“Soaking the Middle Class tells the complex story of disaster recovery in a White middle-class suburb. It is driven by the chilling narrative of the water rising, escape, and inspiring and awesome stories of rebuilding. But not everyone rebounds the same. Behind an appearance of homogeneity are forces—both structural and individual—that widen gaps in wealth and resources. As an ever more volatile environment threatens to soak us all, this book is essential reading for how to create a broader and more equitable safety net.”
—MARY PATTILLO, Northwestern University

“A powerful book about one of the most urgent problems of the century: how to avoid going under in an era of catastrophic climate change. Drawing on an unusually deep and extensive study of an inundated suburban community, Anna Rhodes and Max Besbris show how class-based inequalities determine who bounces back from disaster and who gets bogged down or displaced. Soaking the Middle Class is timely and important for everyone who calls this warm, wet planet home.”
—ERIC KLINENBERG, New York University

“As climate change causes more extreme weather many middle-class Americans assume that their financial and social resources, their insurance, as well as help from the government, would protect them from financial ruin should they be caught in a disaster. In this eye-opening sociological account of how Hurricane Harvey affected one middle class suburb in Houston, Anna Rhodes and Max Besbris show that the disaster had very unequal effects, with some people able to build back better, and others not able to get back on their feet. Soaking the Middle Class is a cogently argued and wide-ranging book that opens our eyes to how disaster puts us all at risk.”
—MARY C. WATERS, Harvard University

Extreme weather is increasing in scale and severity as global warming worsens. While poorer communities are typically most vulnerable to the negative effects of climate change, even well-resourced communities are increasingly vulnerable as climate-related storms intensify. Yet little is known about how middle-class communities are responding to these storms and the resulting damage. In Soaking the Middle Class, sociologists Anna Rhodes and Max Besbris examine how a middle-class community recovers from a climate-related disaster and how this process fosters inequality within these kinds of places.

In 2017, Hurricane Harvey dropped record-breaking rainfall in Southeast Texas resulting in more than $125 billion in direct damages. Rhodes and Besbris followed 59 flooded households in Friendswood, Texas, for two years after the storm to better understand the recovery process in a well-resourced, majority-White, middle-class suburban community. As such, Friendswood should have been highly resilient to storms like Harvey, yet Rhodes and Besbris find that the recovery process exacerbated often-invisible economic inequality between neighbors. Two years after Harvey, some households were in better financial positions than they were before the storm, while others still had incomplete repairs, were burdened with large new debts, and possessed few resources to draw on should another disaster occur.

Rhodes and Besbris find that recovery policies were significant drivers of inequality, with flood insurance playing a key role in the divergent recovery outcomes within Friendswood. Households with flood insurance prior to Harvey tended to have higher incomes than those that did not. These households received high insurance payouts, enabling them to replace belongings, hire contractors, and purchase supplies. Households without coverage could apply for FEMA assistance, which offered considerably lower payouts, and for government loans, which would put them into debt. Households without coverage found themselves exhausting their financial resources, including retirement savings, to cover repairs, which put them in even more financially precarious positions than they were before the flood.

The vast majority of Friendswood residents chose to repair and return to their homes after Hurricane Harvey. Even this devastating flood did not alter their plans for long-term residential stability, and the structure of recovery policies only further oriented homeowners towards returning to their homes. Prior to Harvey, many Friendswood households relied on flood damage from previous storms to judge their vulnerability and considered themselves at low risk. After Harvey, many found it difficult to assess their level of risk for future flooding. Without strong guidance from federal agencies or the local government on how to best evaluate risk, many residents ended up returning to potentially unsafe places.

As climate-related disasters become more severe, Soaking the Middle Class illustrates how inequality in the United States will continue to grow if recovery policies are not fundamentally changed.

ANNA RHODES is Assistant Professor of Sociology, Rice University

MAX BESBRIS is Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Winner of the 2022 Gladys M. Kammerer Award from the American Political Science Association

“Hijacking the Agenda should have a big impact on how we think about Congress, policymaking, and political inequality. It provides an ambitious and creative analysis of an often-overlooked dimension of political power—the outsized role of the wealthy and well-organized in determining whose problems get addressed and whose get ignored.”
—Larry M. Bartels, May Werthan Shayne Chair of Public Policy and Social Science, Vanderbilt University

“To know who governs, we must know who controls the governing agenda. In this innovative book, four top political scientists show that the congressional agenda is disproportionately shaped by economic elites and the politicians most friendly to and funded by them. Combining sophisticated quantitative analysis and compelling case studies, Hijacking the Agenda sets a new standard for research on inequality and American democracy—and sounds a loud warning that all scholars and citizens should hear.”
—Jacob Hacker, Stanley Resor Professor of Political Science, Yale University

Why are the economic concerns of lower- and middle-class Americans so often ignored by Congress, while the economic goals of the wealthiest are prioritized, often resulting in policies promoting their interests? In Hijacking the Agenda, political scientists Christopher Witko, Jana Morgan, Nathan J. Kelly, and Peter K. Enns examine why Congress privileges the concerns of businesses and the wealthy over those of average Americans. They go beyond demonstrating this bias to document how and why economic policy is skewed in favor of the rich.

The authors analyze over 20 years of floor speeches by thousands of members of Congress to examine how campaign contributions and independent expenditures on behalf of candidates help set the national economic agenda. They find that legislators receiving more support from business and other wealthy interests were more likely to discuss the deficit and other upper-class priorities, while those receiving more assistance from unions were more likely to discuss issues important to the lower and middle class, such as economic inequality and wages. This attention imbalance matters because when members of Congress talk about certain issues, their speech is often followed by legislative action. While unions use their resources to push back against wealthy interests, spending by the wealthy dwarfs that of unions, often giving the upper class the upper hand.

The authors use case studies analyzing financial regulation and the minimum wage to demonstrate how the economic power of the wealthy enables them to advance their agenda. In each case, the authors examine structural power, or the power that comes from a group’s economic position, and kinetic power, the power that comes from the ability to mobilize organizational and financial resources in the policy process. They show how business uses its structural power and resources to effect policy change in Congress, as when the financial industry in the late 1990s promoted passage of a bill that eviscerated financial regulations put in place after the Great Depression. Likewise, when business wants to preserve the status quo, it uses its power to keep issues off of the legislative agenda, as when inflation erodes the value of the minimum wage and its declining purchasing power leaves minimum-wage workers in poverty. Although groups representing lower- and middle-class interests, particularly unions, are sometimes able to shape policy if conditions are right, they lack structural power and have limited financial resources. As a result, the wealthy have considerable advantages in the policy process, advantages that only intensify as their economic power becomes more concentrated and policymakers continue to see policies beneficial to business as beneficial for all.

Hijacking the Agenda is an illuminating account of the way economic power influences the congressional agenda and policy process to privilege the wealthy and marks a major step forward in understanding the politics of inequality.

CHRISTOPHER WITKO is professor of public policy and political science and associate director of the School of Public Policy at Pennsylvania State University.

JANA MORGAN is professor of political science at the University of Tennessee.

NATHAN J. KELLY is professor of political science at the University of Tennessee.

PETER K. ENNS is professor of government at Cornell University and executive director of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.

This book examines the Work Projects Administration, previously known as the Work Progress Administration, as well as other national relief policies. The WPA was the name applied to the federally operated and financed program inaugurated in the summer of 1935 in which as many as fifty federal agencies cooperated in providing jobs for workers meeting prescribed conditions of eligibility.

Donald S. Howard was assistant director of the Charity Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation.

A survey of amateur and community theatrical productions and activity in the early twentieth century, in particular dramatics for children through public and private schools, playground and community centers, and various voluntary organizations. With a selected bibliography for amateur workers in drama.

Clarence Arthur Perry was the author of Wider Use of the School Plant, Housing for the Machine Age, and The Rebuilding of Blighted Areas.

This report is about the Community Law Offices (CLO), which operated two neighborhood law offices in Manhattan—in East and Central Harlem—that provided free legal services to individuals and groups who could not afford private attorneys. CLO relied primarily on attorneys in private practice who volunteered part of their time to handle the cases brought to the two offices. Formation and growth, an overview of its operations, and an evaluation of volunteer performance are discussed.

Douglas E. Rosenthal was chief of the Foreign Commerce Section of the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. Robert A. Kagan is professor of political science and law at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Department of Child Helping of the Russell Sage Foundation completed a detailed study of 151 public institutions for delinquent youth in the United States in 1924, including a few private institutions supported chiefly by public funds. The work of such schools is unique, technical, and vitally important, but up to the time that this study was undertaken no complete and detailed information regarding these institutions was available. The department undertook the study with the goal of informing the public and awakening its interest in these schools, and of assisting trustees and superintendents to improve the methods, standards, and conditions of their work. This book examines academics, physical care, and parole for delinquent girls, as well as building conditions, salaries in training schools, record-keeping, and community aspects of institutional life.

Margaret Reeves was field agent of the Russell Sage Foundation and director of the State Bureau of Child Welfare, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

This 1930 report of a statistical study of 10,000 small loans is part of the Small Loans Series, a general survey of small loans prepared for the Russell Sage Foundation by the Department of Remedial Loans. Topics include the development of the small loan business and the social, economic, and living conditions of borrowers.

Louis N. Robinson was professor of economics at Swarthmore College.

A survey of the role of company-sponsored foundations and the philanthropic contributions of American corporations. History and growth, financial operations, goals and objectives, and the causes company foundations support are discussed.

An analysis of the practice, scope, and methods of recording facts in the daily work of public employment in various countries and a plan for standard procedure in the United States made for the Committee on Governmental Labor Statistics of the American Statistical Association.

Anabel M. Stewart and Bryce M. Stewart, Committee on Governmental Labor Statistics

This survey of small loan legislation is part of a general survey of small loans prepared for the Russell Sage Foundation under the direction of Dr. Louis N. Robinson. It is issued as one of the Small Loan Series of the Department of Remedial Loans. Chapter VIII of this volume on the Constitutionality of Small Loan Legislation, by Frank R. Hubachek, was printed in 1931 as a pamphlet under the same title.

David J. Gallert, New York Bar; Walter S. Hilborn, New York Bar, Geoffrey may, Inner Temple, London