The gap between the richest and poorest Americans has grown steadily over the last thirty years, and economic inequality is on the rise in many other industrialized democracies as well. But the magnitude and pace of the increase differs dramatically across nations. A country’s political system and its institutions play a critical role in determining levels of inequality in a society. Democracy, Inequality, and Representation argues that the reverse is also true—inequality itself shapes political systems and institutions in powerful and often overlooked ways.

In Democracy, Inequality, and Representation, distinguished political scientists and economists use a set of international databases to examine the political causes and consequences of income inequality. The volume opens with an examination of how differing systems of political representation contribute to cross-national variations in levels of inequality. Torben Iverson and David Soskice calculate that taxes and income transfers help reduce the poverty rate in Sweden by over 80 percent, while the comparable figure for the United States is only 13 percent. Noting that traditional economic models fail to account for this striking discrepancy, the authors show how variations in electoral systems lead to very different outcomes.

But political causes of disparity are only one part of the equation. The contributors also examine how inequality shapes the democratic process. Pablo Beramendi and Christopher Anderson show how disparity mutes political voices: at the individual level, citizens with the lowest incomes are the least likely to vote, while high levels of inequality in a society result in diminished electoral participation overall. Thomas Cusack, Iverson, and Philipp Rehm demonstrate that uncertainty in the economy changes voters’ attitudes; the mere risk of losing one’s job generates increased popular demand for income support policies almost as much as actual unemployment does. Ronald Rogowski and Duncan McRae illustrate how changes in levels of inequality can drive reforms in political institutions themselves. Increased demand for female labor participation during World War II led to greater equality between men and women, which in turn encouraged many European countries to extend voting rights to women for the first time.

The contributors to this important new volume skillfully disentangle a series of complex relationships between economics and politics to show how inequality both shapes and is shaped by policy. Democracy, Inequality, and Representation provides deeply nuanced insight into why some democracies are able to curtail inequality—while others continue to witness a division that grows ever deeper.

PABLO BERAMENDI is assistant professor of political science at Duke University.

CHRISTOPHER J. ANDERSON is professor of government at Cornell University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Christopher J. Anderson, Pablo Beramendi, Andrea Brandolini, Thomas R. Cusack, Robert J. Franzese Jr., Jude C. Hays, Torben Iversen, Duncan C. McRae, Jonas Pontusson, Philipp Rehm, Ronald Rogowski, David Rueda, Lyle Scruggs, Timothy M. Smeeding, and David Soskice.

Over the past eight years, a marked shift in the national political mood has substantially reduced the federal government's involvement in ameliorating urban problems and enhanced the prominence of state and local governments in the domestic policy arena. Many states and big cities have been forced to reassess their traditionally vexed relationships.

Nowhere has this drama been played out more stormily than in New York. In The Two New Yorks, experts from government, the academy, and the non-profit sector examine aspects of an interaction that has a major impact on the performance of state and city institutions. The analyses presented here explore current state-city strategies for handling such troubling policy areas as education, health care, and housing. Attention is also given to important contextual factors such as economic and demographic trends, and to structural features such as the political framework, relationships with the national government, and the system of public finance.

Despite its uniquely large scope, the drama of the new New Yorks parallels or presages issues faced by virtually all large cities and their states. This unprecedented study makes a vital contribution in an era of declining federal aid and pressing urban need.

GERALD BENJAMIN is at SUNY New Paltz.

CHARLES BRECHER is at New York University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Richard D. Alba, Mary Jo Bane, Gerald Benjamin, Robert Berne, Susan Blamk, Barbara B. Blum, Matthew Drennan, Barbara Gordon Espejo, Ester Fuchs, Cynthia B. Green, James M. Hartman, Raymond D. Horton, Sarah F. Liebschutz, David Lewin, Irene Lurie, Paul D. Moore, James C. Musselwhite Jr., Martin Shefter, Kenneth E. Thorpe, Emanuel Tobier, Katherine Trent, 

Little over a century ago, New York and Budapest were both flourishing cities engaging in spectacular modernization. By 1930, New York had emerged as an innovating cosmopolitan metropolis, while Budapest languished under the conditions that would foster fascism. Budapest and New York explores the increasingly divergent trajectories of these once-similar cities through the perspectives of both Hungarian and American experts in the fields of political, cultural, social and art history. Their original essays illuminate key aspects of urban life that most reveal the turn-of-the-century evolution of New York and Budapest: democratic participation, use of public space, neighborhood ethnicity, and culture high and low.

What comes across most strikingly in these essays is New York's cultivation of social and political pluralism, a trend not found in Budapest. Nationalist ideology exerted tremendous pressure on Budapest's ethnic groups to assimilate to a single Hungarian language and culture. In contrast, New York's ethnic diversity was transmitted through a mass culture that celebrated ethnicity while muting distinct ethnic traditions, making them accessible to a national audience. While Budapest succumbed to the patriotic imperatives of a nation threatened by war, revolution, and fascism, New York, free from such pressures, embraced the variety of its people and transformed its urban ethos into a paradigm for America.

Budapest and New York is the lively story of the making of metropolitan culture in Europe and America, and of the influential relationship between city and nation. In unifying essays, the editors observe comparisons not only between the cities, but in the scholarly outlooks and methodologies of Hungarian and American histories. This volume is a unique urban history. Begun under the unfavorable conditions of a divided world, it represents a breakthrough in cross-cultural, transnational, and interdisciplinary historical work.

THOMAS BENDER is University Professor of the Humanities and professor of history at New York University.

CARL E. SCHORSKE is professor emeritus at Princeton University, and the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Fin-de-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture.

CONTRIBUTORS: Thomas Bender, Elizabeth Blackmar, Geza Buzinkay, Wanda M. Corn, Deborah Dash Moore, Philip Fisher, Eva Forgacs, Gabor Gyani, David C. Hammack, Peter Hanak, Neil Harris, Miklos Lacko, Zsuzsa L. Nagy, Roy Rosenzweig, Carl E. Schorske, Robert W. Snyder, and Istvan Teplan.

Does social science influence social policy? This is a topic of perennial concern among students of politics, the economy, and other social institutions. In Effective Social Science, eight prominent social researchers offer first-hand descriptions of the impact of their work on government and corporate policy.

In their own words, these noted political scientists, economists, and sociologists—among them such influential scholars as James Coleman, Joseph Pechman, and Eliz Ginzberg—tell us what it was like to become involved in the making of social policy. These rich personal narratives, derived from detailed interviews conducted by Bernard Barber (himself a veteran of the biomedical poliy arena), illuminate the role of social science in diverse areas, including school desegregation, comprehensive income taxation, military manpower utilization, transportation deregulation, and the protection of privacy.

The patterns traced in this volume indicate that social science can influence policy, but only as part of a pluralistic, political process; effective social research requires advocacy as well as a conducive social and idealogical climate. For anyone curious about the relationship between social knowledge and social action, this book provides striking illustration and fruitful analysis.

BERNARD BARBER is professor at Barnard College and the Graduate faculties at Columbia University.

Winner of the 1973 C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems

Less than 2 percent of some 4000 adults prosecuted for participating in the bloodiest ghetto revolt of this generation served any time in jail as a result of their conviction and sentencing. Why? Why, in contrast, did the majority of those arrested following a brief and minor confrontation with police in a different city receive far harsher treatment than ordinarily meted out for comparable offenses in "normal" times? What do these incidents tell us about the nature of legal repression in the American state?

No coherent theory of political repression in the liberal state exists today. Neither the liberal view of repression as "anomaly" nor the radical view of repression as "fascist core" appears to come to grips with the distinctive characteristics of legal repression in the liberal state.

This book attempts to arrive at a more adequate understanding of these "distinctive characteristics" by means of a detailed analysis of the legal response to the most serious violent challenge to the existing political order since the Great Depression—the black ghetto revolts between 1964 and 1968.

Using police and court records, and extensive interviews with judges, defense attorneys, prosecutors, and detention officials, Professor Balbus provides a complete reconstruction of the response of the criminal courts of Los Angeles, Detroit, and Chicago to the "civil disorders" that occurred in these cities. What emerges is a disturbing picture of the relationship between court systems and participants and the local political environments in which they operate.

ISAAC D. BALBUS has been assistant professor of politics at Princeton University, and will join the faculty of York College of the City University of New York as associate professor of political science in the fall of 1973. He received his B.A. in Government from Colby College and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago. He is the author of a number of articles on Marxism, Elitist Theory, and Pluralism.

This book presents an informing picture of giving in the United States. It glances briefly at the history of philanthropy, including its growth in government services, but its emphasis is on recent changes and special opportunities for today. It offers estimates of giving, as to amounts, sources, and benefiting agencies. It includes a discussion of legal and tax aspects of philanthropy.

F. EMERSON ANDREWS was a staff member of Russell Sage Foundation since 1928, a consultant on publications to the Twentieth Century Fund since 1940, and served as a consultant to a number of other organizations in the welfare field. This book grew out of the requests of many donors for advice and help, which came to him as co-author of American Foundations for Social Welfare.