American Insecurity: Why Our Economic Fears Lead to Political Inaction - Hardcover

Levine, Adam Seth

 
9780691162966: American Insecurity: Why Our Economic Fears Lead to Political Inaction
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0691162964 ISBN 13: 9780691162966
Verlag: Princeton University Press, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

"This tremendously interesting and highly relevant book has an encouraging message: Danish citizens stood behind the civil liberties of Muslims even at the height of the Danish cartoon crisis. It shows that what common sense expected to happen--a backlash--did not happen, and then explains why with a straightforwardness and immediacy that are rare for an academic text."--Hanspeter Kriesi, European University Institute

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Adam Seth Levine is an assistant professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. He has published in a variety of outlets such as the Journal of Politics, Political Analysis, Review of Behavioral Economics, and Political Communication. His work has won numerous awards, including the 2011 E. E. Schattschneider Prize. This prize is the highest dissertation award in the field of American government and is given annually by the American Political Science Association.

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"The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, growing financial threats to the middle class, and the biggest political movement is the antigovernment Tea Party. What gives? The answer is that Americans buffeted by economic risks don't give. They don't give money or time to political organizations seeking to improve economic security. When you try to rally people to the cause, you inadvertently but powerfully deter their political participation. Levine has provided a compelling new account of a profound, and profoundly important, paradox."--Jacob S. Hacker, author of The Great Risk Shift

"In American Insecurity, Levine develops a rich, interdisciplinary theory to explain why it's difficult to mobilize people around issues related to economic insecurity. Levine demonstrates the causal, demobilizing influence of what he calls 'self-undermining rhetoric'--rhetoric that reminds people they themselves face the very financial threats that they're being asked to mobilize to prevent. Well-written and intellectually stimulating, this book will make a significant contribution to the field."--Joanne Miller, University of Minnesota

"In this book, Levine dramatically reduces the untenable arc of inference drawn from the lack of large-scale collective action addressing problems of American financial insecurity. Arguing that political appeals on these kinds of issues have a uniquely demobilizing impact, Levine offers a more plausible explanation for our political impasse that is firmly grounded in innovative research, fresh theorizing, and unusual insight into the financial stresses of modern American life."--Leslie McCall, Northwestern University

"Developing a groundbreaking theory about the difficulties of collective action in American politics, this book considers how interest groups, public political participation, and the responsiveness of elected officials play a role in the distinct lack of policies aimed at ameliorating the effects of economic insecurity in the United States. One of the most important books in decades."--James N. Druckman, Northwestern University

"American Insecurity addresses a wide range of political situations to explain why the economic dislocations that have affected tens of millions of Americans have not led to political countermobilization. It presents an entirely novel idea: that self-undermining rhetoric will systematically lead to undermobilization precisely when specific challenges are discussed. This book is a winner."--Frank R. Baumgartner, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Aus dem Klappentext

"The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, growing financial threats to the middle class, and the biggest political movement is the antigovernment Tea Party. What gives? The answer is that Americans buffeted by economic risks don't give. They don't give money or time to political organizations seeking to improve economic security. When you try to rally people to the cause, you inadvertently but powerfully deter their political participation. Levine has provided a compelling new account of a profound, and profoundly important, paradox."--Jacob S. Hacker, author of The Great Risk Shift

"In American Insecurity, Levine develops a rich, interdisciplinary theory to explain why it's difficult to mobilize people around issues related to economic insecurity. Levine demonstrates the causal, demobilizing influence of what he calls 'self-undermining rhetoric'--rhetoric that reminds people they themselves face the very financial threats that they're being asked to mobilize to prevent. Well-written and intellectually stimulating, this book will make a significant contribution to the field."--Joanne Miller, University of Minnesota

"In this book, Levine dramatically reduces the untenable arc of inference drawn from the lack of large-scale collective action addressing problems of American financial insecurity. Arguing that political appeals on these kinds of issues have a uniquely demobilizing impact, Levine offers a more plausible explanation for our political impasse that is firmly grounded in innovative research, fresh theorizing, and unusual insight into the financial stresses of modern American life."--Leslie McCall, Northwestern University

"Developing a groundbreaking theory about the difficulties of collective action in American politics, this book considers how interest groups, public political participation, and the responsiveness of elected officials play a role in the distinct lack of policies aimed at ameliorating the effects of economic insecurity in the United States. One of the most important books in decades."--James N. Druckman, Northwestern University

"American Insecurity addresses a wide range of political situations to explain why the economic dislocations that have affected tens of millions of Americans have not led to political countermobilization. It presents an entirely novel idea: that self-undermining rhetoric will systematically lead to undermobilization precisely when specific challenges are discussed. This book is a winner."--Frank R. Baumgartner, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

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American Insecurity

Why Our Economic Fears Lead to Political Inaction

By Adam Seth Levine

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2015 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-16296-6

Contents

Acknowledgments, vii, 
1 Financial Threats and Self-Undermining Rhetoric, 1, 
2 Do Americans View Financial Threats as Important Political Issues?, 35, 
3 Who Mobilizes?, 81, 
4 Why Rhetoric about Economic Insecurity Can Be Self-Undermining, 107, 
5 How People Respond to Participation Requests, 117, 
6 Political Voice across Issues, 161, 
7 Self-Undermining Rhetoric in the Past and Present, 193, 
Appendix A: Multivariate Models from Chapter 2, 213, 
Appendix B: Analysis of the Washington D.C., Interest-Group Community, 217, 
Appendix C: Multivariate Models from Chapter 5, 227, 
Appendix D: Noncompliance in the ACSCAN Donation Experiment, 230, 
Appendix E: Materials for Experiments in Chapter 5, 233, 
Appendix F: Multivariate Models from Chapter 6, 243, 
Appendix G: Details on Variable Coding for Multivariate Models throughout the Book, 249, 
Notes, 253, 
Bibliography, 283, 
Index, 297,


CHAPTER 1

Financial Threats and Self-Undermining Rhetoric


Job loss. Concerns about job security. Skyrocketing health care bills. Inadequate retirement savings. Concerns about Social Security and Medicare. Tuition bills. Unrelenting college loan payments.

Americans face no shortage of threats to their financial well- being. These threats reflect financial constraints that they presently face or worry that they could face in the future. Some reflect threats to income, during either one's working years or one's golden years. Others reflect concerns about the high and growing cost of goods such as health care and higher education. To varying degrees, these threats affect people throughout both the lower and middle reaches of the income distribution. They impact people who are objectively poor, along with many who enjoy the trappings of a middle-class lifestyle, including a house, a salary, a college degree, and a level of income that permits at least some discretionary spending.

Consider the situation of the average American household today. While the incomes of the richest Americans have exploded since the late 1970s, those in the lower and middle parts of the income distribution have grown much more modestly. At the same time, many Americans are also more likely to experience heightened risk with respect to the economic resources they do have. When it occurs, job loss is more potent because it is more likely to result in long-term unemployment that lasts over six months. Health care involves high out-of-pocket costs, particularly as employers continue to pass along more health care costs to employees (even after the 2010 health care reform). Retirement accounts are less secure because they are increasingly tied to the stock market as opposed to being a defined benefit. And workers who are just starting out incur far more educational debt in advance of a job market that increasingly doles out job insecurity. Taking a wide lens, almost half (44%) of all American families have less than three months of savings to cushion themselves against financial shocks. Or, to state matters more starkly, almost half of Americans are now one financial shock away from poverty.

This book examines the political consequences of these threats to Americans' financial well-being and in particular why they might not motivate people to become politically active even though we have good reason to expect that they would. Echoing the book's title, I collectively refer to such threats as American insecurity — or, in some cases, simply economic insecurity. These labels capture a broad set of areas of life that presently impose constraints on Americans' financial well-being or that they fear could impose constraints in the future. In this book I will be focusing primarily on four threats: involuntary job loss, health care costs, retirement, and higher education costs. These four by no means capture the full range of financial threats that Americans face, but as I will discuss throughout the book they turn out to be particularly illuminating cases. Relative to many other issues that are often grouped under the label of "economic insecurity," explaining political inaction on these four issues turns out to require a new theoretical approach.

Americans have certainly taken note of these forms of insecurity. In 2007, on the eve of the Great Recession, almost two-thirds of Americans reported that the United States offered less economic security than it did just ten years earlier. And a majority expressed concern about how their family would maintain security going forward, including holding a steady job, having health insurance, and retiring comfortably. By the summer of 2009, after Americans had endured the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression as well as taxpayer-funded bailouts of the financial and automotive sectors, almost every single American expressed concern.

Politically speaking, they have also taken note. As millions express concern about losing their job, losing health insurance, incurring major health care expenses, having inadequate retirement savings, and affording a college education for their children, they also express widespread support for public policies that would address such concerns and, in many cases, view them as important issues.

From the perspective of political action, this last point is absolutely critical. It is typically the case that as people consider issues to be more important, they are more likely to take action on them. This means that they become more motivated to do things such as contacting their representatives, attending meetings and rallies, spreading the word about an issue, and donating money to organizations advocating policy change in such issue domains. This fairly intuitive argument about the root of political action is found in both much popular writing on the subject as well as several streams of scholarly writing. It can be found in work on individual political participation and interest-group formation by both political scientists and psychologists. It can also be found in work on campaign strategy and political communication that focuses on the optimal strategies for political elites such as candidates and interest-group leaders.

Indeed, in several other domains, these issue-importance judgments motivate action to a great extent. For example, those who find guns to be a highly important issue are more motivated to become active when gun-related issues are on the political agenda (or to place them on the agenda in the first place). Parallel arguments apply to those concerned about the environment, abortion, and several other issues that affect a broad set of the population. And, absent strong personal motivation on the part of a powerful officeholder or bureaucrat, such large-scale political pressure is often necessary for previously unrepresented groups to make their case in the public square.

That's the landscape as it stands. We would expect issue importance to be a critical catalyst for action when it comes to issues that reflect financial threats that people face. Yet in many cases it hasn't been. To be sure, this does not mean that there are no organizations or activists seeking to represent people facing aspects of economic insecurity. There are. Nor does it mean that Congress has failed to enact any laws whatsoever that would bolster the foundation...

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Verlag
Princeton University Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2015
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0691162964
ISBN 13 
9780691162966
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
248
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
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