In 2001 and 2003, the U.S. Congress passed two of the largest tax cuts in history. The total cost to the Treasury from 2001 through 2013 is projected at over $4.5 trillion—more than twice the federal government’s total annual budget. Despite the escalating national debt and the elimination of the federal budget surplus, this drastic shift in fiscal policy was broadly supported by ordinary Americans.

Scholars have long debated the so-called Robin Hood paradox: advanced democracies with low levels of inequality tend to redistribute more, while those nations with high levels of inequality redistribute less. In an ideal world, however, the correlation should go the other way, as the most unequal democracies have the greatest need for redistribution. How can we understand this puzzling yet persistent relationship between income inequality and redistribution?

Asians and Pacific Islanders currently represent 4.4 percent of the U.S. population, but they made up only two percent of the electorate in the 2004 national election. A large segment of the population is foreign born, which restricts formal electoral participation, but as the population grows so should the pool of potential voters. Yet at every level of education and income, Asian Americans continue to register and vote at rates lower than the general population. Political scientists Jane Junn (Rutgers University), Taeku Lee (University of California, Berkeley), S.

Progressive taxation,where higher incomes are taxed at higher rates, played a significant role in reducing income inequality in many countries for much of the twentieth century. Recent moves in some advanced economies away from this system may help account for rising inequality in those nations. But what made progressive taxation politically viable in the first place?

How do eligible voters become actual voters? Latinos—the nation’s largest and fastest growing minority group—currently comprise about 15 percent of the population, but are only 9 percent of the eligible U.S. electorate. And only a small percentage of eligible voters ever cast a vote in a national election.

The health of a nation’s democracy is inextricably linked to the strength of its civil society. In the United States, civil society is more racially stratified than many of its workplaces and government institutions. To examine the impact that segregated civil society may have on American public life, Michael Dawson of the University of Chicago’s Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture is organizing a two-day conference to be held at the Johnson Foundation in Racine, Wisconsin on January 11-12, 2002.