Nathan J Kelly
Biographic Data
| ID | 89369 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nathan J Kelly |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nathan J |
| FAMILY NAME | Kelly |
| SIGNATURE | KELLY N J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Tennessee at Knoxville |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4494-0403 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1080 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Measuring racial attitudes pre-treatment in survey experiments
Experimental researchers often need to assess the moderating effect of racial attitudes. However, it is unclear whether the racial attitude battery deployed may bias treatment effects. Less subtle batteries could bias treatment effects toward zero if measuring racial attitudes primes these attitudes for subjects assigned to all conditions, including the control condition. We assess whether bias is introduced across four conditions, pre-treatment:…
Ethnoracial Hierarchies and Democratic Commitments
Entrenched ethnoracial hierarchies that persist alongside formal democratic rules threaten commitments to democracy. Previous research has shown how marginalization and oppression harm minoritized group members, but has rarely considered the potential harm entrenched group-based hierarchies pose for democratic society overall. This paper offers two innovations. First, we argue that ethnoracial hierarchies have society-wide implications. Entrenche…
Racial Inequality and Support for Democracy
This article argues that ethnoracial inequalities undermine support for democracy. We develop an original theoretical argument specifying how structural inequalities delegitimize democracy by alienating marginalized group members while also rationalizing forms of hierarchy at odds with democratic principles. Evidence from a large-scale survey experiment conducted among Black and white respondents in the United States shows that exposure to racial…
The Structural Origins of Racial Inequality and Attitudes Toward Redistribution
A long line of research demonstrates that priming race undermines support for redistribution by activating negative racial stereotypes that tend to place blame for racial inequalities on individual members of minoritized groups and downplay the systemic causes of racial inequality. Here we suggest that information emphasizing the structural origins of racial disparities can disrupt these typical patterns and generate more positive attitudes towar…
American Dream versus American Reality: How Information about Structural Racism Can Prompt Support for Race-Based Policies
Negative racial stereotypes routinely work together with myths about American equality to undermine public support for policies that would reduce inequality. But what happens when white Americans are confronted with information about structural racial inequality, which contradicts the myth of equal opportunity? Evidence from an original survey experiment conducted among approximately 4,000 white Americans demonstrates that emphasizing the systemi…
The Representational Deficit of Latinxs in the U.S. House of Representatives
This paper explores the extent to which Latinxs were substantively represented in the 112th U.S. House of Representatives (2011–2013). We make use of a large national sample of Americans to tap into the congruence of the attitudes of constituents with actual roll call votes taken by their legislators in office. In doing so, we are able to make comparisons between constituent attitudes and legislative behavior for Latinx versus non-Latinx constitu…
Inequality, Exclusion, and Tolerance for Political Dissent in Latin America
Although many countries meet electoral standards of democracy, often these regimes fail to promote social inclusion or meaningful representation. We argue that systems of exclusion have deleterious consequences for how people think about democracy, undermining tolerance for political dissent. Using cross-national public opinion data together with contextual measures of economic and political marginalization along ethnoracial lines, we evaluate th…
America's Inequality Trap
Federalism, Government Liberalism, and Union Weakness in America
Unlike most other countries, in the United States, subnational governments (states) have substantial authority over collective bargaining and union organization laws. Because states compete for business investment and union (dis)organization likely has spillover effects beyond state borders, weak unions in one state may affect union organization in other states. We examine how union decline in one state is associated with union decline in neighbo…
Democracy that Excludes: Persistent Inequalities and the Future of Democratic Governance
Democracy is often reduced to the presence of a particular set of institutional rules and practices. We argue that democracy also implies a promise of more just outcomes, and define systems that are institutionally democratic but fail to fully incorporate all citizens as exclusionary democracies . We argue here that the practice of exclusionary democracy may produce broad and mostly negative implications for the future of democratic governance. I…
Moving forward with time series analysis
In a recent Research and Politics article, we showed that for many types of time series data, concerns about spurious relationships can be overcome by following standard procedures associated with cointegration tests and the general error correction model (GECM). Matthew Lebo and Patrick Kraft (LK) incorrectly argue that our recommended approach will lead researchers to identify false (i.e., spurious) relationships. In this article, we show how L…
Social Patterns of Inequality, Partisan Competition, and Latin American Support for Redistribution
This article argues that social patterns of inequality and structures of partisan competition play central roles in shaping support for redistribution, offering three important insights concerning redistribution attitude formation. First, pronounced income disparities between ethnic/racial groups reduce support for redistribution. Second, for members of marginalized ethnic groups, entrenched discrimination reflected in large between-group inequal…
Class Bias in Voter Turnout, Representation, and Income Inequality
The mass franchise led to more responsive government and a more equitable distribution of resources in the United States and other democracies. Recently in America, however, voter participation has been low and increasingly biased toward the wealthy. We investigate whether this electoral “class bias” shapes government ideology, the substance of economic policy, and distributional outcomes, thereby shedding light on both the old question of whethe…
Partisan Politics, Financial Deregulation, and the New Gilded Age
This paper examines how financial deregulation and the partisan underpinnings of deregulation shaped the path of income inequality in the United States. Using time-series data from 1914 to 2010, we assess the effect of partisan politics on financial deregulation and, in turn, the effect of deregulation on income inequality. We find that financial deregulation has generally declined when Democrats attain more power in Washington and that deregulat…
Conditional Status Quo Bias and Top Income Shares: How U.S. Political Institutions Have Benefited the Rich
This article develops and tests a model of conditional status quo bias and American inequality. We find that institutional features that bias policy outcomes toward the status quo have played a central role in the path of inequality. Using time-series analysis of top income shares during the post-Depression period, we identify the Senate as a key actor in the politics of income inequality. Our findings suggest that the supermajoritarian nature of…
Government Ideology and Unemployment in the U.S. States
Research shows that when the more liberal Democratic Party controls the national government, unemployment is lower, but whether liberal state governments are associated with lower unemployment has not been examined. We argue that more left-leaning governments in the U.S. states have the same preference for and willingness to use government to reduce unemployment, but that the greater resource and policymaking constraints that the states face duri…
Market Inequality and Redistribution in Latin America and the Caribbean
This article analyzes how politics influences Latin American and Caribbean income inequality. Most studies view the distributional process in two phases with inequality shaped first by markets and then by state redistribution. Typically, cross-national analyses of inequality limit the influence of politics to the redistributive phase. But we argue that a full understanding of how government affects inequality must also consider how politics shape…
Federalism and American Inequality
Studies of the political determinants of economic inequality have usually focused on the national government, but in federalist systems subnational governments may also be important. In recent decades, the U.S. national government has been less active in fighting inequality, but increasing devolution means that states wanting to address this problem have had a greater incentive and perhaps means by which to do so. Applying power resources theory,…
The Rise of the Super-Rich: Power Resources, Taxes, Financial Markets, and the Dynamics of the Top 1 Percent, 1949 to 2008
The income share of the super-rich in the United States has grown rapidly since the early 1980s after a period of postwar stability. What factors drove this change? In this study, we investigate the institutional, policy, and economic shifts that may explain rising income concentration. We use single-equation error correction models to estimate the long- and short-run effects of politics, policy, and economic factors on pretax top income shares b…
Explaining Public Attitudes toward Fighting Inequality in Latin America
This paper uses the 2008 Americas Barometer survey data from 22 countries to explore the factors that shape Latin American attitudes about the role of the state in reducing inequality. Using multilevel analysis to properly model both the individual‐ and country‐level predictors of these attitudes, we find that traditional explanations of public attitudes about government's redistributive role also carry weight in Latin America. Economic evaluatio…
Inequality and the Dynamics of Public Opinion: The Self‐Reinforcing Link Between Economic Inequality and Mass Preferences
This article assesses the influence of income inequality on the public's policy mood. Recent work has produced divergent perspectives on the relationship between inequality, public opinion, and government redistribution. One group of scholars suggests that unequal representation of different income groups reproduces inequality as politicians respond to the preferences of the rich. Another group of scholars pays relatively little attention to dist…
The Politics of Income Inequality in the United States
This book revolves around one central question: do political dynamics have a systematic and predictable influence on distributional outcomes in the United States? The answer is a resounding yes. Utilizing data from mass income surveys, elite surveys and aggregate time series, as well as theoretical insights from both American and comparative politics, Kelly shows that income inequality is a fundamental part of the US macro political system. Shift…
The politics of income inequality in the United States
Legislative Productivity of the U.S. Congress, 1789–2004
We measure legislative productivity for the entire history of the U.S. Congress. Current measures of legislative productivity are problematic because they measure productivity for a limited number of decades and because they are based on different aspects of productivity. We provide a methodology for measuring (1) a Legislative Productivity Index (LPI) and (2) a Major Legislation Index (MLI). We use the W-CALC algorithm of Stimson (1999, Public o…
Religious Traditionalism and Latino Politics in the United States
This article examines how and why ethnic context conditions the link between religious traditionalism and the political attitudes and behaviors of Latinos in the United States. Existing research shows that the impact of religious traditionalism on political attitudes varies by policy and religious context. Through an analysis of issue attitudes, ideology, and partisanship, we confirm this existing work and also show that religious traditionalism …
Dynamic Models for Dynamic Theories: The Ins and Outs of Lagged Dependent Variables
A lagged dependent variable in an OLS regression is often used as a means of capturing dynamic effects in political processes and as a method for ridding the model of autocorrelation. But recent work contends that the lagged dependent variable specification is too problematic for use in most situations. More specifically, if residual autocorrelation is present, the lagged dependent variable causes the coefficients for explanatory variables to be …
Inequality and the Dynamics of Public Opinion: The Self‐Reinforcing Link Between Economic Inequality and Mass Preferences
This article assesses the influence of income inequality on the public's policy mood. Recent work has produced divergent perspectives on the relationship between inequality, public opinion, and government redistribution. One group of scholars suggests that unequal representation of different income groups reproduces inequality as politicians respond to the preferences of the rich. Another group of scholars pays relatively little attention to dist…
The Rise of the Super-Rich: Power Resources, Taxes, Financial Markets, and the Dynamics of the Top 1 Percent, 1949 to 2008
The income share of the super-rich in the United States has grown rapidly since the early 1980s after a period of postwar stability. What factors drove this change? In this study, we investigate the institutional, policy, and economic shifts that may explain rising income concentration. We use single-equation error correction models to estimate the long- and short-run effects of politics, policy, and economic factors on pretax top income shares b…
Federalism and American Inequality
Studies of the political determinants of economic inequality have usually focused on the national government, but in federalist systems subnational governments may also be important. In recent decades, the U.S. national government has been less active in fighting inequality, but increasing devolution means that states wanting to address this problem have had a greater incentive and perhaps means by which to do so. Applying power resources theory,…
Religion and Latino Partisanship in the United States
This article examines the interplay among religion, ethnicity, and the partisanship of Latinos in the U.S. Using pooled data from the 1990-2000 National Election Studies, we assess denominational affiliation and religious commitment as explanations of partisanship. We show that there is more religious diversity among Latinos than is usually acknowledged in studies of Latino politics and that the political importance of religion among Latinos has …
Conditional Status Quo Bias and Top Income Shares: How U.S. Political Institutions Have Benefited the Rich
This article develops and tests a model of conditional status quo bias and American inequality. We find that institutional features that bias policy outcomes toward the status quo have played a central role in the path of inequality. Using time-series analysis of top income shares during the post-Depression period, we identify the Senate as a key actor in the politics of income inequality. Our findings suggest that the supermajoritarian nature of…
Class Bias in Voter Turnout, Representation, and Income Inequality
The mass franchise led to more responsive government and a more equitable distribution of resources in the United States and other democracies. Recently in America, however, voter participation has been low and increasingly biased toward the wealthy. We investigate whether this electoral “class bias” shapes government ideology, the substance of economic policy, and distributional outcomes, thereby shedding light on both the old question of whethe…
Political Choice, Public Policy, and Distributional Outcomes
I address the functioning of the U.S. governing system by analyzing distributional outcomes from 1947 to 2000. The key question is whether public policy influences distributional outcomes. The macropolitics model and power resource theory suggest that left policies should equalize the distribution of income. I utilize single equation error correction models to assess the impact of policy on income inequality through two mechanisms—market conditio…
Market Inequality and Redistribution in Latin America and the Caribbean
This article analyzes how politics influences Latin American and Caribbean income inequality. Most studies view the distributional process in two phases with inequality shaped first by markets and then by state redistribution. Typically, cross-national analyses of inequality limit the influence of politics to the redistributive phase. But we argue that a full understanding of how government affects inequality must also consider how politics shape…
Legislative Productivity of the U.S. Congress, 1789–2004
We measure legislative productivity for the entire history of the U.S. Congress. Current measures of legislative productivity are problematic because they measure productivity for a limited number of decades and because they are based on different aspects of productivity. We provide a methodology for measuring (1) a Legislative Productivity Index (LPI) and (2) a Major Legislation Index (MLI). We use the W-CALC algorithm of Stimson (1999, Public o…
Social Patterns of Inequality, Partisan Competition, and Latin American Support for Redistribution
This article argues that social patterns of inequality and structures of partisan competition play central roles in shaping support for redistribution, offering three important insights concerning redistribution attitude formation. First, pronounced income disparities between ethnic/racial groups reduce support for redistribution. Second, for members of marginalized ethnic groups, entrenched discrimination reflected in large between-group inequal…
Religious Traditionalism and Latino Politics in the United States
This article examines how and why ethnic context conditions the link between religious traditionalism and the political attitudes and behaviors of Latinos in the United States. Existing research shows that the impact of religious traditionalism on political attitudes varies by policy and religious context. Through an analysis of issue attitudes, ideology, and partisanship, we confirm this existing work and also show that religious traditionalism …
Partisan Politics, Financial Deregulation, and the New Gilded Age
This paper examines how financial deregulation and the partisan underpinnings of deregulation shaped the path of income inequality in the United States. Using time-series data from 1914 to 2010, we assess the effect of partisan politics on financial deregulation and, in turn, the effect of deregulation on income inequality. We find that financial deregulation has generally declined when Democrats attain more power in Washington and that deregulat…
Inequality, Exclusion, and Tolerance for Political Dissent in Latin America
Although many countries meet electoral standards of democracy, often these regimes fail to promote social inclusion or meaningful representation. We argue that systems of exclusion have deleterious consequences for how people think about democracy, undermining tolerance for political dissent. Using cross-national public opinion data together with contextual measures of economic and political marginalization along ethnoracial lines, we evaluate th…
Government Ideology and Unemployment in the U.S. States
Research shows that when the more liberal Democratic Party controls the national government, unemployment is lower, but whether liberal state governments are associated with lower unemployment has not been examined. We argue that more left-leaning governments in the U.S. states have the same preference for and willingness to use government to reduce unemployment, but that the greater resource and policymaking constraints that the states face duri…
Explaining Public Attitudes toward Fighting Inequality in Latin America
This paper uses the 2008 Americas Barometer survey data from 22 countries to explore the factors that shape Latin American attitudes about the role of the state in reducing inequality. Using multilevel analysis to properly model both the individual‐ and country‐level predictors of these attitudes, we find that traditional explanations of public attitudes about government's redistributive role also carry weight in Latin America. Economic evaluatio…
American Dream versus American Reality: How Information about Structural Racism Can Prompt Support for Race-Based Policies
Negative racial stereotypes routinely work together with myths about American equality to undermine public support for policies that would reduce inequality. But what happens when white Americans are confronted with information about structural racial inequality, which contradicts the myth of equal opportunity? Evidence from an original survey experiment conducted among approximately 4,000 white Americans demonstrates that emphasizing the systemi…
Federalism, Government Liberalism, and Union Weakness in America
Unlike most other countries, in the United States, subnational governments (states) have substantial authority over collective bargaining and union organization laws. Because states compete for business investment and union (dis)organization likely has spillover effects beyond state borders, weak unions in one state may affect union organization in other states. We examine how union decline in one state is associated with union decline in neighbo…
Racial Inequality and Support for Democracy
This article argues that ethnoracial inequalities undermine support for democracy. We develop an original theoretical argument specifying how structural inequalities delegitimize democracy by alienating marginalized group members while also rationalizing forms of hierarchy at odds with democratic principles. Evidence from a large-scale survey experiment conducted among Black and white respondents in the United States shows that exposure to racial…
Does Politics Really Matter: Policy and Government’s Equalizing Influence in the United States
Analyses of the U.S. governing system indicate that national policy is influenced by public opinion, and this is interpreted as representation. Not as much is known aboutwhether policy systematically influences societal outcomes. In fact, some analyses suggest that there is little connection between policies and the outcomes these policies seek to produce. This article seeks to determine whether such a connection exists for income inequality. Alt…
Moving forward with time series analysis
In a recent Research and Politics article, we showed that for many types of time series data, concerns about spurious relationships can be overcome by following standard procedures associated with cointegration tests and the general error correction model (GECM). Matthew Lebo and Patrick Kraft (LK) incorrectly argue that our recommended approach will lead researchers to identify false (i.e., spurious) relationships. In this article, we show how L…
Issue Attitudes and Survey Continuity across Interview Mode in the 2000 NES
Can researchers draw consistent inferences about the U.S. public's issue attitudes when studying survey results from both the in-person and telephone interview modes of the 2000 National Election Studies (NES) survey? We address this question through an analysis contrasting the distribution of issue attitudes across modes in the dual sample design of the 2000 NES. We find clear differences across mode even when applying a method devised by the NE…
The Structural Origins of Racial Inequality and Attitudes Toward Redistribution
A long line of research demonstrates that priming race undermines support for redistribution by activating negative racial stereotypes that tend to place blame for racial inequalities on individual members of minoritized groups and downplay the systemic causes of racial inequality. Here we suggest that information emphasizing the structural origins of racial disparities can disrupt these typical patterns and generate more positive attitudes towar…
The Representational Deficit of Latinxs in the U.S. House of Representatives
This paper explores the extent to which Latinxs were substantively represented in the 112th U.S. House of Representatives (2011–2013). We make use of a large national sample of Americans to tap into the congruence of the attitudes of constituents with actual roll call votes taken by their legislators in office. In doing so, we are able to make comparisons between constituent attitudes and legislative behavior for Latinx versus non-Latinx constitu…
Does Politics Really Matter: Policy and Government’s Equalizing Influence in the United States
Analyses of the U.S. governing system indicate that national policy is influenced by public opinion, and this is interpreted as representation. Not as much is known aboutwhether policy systematically influences societal outcomes. In fact, some analyses suggest that there is little connection between policies and the outcomes these policies seek to produce. This article seeks to determine whether such a connection exists for income inequality. Alt…
Political Choice, Public Policy, and Distributional Outcomes
I address the functioning of the U.S. governing system by analyzing distributional outcomes from 1947 to 2000. The key question is whether public policy influences distributional outcomes. The macropolitics model and power resource theory suggest that left policies should equalize the distribution of income. I utilize single equation error correction models to assess the impact of policy on income inequality through two mechanisms—market conditio…
Religion and Latino Partisanship in the United States
This paper examines the interplay between religion, ethnicity, and the partisanship of Latinos in the United States.Using pooled data from the 1990-2000 National Election Studies, we assess denominational affiliation and religious commitment as explanations of partisanship.We show that there is more religious diversity among Latinos than is usually acknowledged in studies of Latino politics and that the political importance of religion among Lati…
Religion and Latino Partisanship in the United States
This article examines the interplay among religion, ethnicity, and the partisanship of Latinos in the U.S. Using pooled data from the 1990-2000 National Election Studies, we assess denominational affiliation and religious commitment as explanations of partisanship. We show that there is more religious diversity among Latinos than is usually acknowledged in studies of Latino politics and that the political importance of religion among Latinos has …
Issue Attitudes and Survey Continuity across Interview Mode in the 2000 NES
Can researchers draw consistent inferences about the U.S. public's issue attitudes when studying survey results from both the in-person and telephone interview modes of the 2000 National Election Studies (NES) survey? We address this question through an analysis contrasting the distribution of issue attitudes across modes in the dual sample design of the 2000 NES. We find clear differences across mode even when applying a method devised by the NE…
Political Choice, Public Policy, and Distributional Outcomes
I address the functioning of the U.S. governing system by analyzing distributional outcomes from 1947 to 2000. The key question is whether public policy influences distributional outcomes. The macropolitics model and power resource theory suggest that left policies should equalize the distribution of income. I utilize single equation error correction models to assess the impact of policy on income inequality through two mechanisms—market conditio…
Dynamic Models for Dynamic Theories: The Ins and Outs of Lagged Dependent Variables
A lagged dependent variable in an OLS regression is often used as a means of capturing dynamic effects in political processes and as a method for ridding the model of autocorrelation. But recent work contends that the lagged dependent variable specification is too problematic for use in most situations. More specifically, if residual autocorrelation is present, the lagged dependent variable causes the coefficients for explanatory variables to be …
Legislative Productivity of the U.S. Congress, 1789–2004
We measure legislative productivity for the entire history of the U.S. Congress. Current measures of legislative productivity are problematic because they measure productivity for a limited number of decades and because they are based on different aspects of productivity. We provide a methodology for measuring (1) a Legislative Productivity Index (LPI) and (2) a Major Legislation Index (MLI). We use the W-CALC algorithm of Stimson (1999, Public o…
Religious Traditionalism and Latino Politics in the United States
This article examines how and why ethnic context conditions the link between religious traditionalism and the political attitudes and behaviors of Latinos in the United States. Existing research shows that the impact of religious traditionalism on political attitudes varies by policy and religious context. Through an analysis of issue attitudes, ideology, and partisanship, we confirm this existing work and also show that religious traditionalism …
The Politics of Income Inequality in the United States
This book revolves around one central question: do political dynamics have a systematic and predictable influence on distributional outcomes in the United States? The answer is a resounding yes. Utilizing data from mass income surveys, elite surveys and aggregate time series, as well as theoretical insights from both American and comparative politics, Kelly shows that income inequality is a fundamental part of the US macro political system. Shift…
The politics of income inequality in the United States
Explaining Public Attitudes toward Fighting Inequality in Latin America
This paper uses the 2008 Americas Barometer survey data from 22 countries to explore the factors that shape Latin American attitudes about the role of the state in reducing inequality. Using multilevel analysis to properly model both the individual‐ and country‐level predictors of these attitudes, we find that traditional explanations of public attitudes about government's redistributive role also carry weight in Latin America. Economic evaluatio…
Inequality and the Dynamics of Public Opinion: The Self‐Reinforcing Link Between Economic Inequality and Mass Preferences
This article assesses the influence of income inequality on the public's policy mood. Recent work has produced divergent perspectives on the relationship between inequality, public opinion, and government redistribution. One group of scholars suggests that unequal representation of different income groups reproduces inequality as politicians respond to the preferences of the rich. Another group of scholars pays relatively little attention to dist…
Federalism and American Inequality
Studies of the political determinants of economic inequality have usually focused on the national government, but in federalist systems subnational governments may also be important. In recent decades, the U.S. national government has been less active in fighting inequality, but increasing devolution means that states wanting to address this problem have had a greater incentive and perhaps means by which to do so. Applying power resources theory,…
The Rise of the Super-Rich: Power Resources, Taxes, Financial Markets, and the Dynamics of the Top 1 Percent, 1949 to 2008
The income share of the super-rich in the United States has grown rapidly since the early 1980s after a period of postwar stability. What factors drove this change? In this study, we investigate the institutional, policy, and economic shifts that may explain rising income concentration. We use single-equation error correction models to estimate the long- and short-run effects of politics, policy, and economic factors on pretax top income shares b…
Market Inequality and Redistribution in Latin America and the Caribbean
This article analyzes how politics influences Latin American and Caribbean income inequality. Most studies view the distributional process in two phases with inequality shaped first by markets and then by state redistribution. Typically, cross-national analyses of inequality limit the influence of politics to the redistributive phase. But we argue that a full understanding of how government affects inequality must also consider how politics shape…
Conditional Status Quo Bias and Top Income Shares: How U.S. Political Institutions Have Benefited the Rich
This article develops and tests a model of conditional status quo bias and American inequality. We find that institutional features that bias policy outcomes toward the status quo have played a central role in the path of inequality. Using time-series analysis of top income shares during the post-Depression period, we identify the Senate as a key actor in the politics of income inequality. Our findings suggest that the supermajoritarian nature of…
Government Ideology and Unemployment in the U.S. States
Research shows that when the more liberal Democratic Party controls the national government, unemployment is lower, but whether liberal state governments are associated with lower unemployment has not been examined. We argue that more left-leaning governments in the U.S. states have the same preference for and willingness to use government to reduce unemployment, but that the greater resource and policymaking constraints that the states face duri…
Partisan Politics, Financial Deregulation, and the New Gilded Age
This paper examines how financial deregulation and the partisan underpinnings of deregulation shaped the path of income inequality in the United States. Using time-series data from 1914 to 2010, we assess the effect of partisan politics on financial deregulation and, in turn, the effect of deregulation on income inequality. We find that financial deregulation has generally declined when Democrats attain more power in Washington and that deregulat…
Class Bias in Voter Turnout, Representation, and Income Inequality
The mass franchise led to more responsive government and a more equitable distribution of resources in the United States and other democracies. Recently in America, however, voter participation has been low and increasingly biased toward the wealthy. We investigate whether this electoral “class bias” shapes government ideology, the substance of economic policy, and distributional outcomes, thereby shedding light on both the old question of whethe…
Moving forward with time series analysis
In a recent Research and Politics article, we showed that for many types of time series data, concerns about spurious relationships can be overcome by following standard procedures associated with cointegration tests and the general error correction model (GECM). Matthew Lebo and Patrick Kraft (LK) incorrectly argue that our recommended approach will lead researchers to identify false (i.e., spurious) relationships. In this article, we show how L…
Social Patterns of Inequality, Partisan Competition, and Latin American Support for Redistribution
This article argues that social patterns of inequality and structures of partisan competition play central roles in shaping support for redistribution, offering three important insights concerning redistribution attitude formation. First, pronounced income disparities between ethnic/racial groups reduce support for redistribution. Second, for members of marginalized ethnic groups, entrenched discrimination reflected in large between-group inequal…
Democracy that Excludes: Persistent Inequalities and the Future of Democratic Governance
Democracy is often reduced to the presence of a particular set of institutional rules and practices. We argue that democracy also implies a promise of more just outcomes, and define systems that are institutionally democratic but fail to fully incorporate all citizens as exclusionary democracies . We argue here that the practice of exclusionary democracy may produce broad and mostly negative implications for the future of democratic governance. I…
Federalism, Government Liberalism, and Union Weakness in America
Unlike most other countries, in the United States, subnational governments (states) have substantial authority over collective bargaining and union organization laws. Because states compete for business investment and union (dis)organization likely has spillover effects beyond state borders, weak unions in one state may affect union organization in other states. We examine how union decline in one state is associated with union decline in neighbo…
America's Inequality Trap
Political science (27 works) · Politics (25 works) · Economics (21 works) · Law (19 works) · Inequality (18 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Political economy (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Economic inequality (12 works)