Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson's Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class is both a work of political science and a contribution to broad public discussion of distributive politics. Its topic could not be more relevant to a US polity wracked by bitter partisan disagreements about taxes, social spending, financial regulation, social insecurity, and inequality. The political power of “the rich” is a theme of widespread public attention. The headline on the cover of the January–February 2011 issue of The American Interest—“Inequality and Democracy: Are Plutocrats Drowning Our Republic?”—is indicative. Francis Fukuyama's lead essay, entitled “Left Out,” clarifies that by “plutocracy,” the journal means “not just rule by the rich, but rule by and for the rich. We mean, in other words, a state of affairs in which the rich influence government in such a way as to protect and expand their own wealth and influence, often at the expense of others.” Fukuyama makes clear that he believes that this state of affairs obtains in the United States today.

Readers of Perspectives on Politics will know that the topic has garnered increasing attention from political scientists in general and in our journal in particular. In March 2009, we featured a symposium on Larry Bartels's Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age. And in December 2009, our lead article, by Jeffrey A. Winters and Benjamin I. Page, starkly posed the question “Oligarchy in the United States?” and answered it with an equally stark “yes.” Winner-Take-All Politics thus engages a broader scholarly discussion within US political science, at the same time that it both draws upon and echoes many “classic themes” of US political science from the work of Charles Beard and E. E. Schattschneider to Ted Lowi and Charles Lindblom.

In this symposium, we have brought together a group of important scholars and commentators who offer a range of perspectives on the book and on the broader themes it engages. While most of our discussants are specialists on “American politics,” we have also sought out scholars beyond this subfield. Our charge to the discussants is to evaluate the book's central claims and evidence, with a focus on three related questions: 1) How compelling is its analysis of the “how” and “why” of recent US public policy and its “turn” in favor of “the rich” and against “the middle class”? 2) How compelling is its critique of the subfield of “American politics” for its focus on the voter–politician linkage and on “politics as spectacle” at the expense of an analysis of “politics as organized combat”? 3) And do you agree with its argument that recent changes in US politics necessitate a different, more comparative, and more political economy–centered approach to the study of US politics?—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

Morozov is absolutely right to point out that other countries—not in the set analyzed in Digital Origins—might reveal different paths toward or away from democratic government. But a quick look at some of the examples shows that they do not directly conflict with my argument that the proliferation of consumer electronics in countries with an active civil society and limited resource wealth seems to come with democratic consequences. China, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela are often offered as examples of how a tough regime can use digital media to oppress their citizens.

In a March 2006 New York Times editorial, sociologist Orlando Patterson highlighted and tried to explain the “tragedy unfolding in our inner cities,” particularly the “self-destructive” behavior of “young black men.” Provocatively, he identified what sociologists have labeled the “cool-pose culture” as the primary culprit. According to this “culture of failure” thesis, minority youth are partly responsible for this tragedy by choosing a lifestyle that disconnects them from the “socioeconomic mainstream.” It is this thesis that Our Schools Suck is determined to discredit. The authors, four scholars and also, importantly, self-professed activists, criticize scholars, politicians, political analysts, and entertainers, including Patterson, Barack Obama, Juan Williams, and Bill Cosby, for giving “nonwhite youth” a “moral flogging” rather than focusing on the real problem, “socioeconomic and school conditions” (p. 5). Instead of being unconcerned about education, they argue, urban minority youth value education and are acutely aware of their schools' shortcomings.

First, I offer a big thank you to Jane Bennett for an insightful and kind review. As authors know, it is hard looking back at one's work as a mere reader, let alone in a constructively critical vein. Often as not, my reaction is: I wrote that? Bennett helped me see this work with fresh eyes. And, having read and reviewed Vibrant Matter (kudos to editor Jeff Isaac), I can see my work through an entirely different lens—vibrant materiality. In this reply, I'd like to flag two points of convergence in our work and take up the notion of “common sense.”

Joshua Dunn's thoughtful review raises methodological and substantive issues that require clarification. According to Dunn, my coauthors and I “contend” that students' “statements” criticizing their lack of academic drive or that of their peers “show how students have ‘internalized’ the perspective of scholars such as Patterson.” This is evidence, he contends, that we “tend not to treat young people as ‘experts’ of their lives” when they failed to support our critique of the “culture of failure” thesis. However, we make no such contention. Moreover, his critique misrepresents our ethnographic approach. While researchers who conduct interviews as part of their methods often report statements by public officials and others to support their arguments, as ethnographers we engaged in an interpretative task.

Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson's Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class is both a work of political science and a contribution to broad public discussion of distributive politics. Its topic could not be more relevant to a US polity wracked by bitter partisan disagreements about taxes, social spending, financial regulation, social insecurity, and inequality. The political power of “the rich” is a theme of widespread public attention. The headline on the cover of the January–February 2011 issue of The American Interest—“Inequality and Democracy: Are Plutocrats Drowning Our Republic?”—is indicative. Francis Fukuyama's lead essay, entitled “Left Out,” clarifies that by “plutocracy,” the journal means “not just rule by the rich, but rule by and for the rich. We mean, in other words, a state of affairs in which the rich influence government in such a way as to protect and expand their own wealth and influence, often at the expense of others.” Fukuyama makes clear that he believes that this state of affairs obtains in the United States today.

Readers of Perspectives on Politics will know that the topic has garnered increasing attention from political scientists in general and in our journal in particular. In March 2009, we featured a symposium on Larry Bartels's Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age. And in December 2009, our lead article, by Jeffrey A. Winters and Benjamin I. Page, starkly posed the question “Oligarchy in the United States?” and answered it with an equally stark “yes.” Winner-Take-All Politics thus engages a broader scholarly discussion within US political science, at the same time that it both draws upon and echoes many “classic themes” of US political science from the work of Charles Beard and E. E. Schattschneider to Ted Lowi and Charles Lindblom.

In this symposium, we have brought together a group of important scholars and commentators who offer a range of perspectives on the book and on the broader themes it engages. While most of our discussants are specialists on “American politics,” we have also sought out scholars beyond this subfield. Our charge to the discussants is to evaluate the book's central claims and evidence, with a focus on three related questions: 1) How compelling is its analysis of the “how” and “why” of recent US public policy and its “turn” in favor of “the rich” and against “the middle class”? 2) How compelling is its critique of the subfield of “American politics” for its focus on the voter–politician linkage and on “politics as spectacle” at the expense of an analysis of “politics as organized combat”? 3) And do you agree with its argument that recent changes in US politics necessitate a different, more comparative, and more political economy–centered approach to the study of US politics?—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

Hiking through the desert once I stopped to hug a large round boulder. I don't know what compelled me to do it. I had never done it before or since, but I can still feel it. It was as if the rock hugged back.

Deborah Gould's volume is a beautifully written account of direct-action AIDS activism in the United States from its emergence in the mid-1980s through its decline in the early 1990s. The story of ACT UP, the central focus of the work, illuminates the complex history of both the AIDS epidemic and the political dynamics of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities at a key moment of transition. Founded during the conservative backlash of the Reagan era and active through the conservative turn in LGBT politics of the early Clinton years (with the prioritization of questions like military service), the group's confrontational tactics, radical discourse, and political successes prove something of an anomaly. Explaining this anomaly is Gould's central concern, and in doing so, she offers a compelling argument for the importance of addressing affect and emotion in the study of social movements, providing a carefully nuanced conceptual framework to do so.

Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson's Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class is both a work of political science and a contribution to broad public discussion of distributive politics. Its topic could not be more relevant to a US polity wracked by bitter partisan disagreements about taxes, social spending, financial regulation, social insecurity, and inequality. The political power of “the rich” is a theme of widespread public attention. The headline on the cover of the January–February 2011 issue of The American Interest—“Inequality and Democracy: Are Plutocrats Drowning Our Republic?”—is indicative. Francis Fukuyama's lead essay, entitled “Left Out,” clarifies that by “plutocracy,” the journal means “not just rule by the rich, but rule by and for the rich. We mean, in other words, a state of affairs in which the rich influence government in such a way as to protect and expand their own wealth and influence, often at the expense of others.” Fukuyama makes clear that he believes that this state of affairs obtains in the United States today.

Readers of Perspectives on Politics will know that the topic has garnered increasing attention from political scientists in general and in our journal in particular. In March 2009, we featured a symposium on Larry Bartels's Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age. And in December 2009, our lead article, by Jeffrey A. Winters and Benjamin I. Page, starkly posed the question “Oligarchy in the United States?” and answered it with an equally stark “yes.” Winner-Take-All Politics thus engages a broader scholarly discussion within US political science, at the same time that it both draws upon and echoes many “classic themes” of US political science from the work of Charles Beard and E. E. Schattschneider to Ted Lowi and Charles Lindblom.

In this symposium, we have brought together a group of important scholars and commentators who offer a range of perspectives on the book and on the broader themes it engages. While most of our discussants are specialists on “American politics,” we have also sought out scholars beyond this subfield. Our charge to the discussants is to evaluate the book's central claims and evidence, with a focus on three related questions: 1) How compelling is its analysis of the “how” and “why” of recent US public policy and its “turn” in favor of “the rich” and against “the middle class”? 2) How compelling is its critique of the subfield of “American politics” for its focus on the voter–politician linkage and on “politics as spectacle” at the expense of an analysis of “politics as organized combat”? 3) And do you agree with its argument that recent changes in US politics necessitate a different, more comparative, and more political economy–centered approach to the study of US politics?—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

Tom Princen and I share many commitments—to treading lightly on the earth, to the political potential of everyday habits, to practicing the difficult art of countercultural persuasion, to a political economy of sustainability, and to the advantages of short and earnest books.

Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson's Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class is both a work of political science and a contribution to broad public discussion of distributive politics. Its topic could not be more relevant to a US polity wracked by bitter partisan disagreements about taxes, social spending, financial regulation, social insecurity, and inequality. The political power of “the rich” is a theme of widespread public attention. The headline on the cover of the January–February 2011 issue of The American Interest—“Inequality and Democracy: Are Plutocrats Drowning Our Republic?”—is indicative. Francis Fukuyama's lead essay, entitled “Left Out,” clarifies that by “plutocracy,” the journal means “not just rule by the rich, but rule by and for the rich. We mean, in other words, a state of affairs in which the rich influence government in such a way as to protect and expand their own wealth and influence, often at the expense of others.” Fukuyama makes clear that he believes that this state of affairs obtains in the United States today.

Readers of Perspectives on Politics will know that the topic has garnered increasing attention from political scientists in general and in our journal in particular. In March 2009, we featured a symposium on Larry Bartels's Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age. And in December 2009, our lead article, by Jeffrey A. Winters and Benjamin I. Page, starkly posed the question “Oligarchy in the United States?” and answered it with an equally stark “yes.” Winner-Take-All Politics thus engages a broader scholarly discussion within US political science, at the same time that it both draws upon and echoes many “classic themes” of US political science from the work of Charles Beard and E. E. Schattschneider to Ted Lowi and Charles Lindblom.

In this symposium, we have brought together a group of important scholars and commentators who offer a range of perspectives on the book and on the broader themes it engages. While most of our discussants are specialists on “American politics,” we have also sought out scholars beyond this subfield. Our charge to the discussants is to evaluate the book's central claims and evidence, with a focus on three related questions: 1) How compelling is its analysis of the “how” and “why” of recent US public policy and its “turn” in favor of “the rich” and against “the middle class”? 2) How compelling is its critique of the subfield of “American politics” for its focus on the voter–politician linkage and on “politics as spectacle” at the expense of an analysis of “politics as organized combat”? 3) And do you agree with its argument that recent changes in US politics necessitate a different, more comparative, and more political economy–centered approach to the study of US politics?—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

It is a pleasure to respond to such a thoughtful and insightful review of Moving Politics. Let me begin with Rafael de la Dehesa's suggestion that I may have overstated my challenge to the political opportunity model of social movement emergence. In arguing for the importance of bringing emotion into our analyses, I state that the task is not to consider feelings in isolation but rather as they articulate with more frequently studied factors that shape activism and movements, including political opportunities. Because feelings always play out in contexts, attention to them necessitates attention to the larger contexts in and through which they emerge and operate. In my view, one of the crucial insights that scholars in the political opportunity tradition make is that the larger political environment is a critical factor in movement emergence; we disagree, I believe, in our understandings of how that external context matters. The model's emphasis on the necessity of opening political opportunities for movement emergence, conveyed in its proponents' programmatic statements and suggested by the model's very name, precludes instances when movements arise in the face of tightly constricting opportunities, as occurred in the case of the AIDS movement. Even if, as de la Dehesa suggests, we were to understand ACT UP's emergence as an example of an existing movement shifting to more confrontational tactics in the face of institutional intransigence, the political opportunity model still comes up short: when the AIDS movement emerged in the early 1980s, AIDS and lesbian and gay activists faced tightly constricted opportunities. In light of the model's limitations, and after sorting through mountains of empirical material that revealed a dramatic shift in the prevailing emotional habitus in lesbian and gay communities during the period of ACT UP's emergence, it seemed like a focus on emotion would help illuminate how the external political environment affects movement processes.

Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson's Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class is both a work of political science and a contribution to broad public discussion of distributive politics. Its topic could not be more relevant to a US polity wracked by bitter partisan disagreements about taxes, social spending, financial regulation, social insecurity, and inequality. The political power of “the rich” is a theme of widespread public attention. The headline on the cover of the January–February 2011 issue of The American Interest—“Inequality and Democracy: Are Plutocrats Drowning Our Republic?”—is indicative. Francis Fukuyama's lead essay, entitled “Left Out,” clarifies that by “plutocracy,” the journal means “not just rule by the rich, but rule by and for the rich. We mean, in other words, a state of affairs in which the rich influence government in such a way as to protect and expand their own wealth and influence, often at the expense of others.” Fukuyama makes clear that he believes that this state of affairs obtains in the United States today.

Readers of Perspectives on Politics will know that the topic has garnered increasing attention from political scientists in general and in our journal in particular. In March 2009, we featured a symposium on Larry Bartels's Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age. And in December 2009, our lead article, by Jeffrey A. Winters and Benjamin I. Page, starkly posed the question “Oligarchy in the United States?” and answered it with an equally stark “yes.” Winner-Take-All Politics thus engages a broader scholarly discussion within US political science, at the same time that it both draws upon and echoes many “classic themes” of US political science from the work of Charles Beard and E. E. Schattschneider to Ted Lowi and Charles Lindblom.

In this symposium, we have brought together a group of important scholars and commentators who offer a range of perspectives on the book and on the broader themes it engages. While most of our discussants are specialists on “American politics,” we have also sought out scholars beyond this subfield. Our charge to the discussants is to evaluate the book's central claims and evidence, with a focus on three related questions: 1) How compelling is its analysis of the “how” and “why” of recent US public policy and its “turn” in favor of “the rich” and against “the middle class”? 2) How compelling is its critique of the subfield of “American politics” for its focus on the voter–politician linkage and on “politics as spectacle” at the expense of an analysis of “politics as organized combat”? 3) And do you agree with its argument that recent changes in US politics necessitate a different, more comparative, and more political economy–centered approach to the study of US politics?—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

Rafael de la Dehesa has written an empirically rich and analytically nuanced book that explores the rise and development of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activist engagements with the state in Brazil and Mexico. The two cases are ideal for comparative analysis: Movements in both countries emerged under semiauthoritarian regimes and operated as their countries transitioned to democracy, but the paths they took show striking differences, allowing de la Dehesa to argue forcefully for the importance of the local and the contingent as activists navigate the national and transnational fields in which they are embedded. As the concept of embeddedness warrants, even while pointing toward the importance of the particular and the agentic, de la Dehesa carefully shows as well how constrained, and enabled, activists were by the multiple fields in which they operated. Queering the Public Sphere in Mexico and Brazil, then, successfully charts an analytical course that recognizes the powerful but nontotalizing nature of institutions, economic forces, and discourses.