Organized Interests and American Democracy

Politics & Social Sciences

Schlozman, Kay Lehman

Tierney, John T.

Politics & Government

Harpercollins College Div

Why, after several generations of suffrage and a revival of the women's movement in the late 1960s, do women continue to be less politically active than men? Why are they less likely to seek public office or join political organizations? The Private Roots of Public Action is the most comprehensive study of this puzzle of unequal participation.  The authors develop new methods to trace gender differences in political activity to the nonpolitical institutions of everyday life--the family, school, workplace, nonpolitical voluntary association, and church. Different experiences with these institutions produce differences in the resources, skills, and political orientations that facilitate participation--with a cumulative advantage for men. In addition, part of the solution to the puzzle of unequal participation lies in politics itself: where women hold visible public office, women citizens are more politically interested and active. The model that explains gender differences in participation is sufficiently general to apply to participatory disparities among other groups--among the young, the middle-aged, and the elderly or among Latinos, African-Americans and Anglo-Whites.

The Private Roots of Public Action: Gender, Equality, and Political Participation

Verba, Sidney

Burns, Prof. Nancy

Social Sciences

Harvard University Press

Injury to Insult: Unemployment, Class, and Political Response

Book by Schlozman, Kay Lehman, Verba, Sidney

It is commonplace in contemporary American politics for those who experience economic strain to join together and ask the government for help. The unemployed, by and large, have not done so. In their study, Kay Lehman Schlozman and Sidney Verba look closely at the unemployed and ask why not.
Using the results of a large-scale survey supplemented by intensive interviews, the authors consider the political attitudes and behavior of the unemployed: how much hardship they feel, how they interpret their joblessness, what they do about it, how they view the American social order, and how they vote or otherwise take part in politics. The analysis is placed in the context of several larger concerns: the relationship between stress in private life and conduct in public life, the circumstances under which the disadvantaged are mobilized for politics, the changing role of social class in America, and the links between politics and macroeconomic conditions.

Business & Money

Economics

This book confirms the idea put forth nearly a century and a half ago by Alexis de Tocqueville, that American democracy is rooted in civic voluntarism--citizens' involvement in family, work, school, and religion, as well as in their political participation as voters, campaigners, protesters, or community activists. 
 The authors analyze civic activity as none have before. They have created an original survey of 15,000 individuals, which includes 2,500 personal interviews, that focuses on the central issues of involvement: how people come to be active, their motivations, their resources, and their networks. We see fascinating differences along cultural lines, among African-Americans, Latinos, and whites, as well as between the religiously observant and the secular. We observe family activism moving from generation to generation, and look into the special role of issues that elicit involvement, including abortion rights and social welfare. 
 This far-reaching analysis confirms that some individuals have a greater voice in politics than others, and that this inequality not only results from varying inclinations toward activity, but also reflects unequal access to such vital resources as money and education. This deeply researched study illuminates the many facets of civic consciousness and action and confirms their quintessential role in American democracy.

Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics

Brady, Henry

Politically active individuals and organizations make huge investments of time, energy, and money to influence everything from election outcomes to congressional subcommittee hearings to local school politics, while other groups and individual citizens seem woefully underrepresented in our political system. The Unheavenly Chorus is the most comprehensive and systematic examination of political voice in America ever undertaken--and its findings are sobering.
 The Unheavenly Chorus is the first book to look at the political participation of individual citizens alongside the political advocacy of thousands of organized interests--membership associations such as unions, professional associations, trade associations, and citizens groups, as well as organizations like corporations, hospitals, and universities. Drawing on numerous in-depth surveys of members of the public as well as the largest database of interest organizations ever created--representing more than thirty-five thousand organizations over a twenty-five-year period--this book conclusively demonstrates that American democracy is marred by deeply ingrained and persistent class-based political inequality. The well educated and affluent are active in many ways to make their voices heard, while the less advantaged are not. This book reveals how the political voices of organized interests are even less representative than those of individuals, how political advantage is handed down across generations, how recruitment to political activity perpetuates and exaggerates existing biases, how political voice on the Internet replicates these inequalities--and more.
 In a true democracy, the preferences and needs of all citizens deserve equal consideration. Yet equal consideration is only possible with equal citizen voice. The Unheavenly Chorus reveals how far we really are from the democratic ideal and how hard it would be to attain it.

The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy

Brady, Henry E.

Sociology

Princeton University Press

Unequal and Unrepresented: Political Inequality and the People's Voice in the New Gilded Age

How American political participation is increasingly being shaped by citizens who wield more resources
The Declaration of Independence proclaims equality as a foundational American value. However, Unequal and Unrepresented finds that political voice in America is not only unequal but also unrepresentative. Those who are well educated and affluent carry megaphones. The less privileged speak in a whisper. Relying on three decades of research and an enormous wealth of information about politically active individuals and organizations, Kay Schlozman, Henry Brady, and Sidney Verba offer a concise synthesis and update of their groundbreaking work on political participation. 
The authors consider the many ways that citizens in American democracy can influence public outcomes through political voice: by voting, getting involved in campaigns, communicating directly with public officials, participating online or offline, acting alone and in organizations, and investing their time and money. Socioeconomic imbalances characterize every form of political voice, but the advantage to the advantaged is especially pronounced when it comes to any form of political expression--for example, lobbying legislators or making campaign donations―that relies on money as an input. With those at the top of the ladder increasingly able to spend lavishly in politics, political action anchored in financial investment weighs ever more heavily in what public officials hear. 
Citing real-life examples and examining inequalities from multiple perspectives, Unequal and Unrepresented shows how disparities in political voice endanger American democracy today.

How American political participation is increasingly being shaped by citizens who wield more resources The Declaration of Independence proclaims equality as a foundational American value. However, Unequal and Unrepresented finds that political voice in America is not only unequal but also unrepresentative. Those who are well educated and affluent carry megaphones. The less privileged speak in a whisper. Relying on three decades of research and an enormous wealth of information about politically active individuals and organizations, Kay Schlozman, Henry Brady, and Sidney Verba offer a concise synthesis and update of their groundbreaking work on political participation. The authors consider the many ways that citizens in American democracy can influence public outcomes through political voice: by voting, getting involved in campaigns, communicating directly with public officials, participating online or offline, acting alone and in organizations, and investing their time and money. Socioeconomic imbalances characterize every form of political voice, but the advantage to the advantaged is especially pronounced when it comes to any form of political expression--for example, lobbying legislators or making campaign donations--that relies on money as an input. With those at the top of the ladder increasingly able to spend lavishly in politics, political action anchored in financial investment weighs ever more heavily in what public officials hear. Citing real-life examples and examining inequalities from multiple perspectives, Unequal and Unrepresented shows how disparities in political voice endanger American democracy today.

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Books by Schlozman, Kay Lehman

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Schlozman, Kay Lehman. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Organized Interests and American Democracy

The Private Roots of Public Action: Gender, Equality, and Political Participation

Injury to Insult: Unemployment, Class, and Political Response

Injury to Insult: Unemployment, Class, and Political Response

Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics

The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy

The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy

Unequal and Unrepresented: Political Inequality and the People's Voice in the New Gilded Age

Unequal and Unrepresented: Political Inequality and the People's Voice in the New Gilded Age