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Title: White-Collar Government in the United States
Citation Type: Journal Article
Publication Year: 2015
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Abstract: If millionaires in the United States formed their own political party, that party would make up just three percent of the country, but it would have a majority in the House of Representatives, a filibuster-proof super-majority in the Senate, a 5:4 majority on the Supreme Court, and a man in the White House. If working-class Americanspeople employed in manual-labor and service-industry jobswere a political party, that party would have made up more than half of the country since the start of the twentieth century. But legislators from that party (those who last worked in blue-collar jobs before getting into politics) would never have held more than two percent of the seats in Congress. In the last few years, scholars of US politics have started taking a renewed interest in what I call white-collar government, the disproportionate numerical representation of wealthy people and white-collar professionals in our political institutions. Political scientists are once again asking how government by the upper class affects public policy in the United States. And theyre starting to ask why our representative process consistently gives us such economically unrepresentative slates of politicians.
Url: http://people.duke.edu/~nwc8/spsr.pdf
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Authors: Carnes, Nicholas
Periodical (Full): Swiss Political Science Review
Issue: 2
Volume: 21
Pages: 213-213433
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Other
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