Among the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, wrote Alexis de Tocqueville on the first page of his classic Democracy in America, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of condition among the people. That was then. This is now. For many years, statistics gathered by international bodies such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have shown that, among developed countries, the United States is the most unequal, whether in terms of income or wealth.
Now a task force of leading scholars assembled by the American Political Science Association (Apsa) finds that the scourge of overt discrimination against AfricanAmericans and women has been replaced by a more subtle but potent threat the growing concentration of the countrys wealth and income in the hands of the few.
Godfrey Hodgson explains the roots of the conservative ascendancy in America and its impact on economy and society in his new book, More Equal than Others: America from Nixon to the new century (2004)
The United States is vigorously promoting democracy abroad, the eminent political scientists point out. But what, they ask, is happening to democracy at home? American ideals of equal citizenship and responsive government, they suggest, may be undergoing threat in an era of persistent and rising inequalities. Disparities of income, wealth and access to opportunity are growing more sharply in the United States than in many other nations, and gaps between races and ethnic groups persist.
The bald facts of growing inequality are welldocumented by many scholars, not least in the biennial series The State of Working America, published since 1998 by Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein and John Schmitt of the Economic Policy Institute. The innovative quality of the Apsa taskforce report, American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality, is that it focuses on the way that inequality is corroding American political democracy.
The fifteen authors of the Apsa report stress that they speak for themselves and not officially for the American Political Science Association. But they are in the main highlyrespected scholars, and collectively their decision to speak out on the political implications of rising inequality is likely to put that issue high up on the political agenda for Democrats, in particular in this presidential election year.
The American Political Science Association task force on Inequality & American Democracy is chaired by Lawrence R. Jacobs, of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota. It includes Sidney Verba of Harvard, one of the worlds leading elections researcher; Theda Skocpol, director of Harvards Center for American Political Studies; Larry Bartels, founding director of Princetons Center for the Study of Democratic Politics; Claire Jean Kim, of the University of CaliforniaIrvine; Hugh Heclo, of George Mason University; and Benjamin Barber, of the University of Maryland.
The authors see severe consequences for American democracy in the fact that the voices of American citizens are heard unequally: The privileged participate more than others and are increasingly well organized to press their demands on government. Public officials are much more responsive to the privileged than to average citizens. Citizens with lower or moderate incomes speak with a whisper that is lost on the ears of inattentive government officials, while the advantaged roar with a clarity and consistency that policymakers readily hear and routinely follow.
Alongside more integration in the areas of race, ethnicity, gender and traditional forms of social exclusion, the United States has become more sharply divided in income and wealth. Moreover, the comparison between trends in American society and other advanced industrial democracies Britain, Canada, France, Germany, and Italy is sobering.
A graph in the Apsa report shows that the share of national income going to the very rich (the top 0.1 of 1%) declining sharply from about 12% in Britain, under 9% in the United States and 8% in France, until it settled in the late 1940s at under 3% in all three countries.
From then until the 1960s, inequality on this and other measures continued steadily to narrow; but from the mid1970s onwards, the United States diverged sharply from its two European allies and became far more unequal. By 1998, the share of income going to the very rich was two to three times higher in the United States than in Britain (even after its experience of Thatcherism) and France.
The authors attribute persistent and rising economic inequality in the United States to a number of causes, including changes in technology and market forces. But these factors affect all countries. It is government policies those pursued and eschewed that explain the sharper inequalities in the United States. Regulation, tax policy and government programmes can be used to moderate or to increase inequality; and in the United States, tax policy, tax loopholes and antitrade union measures have all contributed to inequality.
The Apsa authors concede that Americans who see inequality as reflecting differences between individuals rather than flaws in the economic system are prepared to accept far greater disparities of income and wealth than their European counterparts. But they point out that Americans accept economic inequalities only when they are sure that everyone has an equal chance to succeed. They expect government to ensure equal opportunity, not to favour those who already have wealth and power. Here, they cite survey data indicating that 76% of Americans think the government is run by a few big interests looking out only for themselves a doubling over the last thirty years.
It is hard here to avoid drawing from the reports evidence of a causal connection between the growth of inequality in the United States and the ascendancy of conservative ideas (and, after 1980, of conservative Republicans) in American politics.
The politics of inequality
Inequality does not mean merely impoverished lives, restricted lifechances, or stunted ambitions; it also has consequences for the quality of American democracy.
A key factor here is low voter turnouts. The Apsa report finds that in the United States, only a third of those eligible to vote turn out in midterm Congressional elections and only around half in presidential elections. Moreover, the affluent are most likely to vote; 90% of people in families with incomes over $75,000 tend to vote in presidential elections, but only half with incomes under $15,000. The result is that politicians become more interested in issues affecting the affluent, in turn narrowing the circle of social concern and political responsibility.
Is global inequality rising or narrowing? See the vigorous openDemocracy debate:
- James Galbraith, Globalisation and inequality: The Economist gets it wrong (September 2003)
- Clive Crook, Global inequality and The Economist (September 2003)
- James Galbraith, Globally unequal: a response to Clive Crook (September 2003)
This correlation between income and political participation is even more marked in the area of political fundraising a crucial factor in American politics because of its reliance on political advertising on TV, which is either illegal or closely regulated in other prosperous democracies. In 2000, 95% of political donations came from households with incomes over $100,000 only 12% of the total; over 50% of households with incomes of $75,000 made any political contribution, against 6% of those with incomes under $15,000.
The correlation applies to other forms of political activism. Nearly 75% of the affluent (defined as those with incomes of $75,000 and above) are affiliated with lobbying organisations like the American Association of Retired Persons or environmental groups, but fewer than 30% of the least affluent. The welloff are also twice as likely as the poor to engage in protests over (say) environmental issues or abortion rights.
As a result, the influence of corporate managers and professionals, and their business organisations, has flourished while that of trade unions has receded. Put simply, the report says, the already privileged are better organised through occupational associations than the less privileged. Campaign contributions, it maintains, give the affluent a means to express their voice that is unavailable to most citizens.
There have been repeated attempts, like the McCainFeingold bill, to limit campaign fundraising and the influence of money in politics. Each attempt tends to see more loopholes open for every one closed. Meanwhile, political fundraising is protected by the 1974 decision of the supreme court in an action brought by the wealthy New York senator, James Buckley (brother of the conservative publicist, William F. Buckley), which held in effect that campaign giving was a form of free speech and as such protected by the first amendment to the US constitution.
The return of class politics
Inequality narrows political concern at the level of party organisation and appeal also, argues the Apsa report. The political parties that once channelled the views and interests of the broad public into the political arena now cater to the same relatively privileged groups that disproportionately employ interest groups on their behalf. Democrats and Republicans alike seek campaign workers and campaign contributors among the more affluent.
The skew in political participation towards the advantaged, the report concludes, generates policies tilted towards maintaining the status quo and continuing to reward the organized and already welloff. It is not a matter of direct bribery of politicians; rather, money buys attention.
The larger financial contributors earn the privilege of regularly meeting policymakers in their offices and indeed of sleeping as guests in the White House. They are able to build relationships with government officials who can do them favours: inserting a rider into an omnibus bill, expediting the scheduling of a bill that has been languishing in committee, or making sure that threatening regulatory legislation receives minimal funding for implementation. At every stage, legislators give priority to the concerns of big contributors.
There has always been porkbarrel legislation in congress, steering money towards members districts; but now pork has acquired an ideological seasoning. This process has been reinforced by the search for ideological unity among Democrats and Republicans that results from their fundraising imperatives though the Republicans have been far more successful in embracing a shared conservative dogma than the Democrats have in defending liberal ideas.
Godfrey Hodgson maps American insecurities in openDemocracy:
- Can America go modest? (October 2001)
- From frontiersman to neocon (April 2003)
- A comedy of errors: Tony Blair and America (April 2004)
- Ronald Reagan: the feelgood president (June 2004)
Members of Congress have channelled defence contracts and other funding to districts represented by their political allies. Recent research on the Senate reveals wealthier constituents to have almost three times more influence on their senators votes than those near the bottom of the income ladder; the preferences of constituents in the bottom fifth of the income distribution have little or no effect on the way senators vote.
The Apsa report is well aware of the embarrassing contrast between neoWilsonian campaigns for spreading the benefits of American democracy abroad with the realities of domestic American politics: The nations current campaign to expand democracy abroad should be a bugle call at home to make the birthright of all Americans equal voice and influence in the affairs of government more of a reality than it is today.
It may have only one muted reference to class warfare in Congress, but the American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality report clearly implies that inequalities in wealth in the American system and in the access to influence that wealth buys are turning American politics into class politics as they have not been for generations.