Kirjahaku

Because political campaigns in the United States are privately funded, America's political system is heavily biased toward the interests of wealthy campaign contributors. As a result, government policies have largely ignored the growth in income inequality caused by technological change and economic globalization. This omission has been tolerated because most Americans do not support interventionist government policies. They believe that the government serves the interests of the campaign donors rather than the public. This skepticism concerning the public sector's fairness must be overcome before effective programs to offset mounting inequality can be implemented. Though in recent years legislation to reform the financing of political campaigns has been adopted, private wealth continues to dominate the political process. Political cynicism therefore persists. A voluntary system of public funding of candidates for office is required to generate the trust in the public sector necessary to reverse the trend toward inequality.

Because political campaigns in the United States are privately funded, America's political system is heavily biased toward the interests of wealthy campaign contributors. As a result, government policies have largely ignored the growth in income inequality caused by technological change and economic globalization. This omission has been tolerated because most Americans do not support interventionist government policies. They believe that the government serves the interests of the campaign donors rather than the public. This skepticism concerning the public sector's fairness must be overcome before effective programs to offset mounting inequality can be implemented. Though in recent years legislation to reform the financing of political campaigns has been adopted, private wealth continues to dominate the political process. Political cynicism therefore persists. A voluntary system of public funding of candidates for office is required to generate the trust in the public sector necessary to reverse the trend toward inequality.

The argument the author presents is that globalization is associated with the economic growth necessary to alleviate poverty. Globalization therefore should be encouraged. At the same time, governments must adopt policies that address the needs of those who are victimized by the dislocations caused by the process. The book responds to the opponents by emphasizing globalization’s potential to alleviate poverty, but at the same time is critical of those who defend globalization without acknowledging the costs it imposes on innocent victims. In addressing the activist opponents of the process, the author maintains that they should not reject the global integration of world markets because of a concern for justice. Instead activists can advance the interests of the world’s poor by mounting political movements to advance international agreements to stabilize the world economy and ensure labor rights.

Since its publication in 1978, Jay R. Mandle’s The Roots of Black Poverty has come to be seen as a landmark publication in the study of the political economy of the postbellum South. In Not Slave, Not Free, Mandle substantially revises and updates his earlier work in light of significant new research. The new edition provides an enhanced historical perspective on the African American economic experience since emancipation.Not Slave, Not Free focuses first on rural southern society before World War II and the role played by African Americans in that setting. The South was the least developed part of the United States, a fact that Mandle considers fundamental in accounting for the poverty of African Americans in the years before the War. At the same time, however, the concentration of the black labor force in plantation work significantly retarded the South’s economic growth. Tracing the postwar migration of blacks from the South, Mandle shifts attention to the problems and opportunities that confronted African Americans in cities. He shows how occupational segregation and income growth accelerated this migration.Instrumental to an understanding of the history of the political economy of the United States, this book also directs readers and policymakers to the central issues confronting African Americans today.

This study uniquely and systematically makes the argument that the electoral process in America should be considered as a public good. This argument is placed in the context of an examination of campaign funding and historical attempts at reform. It furthermore is more analytic than anything in the field in tracing the connections between our system of private funding of electoral campaigns and specific difficulties that the country has encountered with regard to the environment, health care, and the financial crisis. It is unique in drawing the conclusion that greater political equality can best be achieved by providing candidates with the option of paying for their campaigns with public funds. Finally, no major study has considered why campaign finance reform has not been a rallying cry for a mass movement or concerns itself, as this book does, with the conditions that might foster such a movement.The research presented in this work argues that if America is to achieve greater political equality our electoral system needs to be treated as a public good. Professor Mandle states that elections share the attributes of government-supplied services such as the defense budget. But in the United States electoral efforts are financed with private donations and this leads to distortions in public policy. To avoid such serious policy biases, candidates should have the option of running for office with the campaign expenditures paid for by public funds, as now exists in a number of states; that is, financed in the way public goods are paid for. After making this theoretical case, the book proceeds to consider the changing pattern by which campaigns have been financed historically in this country. It examines in detail the sources of electoral finance today and considers the relative merits of two alternatives to the present method of political funding: dependence on small donors or a “clean money” system of public financing. It then takes up three case studies, demonstrating how the private funding of political campaigns both is a source of problems in the United States and renders the political system ineffective in addressing issues as they arise. The vested interests that fund political campaigns have limited our ability to deal satisfactorily with global climate change and health care reform, and were important in creating the conditions leading to the financial crisis of 2007-09. The book concludes with a discussion of why in the past advocates of democratic reform have not made campaign finance a priority and explores the circumstances in which a mass movement in support of public funding of electoral campaigns might emerge in the future.