Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T16:21:35.351Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Great Passivity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2004

Lawrence M. Mead
Affiliation:
Lawrence M. Mead is professor of politics at New York University ([email protected])

Extract

According to the APSA report, “American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality,” in the United States economic and political inequality are feeding on each another. Since the 1970s, earnings, income, and wealth have become more unequal, while politics is becoming more elitist. Rising inequality is corrupting our democracy, especially through the rising role that money plays in politics. At the same time a more exclusive government exacerbates, or at least tolerates, growing inequality.Lawrence M. Mead testifies regularly to Congress on poverty, welfare, and social policy and has written many books and articles on the politics of poverty and welfare reform, most recently Lifting up the Poor (with Mary Jo Bane) and Government Matters: Welfare Reform in Wisconsin.

Type
APSA TASK FORCE REPORT AND COMMENTARIES
Copyright
© 2004 American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alinsky, Saul D. 1946. Reveille for radicals. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
American democracy in an age of rising inequality. 2004. Report of the American Political Science Association Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy. Perspectives on Politics 2 (4): 65166.Google Scholar
Beer, Samuel H. 1993. To make a nation: The rediscovery of American federalism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Blank, Rebecca M., and Ron Haskins, eds. 2001. The new world of welfare: An agenda for reauthorization and beyond. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Bok, Derek. 1996. The state of the nation: Government and the quest for a better society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Bok, Derek 2001. The trouble with government. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Ginsberg, Beth, and Lawrence Mead. 2004. Ethnic influences on voting. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago.
Gottschalk, Peter, and Sheldon Danziger. 2004. Wage inequality, earnings inequality and poverty in the U.S. over the last quarter of the twentieth century. Paper presented at the Inequality Summer Institute, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
Levy, Frank, and Richard J. Murnane. 1992. U.S. earnings levels and earnings inequality: A review of recent trends and proposed explanations. Journal of Economic Literature 30 (3): 133381.Google Scholar
Luttbeg, Norman R., and Michael M. Gant. 1995. American electoral behavior, 1952–1992. 2nd ed. Itasca, IL: F. E. Peacock.
Mead, Lawrence M. 1992. The new politics of poverty: The nonworking poor in America. New York: Basic Books.
Mead, Lawrence M. 2004. Government matters: Welfare reform in Wisconsin. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mettler, Suzanne. 2002. Bringing the state back in to civic engagement: Policy feedback effects of the G.I. Bill for World War II veterans. American Political Science Review 96 (2): 35165.Google Scholar
Mettler, Suzanne, and Joe Soss. 2004. The consequences of public policy for democratic citizenship: Bridging policy studies and mass politics. Perspectives on Politics 2 (1): 5573.Google Scholar
Olson, Mancur. 1971. The logic of collective action: Public goods and the theory of groups. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Phillips, Kevin. 1999. The cousins' wars: Religion, politics, and the triumph of Anglo-America. New York: Basic Books.
Putnam, Robert. 2004. Diversity, inequality, and community: Mid-term report on a continuing project. Presentation at the Inequality Summer Institute, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge.
Sander, Thomas H., and Robert D. Putnam. 2002. Walking the civic talk after Sept. 11. Christian Science Monitor, February 19.
Soss, Joe. 1999. Lessons of welfare: Policy design, political learning, and political action. American Political Science Review 93 (2): 36380.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census. 2003. Current population reports, P60-222, Poverty in the United States: 2002. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Verba, Sidney, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady. 1995. Voice and equality: Civic voluntarism in American politics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Young, Michael. 1961. The rise of the meritocracy, 1870–2033: An essay on education and equality. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books.