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POLITICS & POWER

The realm of politics is where we try to enact (or prevent) change. In this section, we document materials that help understand how politics is deeply implicated in the growth and reproduction of inequality. At the heart of politics is the question of power: Who can tell others what to do and how? In the contemporary U.S. the deep inequalities in power seem to be pushing the country toward a political cul de sac of plutocratic access to the highest spheres of government, and toward a deeply polarized conception of solutions and problems facing us. We attempt to provide resources that explore the relationship of politics and power to economic and social inequality.

FEATURED RESOURCES

Books, Reports, and Scholarly Publications 

  • Ahlquist, John S. 2017. “Labor Unions, Political Representation, and Economic Inequality.” Annual Review of Political Science 20(1): 409–32. http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051215-023225.
  • Andrain, Charles F. 2014. Political Power and Economic Inequality: A Comparative Policy Approach. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.
  • Gaventa, John, and Bruno Martorano. 2016. “Inequality, Power and Participation – Revisiting the Links.” IDS Bulletin 47(5). http://bulletin.ids.ac.uk/idsbo/article/view/2791.
  • Hacker, Jacob S., and Paul Pierson. 2010. Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer-and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class. 1st Simon & Schuster hardcover ed. New York: Simon & Schuster.
  • Hager, Sandy Brian. 2016. “6. Who Rules the Debt State?” In Public Debt, Inequality, and Power: The Making of a Modern Debt State, University of California Press, 83–95. https://california.degruyter.com/view/title/571853.
  • Jacobs, Lawrence R., and Theda Skocpol, eds. 2005. Inequality and American Democracy: What We Know and What We Need to Learn. 1st ed. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
  • Kenney, Catherine T. 2006. “The Power of the Purse: Allocative Systems and Inequality in Couple Households.” Gender & Society 20(3): 354–81. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0891243206286742.
  • Milazzo, Annamaria, and Markus Goldstein. 2019. “Governance and Women’s Economic and Political Participation: Power Inequalities, Formal Constraints and Norms.” The World Bank Research Observer 34(1): 34–64. https://academic.oup.com/wbro/article/34/1/34/5492442.
  • Ojha, Archana. 2017. “Power, Inequality and Discrimination: Chains of Subordination in Indigenous History of the United States (C.1600 to 1890S).” Indian History Congress 78: 926–34. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26906169.
  • Schutz, Eric A., ed. 2011. Inequality and Power. 0 ed. Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781136811388.
  • Shipman, Alan, June Edmunds, and Bryan S. Turner. 2018. The New Power Elite: Inequality, Politics and Greed. Anthem Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/j.ctt22h6qjp.
  • Williams, Linda Faye. 2004. “The Issue of Our Time: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America.” Perspectives on Politics 2(04): 683–89. http://www.journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1537592704040447.

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