The Unheavenly Chorus

by Schlozman, Kay Lehman; Verba, Sidney; Brady, Henry E.

• ISBN13: 9780691154848
• ISBN10: 0691154848
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-04-09
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

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 Chorusis the most comprehensive and systematic examination of political voice in America ever undertaken--and its findings are sobering. The Unheavenly Chorusis 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 Chorusreveals how far we really are from the democratic ideal and how hard it would be to attain it.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. ix
List of Tables	p. xiii
Preface	p. xvii
Acknowledgments	p. xxv
Introduction: Democracy and Political Voice	p. 1
Thinking about Inequality and Political Voice
The (Ambivalent) Tradition of Equality in America	p. 31
The Context: Growing Economic Inequality and Weakening Unions	p. 69
Equal Voice and the Dilemmas of Democracy	p. 96
Inequality of Political Voice and Individual Participation
Does Unequal Voice Matter?	p. 117
The Persistence of Unequal Voice	p. 147
Unequal at the Starting Line: The Intergenerational Persistence of Political Inequality with Nancy Burns	p. 177
Political Participation over the Life Cycle with Jennifer Erkulwater	p. 199
Political Activism and Electoral Democracy: Perspectives on Economic Inequality and Political Polarization	p. 232
Inequality of Political Voice and Organized Interest Activity
Political Voice through Organized Interests: Introductory Matters	p. 265
Who Sings in the Heavenly Chorus? The Shape of the Organized Interest System	p. 312
The Changing Pressure Community	p. 347
Beyond Organizational Categories	p. 370
Political Voice through Organized Interest Activity	p. 393
Can We Change the Accent of the Unheavenly Chorus?
Breaking the Pattern through Political Recruitment	p. 447
Weapon of the Strong? Participatory Inequality and the Internet	p. 483
What, if Anything, Is to Be Done?	p. 534
Conclusion: Equal Voice and the Promise of American Democracy	p. 574
Appendixes
Equality and the State and U.S. Constitutions	p. 605
The Persistence of Political and Nonpolitical Activity	p. 608
The Intergenerational Transmission of Political Participation	p. 616
Age, Period, and Cohort Effects	p. 619
The Washington Representatives Database	p. 621
Additional Tables	p. 645
Do Online and Offline Political Activists Differ from One Another?	p. 649
Index	p. 655
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