
Democracy at Risk: How Polititcal Choices Undermine Citizen
Participation and What We Can Do About It (Brookings
Institution Press, 2005).
Frances Fox Piven is Distinguished Professor of Political
Science and Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of
New York. Among her books are Regulating the Poor, Poor People's
Movements, Why Americans Still Don't Vote, and, most recently,
The War at Home.
Kay Lehman Scholzman is J. Joseph Moakley Endowed Professor of
Political Science at Boston College. She has written numerous articles
in professional journals and is editor of Elections in America
and co-author of Injury to Insult: Unemployment, Class and Political
Response (with Sidney Verba), Organized Interests and
American Democracy (with John T. Tierney), Voice and
Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics (with Sidney
Verba and Henry E. Brady) and, most recently, The Private Roots of
Public Action: Gender, Equality, and Political Participation
(with Nancy Burns and Sidney Verba), which was co-winner of the American
Political Science Association's Schuck Prize.
Theda Skocpol is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government
and Sociology, and Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at
Harvard University. Skocpol served as co-chair (with Lawrence Jacobs) of
the American Political Science Association Task Force on Inequality and
American Democracy. She is author of Diminished Democracy: From
Membership to Management in American Civic Life (University of
Oklahoma Press, 2003), which won the J. David Greenstone Award of the
Politics and History Section of the American Political Science
Association.
Timothy M. Smeeding is an economist and Maxwell Professor of
Public Policy at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. He is
director of the Luxembourg Income Study Project, which he founded in
1983 and which recently won an APSA award for comparative databases.
Smeeding's primary research focuses on national and cross-national
comparisons of income and wealth inequality and poverty among vulnerable
groups, including low-wage workers, children, and the aged.
Robert Weissberg received his Ph.D. from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, taught at Cornell and the University of Illinois,
Urbana, and is now emeritus. He has published books on public opinion,
political participation, tolerance, empowerment, and other topics. His
articles have appeared in major professional journals plus more popular
outlets such as the Public Interest, Society, and The
Weekly Standard.
