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The COVID-19 pandemic that struck the United States in early 2020 amplified already-stark economic and political divisions and revealed a nation unprepared to launch an immediate public health and economic response. Whether it was the fragmentation of the American federal system, the glaring racial and class disparities in economic and health outcomes, or the weaknesses of America’s tattered safety net, the crisis brought America’s distinctive mix of multi-venue governance, limited social protections, weak labor power, and loosely regulated markets prominently – and often tragically – into display.
On the same day that the White House announced the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court, it turned to business groups to aid in the public relations campaign to secure his confirmation (Goldstein 2018). Once seated, Kavanaugh solidified a strong pro-business orientation on the nation’s highest court, an orientation further consolidated with the eleventh-hour appointment of Amy Coney Barrett in the run-up to the November 2020 election. Meanwhile, the entire federal bench was also being transformed through the confirmations – at an unprecedented pace – of a string of young conservative jurists in the Trump administration (Ruiz et al. 2020). Most of the newest additions are drawn from the membership lists of the Federalist Society, a powerful organization composed of lawyers and legal scholars committed to an originalist reading of the American constitution and a radical free market economic ideology.
As this group met in Cambridge in late February 2020 to discuss revised chapters for this project, we did not know that a COVID-19 super-spreader event was unfolding less than three miles away – ironically, at the conference of a major bio-technology firm. By October, estimates suggested that the strains unleashed at that single event might have infected 300,000 Americans (Wines and Harmon 2020). Well before then, of course, it was clear that a world-historical calamity was unfolding before us.
This volume brings together leading political scientists to explore the distinctive features of the American political economy. The introductory chapter provides a comparatively informed framework for analyzing the interplay of markets and politics in the United States, focusing on three key factors: uniquely fragmented and decentralized political institutions; an interest group landscape characterized by weak labor organizations and powerful, parochial business groups; and an entrenched legacy of ethno-racial divisions embedded in both government and markets. Subsequent chapters look at the fundamental dynamics that result, including the place of the courts in multi-venue politics, the political economy of labor, sectional conflict within and across cities and regions, the consolidation of financial markets and corporate monopoly and monopsony power, and the ongoing rise of the knowledge economy. Together, the chapters provide a revealing new map of the politics of democratic capitalism in the United States.
This chapter explores the dynamics of precarity and socioeconomic risk across the most advanced industrial countries. We situate the United States in a comparative framework to identify the characteristics it shares with other rich democracies as well as the distinctive dynamics of precarity in the American context. The United States stands out for the way it combines uncommonly high levels of individual-level exposure to various risks with low levels of collectively provided insurance to mitigate the impact of these risks. Moreover, we show that the institutions of the American political economy operate to compound risk, actively promoting what we call risk contagion, as misfortune in one arena spreads to foment misfortune in others.
Recent years have seen a revival of debates about the role of business and the sources of business power in postindustrial political economies. Scholarly accounts commonly distinguish between structural sources of business power, connected to its privileged position in capitalist economies, and instrumental sources, related to direct forms of lobbying by business actors. The authors argue that this distinction overlooks an important third source of business power, which they conceptualize as institutional business power. Institutional business power results when state actors delegate public functions to private business actors. Over time, through policy feedback and lock-in effects, institutional business power contributes to an asymmetrical dependence of the state on the continued commitment of private business actors. This article elaborates the theoretical argument behind this claim, providing empirical examples of growing institutional business power in education in Germany, Sweden, and the United States.
The address situates the rise of “gig” work in the context of a much longer-term trend toward more precarious forms of employment. It explores the forces that are driving these developments and discusses the problems they pose at both the individual level and the national level. By situating the United States in a comparative perspective, it identifies the structural factors that exacerbate the problem of precarity and intensify its effects in the American political economy.
I use the case of the transportation network company Uber as a lens to explore the comparative politics of the platform economy in Europe and the United States. Within the advanced capitalist world, different countries have responded in very different ways to this new service, from welcome embrace and accommodating regulatory adjustments to complete rejection and legal bans. I analyze Uber’s arrival and reception in the United States, Germany, and Sweden, documenting three very different responses to this disruptive new actor. I show that conflicts over Uber centered on different issues in the three countries. These differences were consequential because the specific regulatory “flashpoints”that Uber provoked mobilized different actors, inspired the formation of different coalitions, and shaped the terms on which conflicts over Uber were framed and fought.