The authors of this timely book, Who Gets What?, harness the expertise from across the social sciences to show how skyrocketing inequality and social dislocation are fracturing the stable political identities and alliances of the postwar era across advanced democracies. Drawing on extensive evidence from the United States and Europe, with a focus especially on the United States, the authors examine how economics and politics are closely entwined. Chapters demonstrate how the new divisions that separate people and places–and fragment political parties–hinder a fairer distribution of resources and opportunities. They show how employment, education, sex and gender, and race and ethnicity affect the way people experience and interpret inequality and economic anxieties. Populist politics have addressed these emerging insecurities by deepening social and political divisions, rather than promoting broad and inclusive policies.
1. Introduction: The New Politics of Insecurity Frances Rosenbluth and Margaret Weir: Part I. People: 2. Race, Remembrance and Precarity: Nostalgia and Vote Choice in the 2016 US Election Andra Gillespi; 3. The End of Human Capital Solidarity? Ben Ansell and Jane Gingrich; 4. Public Opinion and Reactions to Increasing Income Inequality Kris-Stella Trump; 5. Engendering Democracy in an Age of Anxiety Alice Kessler-Harris; Part II. Place: 6. Keeping your Enemies Close: Electoral Rules and Partisan Polarization Jonathan Rodden; 7. America's Unequal Metropolitan Geography: Segregation and the Spatial Concentration of Affluence and Poverty Douglas S. Massey and Jacob S. Rugh; 8. Redistribution and the Politics of Spatial Inequality in America Margaret Weir and Desmond King; Part III. Politics: 9. Electoral Realignments in the Atlantic World Carles Boix; Political Parties in the New Politics of Insecurity Christian Salas, Frances Rosenbluth and Ian Shapiro; 11. The Peculiar Politics of American Insecurity Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson; 12. The Anxiety of Precarity: the United States in Comparative Perspective Kathleen Thelen and Andreas Wiedemann; 13. Increasing Instability and Uncertainty Among Low-Wage Workers: Implications for Inequality and Potential Policy Solutions Elizabeth Ananat, Anna Gassman-Pines and Yulya Truskinovsky.
Frances McCall Rosenbluth is Damon Wells Professor in the Department of Political Science at Yale University. She writes widely about the politics and political economy of democratic accountability. Her books include Women, Work, and Power (with Torben Iversen, 2010), Forged Through Fire (with John Ferejohn, 2016), and Responsible Parties (with Ian Shapiro, 2018). Margaret Weir is Wilson Professor of Public and International Affairs and Political Science at Brown University. She has written and edited several volumes on social policy, race, and employment in the United States. Professor Weir also served as director of the MacArthur Foundation Network on Building Resilient Regions and is currently working on a book entitled, The New Metropolis: The Politics of Spatial Inequality in Twenty-First Century America.