Who Gets What?
The New Politics of Insecurity

As stable political alliances in democracies have dissolved, populism deepens social and economic divisions rather than addressing economic insecurity.

Frances McCall Rosenbluth (Edited by), Margaret Weir (Edited by)

9781108794138, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 29 July 2021

320 pages
22.9 x 15 x 2 cm, 0.54 kg

The authors of this timely book, Who Gets What?, harness the expertise from across the social sciences to show how skyrocketing inequality and social dislocation are fracturing the stable political identities and alliances of the postwar era across advanced democracies. Drawing on extensive evidence from the United States and Europe, with a focus especially on the United States, the authors examine how economics and politics are closely entwined. Chapters demonstrate how the new divisions that separate people and places–and fragment political parties–hinder a fairer distribution of resources and opportunities. They show how employment, education, sex and gender, and race and ethnicity affect the way people experience and interpret inequality and economic anxieties. Populist politics have addressed these emerging insecurities by deepening social and political divisions, rather than promoting broad and inclusive policies.

1. Introduction: The New Politics of Insecurity Frances Rosenbluth and Margaret Weir: Part I. People: 2. Race, Remembrance and Precarity: Nostalgia and Vote Choice in the 2016 US Election Andra Gillespi
3. The End of Human Capital Solidarity? Ben Ansell and Jane Gingrich
4. Public Opinion and Reactions to Increasing Income Inequality Kris-Stella Trump
5. Engendering Democracy in an Age of Anxiety Alice Kessler-Harris
Part II. Place: 6. Keeping your Enemies Close: Electoral Rules and Partisan Polarization Jonathan Rodden
7. America's Unequal Metropolitan Geography: Segregation and the Spatial Concentration of Affluence and Poverty Douglas S. Massey and Jacob S. Rugh
8. Redistribution and the Politics of Spatial Inequality in America Margaret Weir and Desmond King
Part III. Politics: 9. Electoral Realignments in the Atlantic World Carles Boix
Political Parties in the New Politics of Insecurity Christian Salas, Frances Rosenbluth and Ian Shapiro
11. The Peculiar Politics of American Insecurity Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson
12. The Anxiety of Precarity: the United States in Comparative Perspective Kathleen Thelen and Andreas Wiedemann
13. Increasing Instability and Uncertainty Among Low-Wage Workers: Implications for Inequality and Potential Policy Solutions Elizabeth Ananat, Anna Gassman-Pines and Yulya Truskinovsky.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], Comparative politics [JPB], Sociology [JHB], Social mobility [JFFM], History of the Americas [HBJK]