This article analyzes Latin American and Caribbean income inequality, making three important contributions. First, we show that politics not only shapes redistribution, but also affects inequality produced by the market, with much of the effect occurring through the market conditioning...

Forgotten: How Congress Ignores the Lower and Middle Classes -- Power and the Policy Agenda -- Congressional Attention to Economic Issues -- Economic Interests and the Economic Agenda in Congress -- Empowering Wall Street: Congressional Concern for Financial Deregulation -- Financial...

This paper examines why some party systems collapse, while similar systems confronting what seem to be equally insurmountable obstacles survive. I argue that when party systems neglect their central task of linking society and the state, they lose their reason for existence and fail. Parties may...

The rise of the super-rich in the United States during the last thirty years has rekindled concerns about oligarchic political influences. Following recent theoretical work by Winters (2011), we conceptualize oligarchy as a defense against threats to income accumulation by the super-rich. We...

One of the central concepts in the study of social movements is that of the “Protest Cycle” (e.g., Tarrow 1998). The imagery of the Cycle is that of heightened protests, across issue areas and groups. Scholars have connected its rise to openings in the Political Opportunity Structure, which...

Intro -- Contents -- One / Contemporary Politics and the Perpetuation of Inequality -- Two / An Inescapable Plutocracy? -- Three / Public Preferences and Economic Inequality -- Four / Elections and the Inequality Trap -- Five / Partisan Convergence and Financial Deregulation -- Six /...