JBVELUT-SISP2013Boycotting the system: Labor market polarization
and contentious action
in the New Gilded Age (1990-2013) Jean-Baptiste Velut is Assistant
Professor in American Studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University
of Paris. He wrote a dissertation entitled “Free or Fair Trade? The
Battle for the Rules of American Trade Policy from NAFTA to CAFTA”
(2009, Sorbonne Nouvelle University/City University of New York)
and has published several articles on US foreign economic policy
and globalization debates in the United States. His current
research focuses on contemporary progressive movements
(alterglobalist movement, consumer activism, Occupy Wall Street,
etc.).
In the United States, the past two decades have shown a sharp
contrast between the
seemingly idyllic picture of the “Roaring Nineties” and the grim
socio-economic reality of
George W. Bush’s “lost decade” that culminated with the Great
Recession. The return to
austerity politics has nourished both Americans’ nostalgia for the
Clinton years and their
disillusion in the political system. Beyond this dichotomous
interpretation of contemporary
economic history, a single phenomenon has transformed both the US
labor market and
Americans’ political response over the past decades. Under the
triple forces of globalization,
technological advances and supply-side reforms, US employment has
split between a
mushrooming lower class, a hollowing out middle-class and a robust
and disconnected higher
class.
Despite the dislocating effects of labor market polarization and
“jobless recoveries”, the
two-party system has remained mired in partisan conflict and
political inertia. Yet, in various
spheres of American society, different forms of collective action
have emerged to protest
against the collusion of political and economic elites and the
betrayal of the American dream.
Since the 1990s, American grassroots movements have mobilized for
global justice, launched
local living wage campaigns and “Occupied” public spaces to protest
against social
inequalities. “Citizen consumers” have activated their buying power
and repoliticized
consumption through boycotts and “buycotts” on behalf of social
banking, local food and fair
trade.
In this paper (which is part of a broader book project), I will
argue that these
unconventional or disruptive forms of political participation
constitute direct responses to the
conservative nature of the US political system, whose focus on
austerity measures risks
exacerbating social inequality and the hollowing out of the
middle-class. The first section will
paint the picture of the dual phenomenon of polarization that has
put America’s market
democracy under considerable stress. The second part will review
political and sociological
2
explanations of social change and connect them with recent
political events. The final section
sheds light on the recurrent pattern of contentious action against
economic and political
polarization and discusses its impact on the
electoral-representative system, along with the
prospects for a departure from the Gilded Age economy.
A tale of two polarizations
The New Gilded Age The first, and most discussed type of economic
polarization has been the return to extreme
forms of social inequality unseen since America’s Gilded Age. At
the top of the revenue
ladder, the income share (including capital gains) of the richest
1% more than doubled from
10% in 1980 to 23.5% in 2007 – its highest level since 1928 –
before receding to 19.8% in
2011. Income concentration is perhaps even more striking for the
0.01% who saw their
national income share increase six-fold from 1% in the late 1970s
to more than 6% before the
crisis. Meanwhile the latter group’s average capital gains and
revenues jumped from $3.8
million to $38 million – a ten-fold surge in thirty years. By
contrast, the average revenues of
the bottom 90% of the American population barely budged, from
$33,500 in 1978 to $35,200
at the dawn of the Great Recession. (World Top Incomes Database,
2013).
Today, the gap between America’s top business elites and the
average worker has become
abyssal. International measures of inequality (using the Gini
coefficient after taxes and
transfer) rank the United States as the most unequal OECD countries
after Chile, Mexico and
Turkey (OECD, 2013). While these trends were long in the making,
they accelerated during
the “lost decade” of the Bush years. During the economic expansion
of the first decade of the
twenty-first century, revenue gains were largely confined to
America’s richest 1%, who
between 2002 and 2007 captured nearly two thirds of all income
gains, while the large
majority of Americans (99%) saw their revenues increase by 6.8%. If
the financial crisis
initially seemed to bring these trends to a halt, it did not
fundamentally alter the course of
what Paul Krugman has called the “Great Divergence.” Indeed,
although wealthy Americans
proportionally experienced greater asset losses during the stock
market crash, they managed
to monopolize 93% of all income gains in the aftermath of the
crisis (Saez 2012).
Yet, once again, these changes long preceded the financial crisis.
The “Big Zero” –
another apt nickname for the aughts – saw a sustained increase in
poverty, from 11.7% in
2000 to 15.1% in 2010. After 2.6 million people joined the ranks of
the American poor in
2010, the total number of people living under the poverty line
($22,314 for a family of four)
3
reached a fifty-year high at more than 46 million (Tavernise,
2011). Adding to this cohort the
“near poor” – people with income less than 50% above the poverty
line – brings the broad
number of poor people in the United States to 100 million people in
the United States – one in
three Americans (DeParle, Gebeloff & Tavernise, 2011). Under
more conventional OECD
measures – revenues less than 50% of the national median income –
the US poverty rate
reached 17.3% at the end of the aughts, a level higher than all
OECD countries except
Mexico, Israel and Chile (OECD, 2013).
Americans are not exempt from extreme poverty, as the number of
people living on two
dollars a day per person or less has doubled since 1996 to reach
1.5 million (Stiglitz, 2012,
16). Nor is employment a safeguard against poverty. According to
the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, the share of the “working poor” in the US workforce
rose from nearly 5% in 2007
to 7.2% in 20101.
Finally, the American middle class has not been immune to these
economic trends. As
mentioned earlier, the vast majority of Americans have reaped very
limited gains from the
dramatic wealth creation of the past three decades. The picture is
particularly bleak for male
workers, whose median personal income has barely changed in forty
years, and after the crisis
was back to its 1967 level ($33,000 in 2011). Women median income
fared much better, if
only to bridge the gender gap that left their revenues inferior to
men by one third ($21,000 in
2011). Since 1975, the median income of US households has increased
by a mere 11.6% - in
contrast with a 582-per-cent surge for the top 5% households (U.S.
Census Bureau, ibid., table
H-3 and H-6). US household median income more or less stagnated
after their peak in 1999,
before falling back to their 1995 level as a result of the
2007-2009 recession (ibid., table H-3).
In sum, regardless of whether the American economy was “back” in
the 1980s or “roaring” in
the 1990s, the past three decades saw a sustained increase in
wealth and income disparities
that singled out the United States as the land of inequality among
developed countries.
Labor market polarization What distinguishes the modern Gilded Age
from its nineteenth century precedent is a
phenomenon that has further divided the US economy and that is
described as labor market
polarization. This process can be broken down into three trends: 1)
rising demand for high-
wage, high-skill occupations; 2) a decline in mid-wage, mid-skill
employment; and 3) a
persistent increase in low-wage, low-skill jobs (Autor, Katz &
Kearney, 2006; Autor, 2010).
1 The BLS defines the working poor as people who spent at least 27
weeks working or looking for work annually and whose income falls
behind the poverty line (BLS, 2010).
4
high-skilled workers on the US labor market. According to
“skill-biased technological
change” theory, technological change has favored high-skilled over
lower-skilled labor, as
highly educated workers are more likely to capture productivity
gains resulting from
automation (Goldin & Katz, 2008). This trend has exacerbated
the dislocating effects of
globalization which also tends to reward high-skilled workers in
developed countries but to
punish lower-skilled labor. This does not mean that high-skilled
workers are guaranteed to
find employment. As Krugman notes, these structural changes cannot
be reduced to a blue
collar vs. white collar dichotomy. In an increasingly competitive
labor market, even educated
workers can be excluded from the labor market (Krugman,
2011).
Mid-skilled or mid-wage workers performing routine tasks have
suffered the most from
these trends. Manufacturing workers have been particularly hit by
the gradual opening of the
BRICS, which brought three billion workers to the ranks of the
global workforce and by the
great productivity gains brought by automation. The US
manufacturing sector experienced a
dramatic decline in employment during the first decade of the
twenty-first century, when the
US lost more than five million manufacturing jobs (Scott, 2010). In
the nontradable sector,
technological advances have reduced the need for routine tasks like
sales, office and
administrative occupations, thereby cutting the rolls of
mid-skilled workers. As economists
Jaimovitch and Siu have shown, the “hollowing out” of the middle
class occurs primarily
during and after recessions, when mid-wage occupations, unlike
low-wage and high-wage
jobs, are not only temporarily eliminated, but disappear after the
economy is revived. Thus,
since the early 1990s, the “jobless” recoveries have affected
disproportionately the US
middle-class (Jaimovitch & Siu, 2012; NELP 2012).
At first sight, these trends point to a dichotomy between the
losers and winners of
globalization in its broad sense, i.e. the increased
interdependence of national economies and
the new technologies undergirding this process. Yet, at the
aggregate level, not all workers are
subject to the pressures of international trade; nor are all
occupations dislocated by
technological advances. The recent trends of the US labor market
cannot be reduced to the
skill-upgrading process that the United States experienced from the
end of the nineteenth
century and throughout the twentieth century (Katz & Margo,
2013). At the bottom of the
labor market pyramid, demand for low-skilled workers – especially
in the food sector, retail
and employment services – has remained robust. This partly explains
why the share of low-
paid full-time workers in the United States was estimated at 25% in
2010. While the United
5
States was not alone in experiencing this phenomenon, it had one of
the largest cohort of low-
paid full-time workers among a sample of thirty-seven
countries2.
The statistics of the past decade provide a clear picture of this
three-tier phenomenon.
Between 2001 and 2012, the number of low-wage positions increased
by 8.7%, while higher-
wage occupations rose by 6.6%. Meanwhile, mid-wage jobs decreased
by 7.3% (Figure 1).
Figure 1
As mentioned earlier, the gradual transfer from mid-wage
occupations to low- and high-
wage jobs often occur during economic recessions. The crisis of
2007-2009 did not only take
a particularly heavy toll on the US middle class, but the “low-wage
recovery” that followed
failed to compensate for mid-skill job losses. The latter
represented 60% of total job losses
during the Great Recession but only 22% of jobs created during the
subsequent period of
economic recovery. By contrast, lower-wage occupations represented
21% of job losses
during the crisis but 58% of jobs created during the recovery
(NELP, 2012). The proportion of
higher-wage jobs destroyed and created remained more or less
constant over the same period
(Figure 2).
2 The International Labor Organization (ILO)’s 2010/2011 Global
Wage Report revealed that low-wage employment had increased in 25
out of 37 countries over the past fifteen years (ILO,
2010/2011).
6
Figure 2
In sum, the United States has experienced two forms of economic
polarization over the
past three decades. First, a small fraction of the US population
has concentrated an increasing
share of wealth and income gains since the late 1970s, pitting the
99% against the 1%.
Second, the labor market has also divided among three segments: a
mushrooming lower-class,
a hollowed-out middle class and a healthy higher class. The
political responses to these
dramatic structural transformations of the US economy have been
very contained, revealing a
sharp contrast between the dynamics of American capitalism and the
statics of US democracy.
Institutional resistance and political inertia
If the US economy has always stood for its flexibility, resilience
was built in the US
constitutional framework. The separation of powers, the bicameral
structure of the legislative
branch, heterogeneous electoral terms and the distribution between
delegated and powers
reserved to the states are as many proofs that the system of checks
and balances was
established to preclude usurpation of power. For the Founding
Fathers, the complexities of the
US institutional apparatus were also designed to protect the system
against the excesses of
“popular government” and its propensity to “instability, injustice
and confusion.” This is why
James Madison pleaded for a “republic,” based on representation and
delegation, instead of
what he described as “pure democracy” that would be inclined to a
“factious spirit” (Madison,
1787).
Although the Federalists succeeded in designing a robust
constitutional framework that
would survive the contingencies of history, they could not stem the
rise of political factions.
Ironically, the growing influence of political parties and interest
groups, far from fostering
7
political instability or “insurrection” as Madison envisioned, has
acted as a bottleneck for
political reform. The government’s ability to face up to these
external and internal pressures
has ebbed and flowed throughout US history. Yet, before we
undertake to examine the
dynamics of democratic change, we need to provide further evidence
about the current
affliction of the US political system.
To begin with, despite century-old efforts to regulate lobbying in
the United States3, the
influence of organized interests has gradually permeated all
branches and levels of
government. Elections are perhaps the most obvious entry point for
interest groups to make
their voice heard. The rising costs of both congressional and
presidential electoral campaigns
is indicative of the growing financial pressure to which political
candidates are exposed
(Figure 3). In less than fifteen years, the total cost of the
election cycle (including both
congressional and presidential races) has increased nearly
four-fold, from $1.6 billion in 1998
to $6.3 billion in 2012 (Open Secrets, n.d.)4.
If election outcomes cannot be reduced to campaign contributions5,
the rising tide of
money in politics means that political reforms are severely
constrained by the growing
presence of interest groups in Washington, DC. Over the past few
decades, the number of
registered lobbyists has increased exponentially. Between 2000 and
2005 alone, the number
of registered lobbyists doubled to reach 35,000 (Hamburger &
Wallsten, 2006, 105). A more
contested democracy is not inherently destructive. Yet, the
proliferation of interest groups has
a dual impact on the policy process. First, wealthy and powerful
citizens are more likely to
engage in interest groups politics that poor and vulnerable ones.
As Schattschneider noted
long before K Street became a household name, “the flaw in the
pluralist heaven is that the
heavenly chorus sings with a strong upper-class accent” (1960, 35).
Second, conservative
forces, in the strict sense of the term, tend to have the upper
hand in the pressure group system
as it is often easier to oppose a bill than to promote reform (Key,
1942). The Byzantine nature 3 One of the first official attempts to
regulate the influence of moneyed interests was the civil service
reform of 1883, which stipulated that government jobs should be
awarded on the basis of merit. 4 While lawmakers have long
attempted to circumscribe moneyed influence, the Supreme Court has
repeatedly blocked these efforts under the First Amendment. In
1976, Buckley v. Valeo overturned legislative reforms to restrict
campaign finance, arguing that limitations on independent spending
from citizens or groups of citizens constitute a violation of
freedom of speech. More recently, the Citizens United vs. Federal
Election Commission (2010) upheld this broad interpretation of
First Amendment rights, by declaring that corporations and unions
have the right to spend unlimited funds on campaign advertisements,
under the elusive condition that they do not “coordinate” with
political candidates. For a discussion, see de Chantal (2012). 5
Admittedly, both congressional and presidential elections in 2012
revealed that electoral outcomes are not determined by outside
spending. Indeed, many political candidates that were outspent by
the notorious “Super- PACs” (Political Action Committees) –
independent political groups funding campaigns in the post-Citizens
United era – managed to win elections: Barack Obama being only the
most prominent example that Super PACs do not necessarily carry the
day. Overall, however, Obama managed to raise more money than his
Republican contender: 716 million against 446 million dollars.
(Opensecrets.org, n.d. B).
8
of the Dodd-Frank financial reform (2010) and Obamacare (2010), the
failure of climate
change reform during Obama’s first term, along with the collapse of
gun control legislation
in early 2013 are only a few examples of the grinding forces at
play in the interest group
power structure.
The polarization of the American political sphere has compounded
the paralysis of the
political system. Over the past two decades, the gap between the
Republican and the
Democratic parties has considerably widened. The origins of this
phenomenon can be traced
to the contested legacy of the 1960s and 1970s. The current
syndrome of hyperpartisanship
developed in three phases: 1) the mobilizing effects of the Clinton
presidency on the
Republican Party and the bitter conflicts that opposed the two
parties in the 1990s; 2) the
divisive leadership of the Bush administration in both domestic and
foreign policy spheres; 3)
the partisan battles that culminated in the aftermath of the
financial crisis and which became
ever more prominent after Republicans recaptured the House of
Representatives in 2010.
Perhaps the greatest evidence of the unbridgeable chasm between
political parties is the
series of protracted budgetary debates – from the debt ceiling
crisis to the fiscal cliff – that
have hampered political action amidst the greatest economic
recession since the Great
Depression. From a longer perspective, another measure of political
polarization is the
increasing use of the filibuster procedure to block any reform in
the Senate. Figure 4 provides
a brief overview of the history of the filibuster by showing the
evolution of “cloture” motions,
the procedure used to break a filibuster. This graph reveals a
constant progression from the
late 1960s until now. The Obama presidency stands out for the
dramatic increase of
congressional obstruction.
Some political analysts interpret hyperpartisanship as the
reflection of the “disappearing
center” in the electorate, arguing that over the past four decades,
Americans have gradually
moved closer to the extremes of the ideological spectrum. For
Abramowitz, political
polarization is a bottom-up process, an unfortunate byproduct of
the electoral system. At first
sight, election results tend to corroborate this scenario
(Abramowitz, 2010). In 2012,
American voters were almost equally split (51.1% v. 47.2%) over the
two main presidential
contenders.
Yet, in reality, this picture is skewed in several respects. First,
ideological identification
and party affiliation do not always guarantee political consistency
across issues (Converse,
1962). Additionally, on a range of socio-economic and cultural
issues, Americans are
generally more moderate than bitter partisan battles might suggest
(Bartels, 2008). What’s
more, the fact that American voters may be divided on certain
issues like abortion or gay
marriage does not mean that these questions are among their
political priorities. Finally, the
demands of marginal segments of the population are not always
reflected in partisan debates
given their lower participation in the policy process (Minnite
& Piven, 2012). Thus, far from
the product of successful representation as Abramowitz suggests,
polarization is closer to a
“breakdown” of the electoral-representative system (Fiorina and
Abrams, 2009). The crisis of
10
America’s contested democracy is perhaps best illustrated by the
historically low approval
ratings of Congress over the past few years, which reached 13% in
March 20136. And if
political scientists may disagree on the roots of
hyperpartisanship, they at least agree on the
perils of political inaction and the need to purge the American
republic.
Social change in theory and practice The previous sections
demonstrated the increasing pressure built up in the American
political economic regime as a result of the dual process of
economic and political
polarization. How long can the “disconnect” between the disruptive
dynamics of capitalism
and the statics of American democracy persist? What political
forces could trigger a
reconfiguration of America’s contemporary political economic
regime7 and remap the
connections within the state-market-society triptych? The
theoretical foundations of social
change have received considerable attention among historians,
sociologists and political
scientists alike. As regards the history of American democracy,
theories of social change can
be divided into two main strands: electoral realignments and social
movement mobilization.
Critical elections and electoral realignments
Within the first literature, political scientists have claimed that
US history is divided into
partisan regimes, i.e. electoral coalitions aggregating different
constituencies for a durable
period (Key, 1955; Schattschneider, 1960; Burnham, 1970)8. Regime
change occurs through
“critical elections” which stand out historically for the intensity
of electoral participation and
the profound readjustments in the power structure (Key, 1955, 4).
For Burnham, these critical
realignments are inevitable and serve as a safety valve once
pressure has built up and the
political system is ready to explode: The periodic rhythm of
American electoral politics, the cycle of oscillation between the
normal and the disruptive, corresponds precisely to the existence
of largely unfettered developmental change in the socioeconomic
system and its absence in the country’s political institutions
(81).
6 This is based on Gallup’s question “Do you approve or disapprove
of the way Congress is handling its job?” See
http://www.gallup.com/poll/161210/congress-approval-stagnant-low-level.aspx
7 Eisner defines a political economic regime as a “historically
specific configuration of policies and institutions which
structures the relationship between social interests, the state and
economic actors in multiple sectors of the economy” (2011, 30). 8
The first reference to critical elections appeared with V.O. Key
(1955) before being elaborated by Schattschneider (1960), Burnham
(1970), Sundquist (1973).
11
The dialectic between economic change and political inertia is
therefore at the center of
critical realignment theory. Despite its methodological
weaknesses9, theories of partisan
regimes have remained appealing in at least two respects: first,
because they capture the
dialectic of change and continuity under a parsimonious, albeit
imperfect model; and second,
because they allow to bridge the gap between socioeconomic and
political spheres. This
explains why it has influenced countless studies of American
politics, from classic studies of
presidential politics (Skowronek, 1997) to recent analyses of
American political economy
(Krugman, 2007; Eisner, 2011).
In the aftermath of the 2008 election, American political analysts
pondered whether
Barack Obama’s electoral coalition constituted a new “partisan
regime”. Indeed, the state of
the union seemed like a syndrome checklist for the harbingers of
critical elections listed in
Burnham’s classic study of critical elections: abnormal stress in
the economy, new political
demands, ideological polarization and high levels of political
participation. In addition, the
Democratic Party’s leading edge over the GOP among young and urban
voters, ethnic
minorities, non-believers and to a lesser extent, women, raised
debates over the advent of a
durable electoral shift that would confine the GOP to a dwindling
segment of the population.
Yet, as often, history proved to be less orderly than political
scientists would have it. To
begin with, while traditional Democratic constituencies were
significantly mobilized in the
2008 elections, voting patterns did not provide a clear electoral
realignment or “dealignment”
(Mayhew, 2000). Second, the Democrats’ humiliating defeat in the
2010 mid-term elections
(“shellacking”) seemed to question the very idea of a durable
partisan regime. Third, the
“change we can believe in” fell short of a paradigm shift that
would address the structural
socio-economic transformations described earlier. Admittedly, the
stimulus package
(American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009), healthcare reform
(Affordable Care Act
of 2010) and financial regulation (Dodd-Frank Act of 2010) did mark
a return to greater
government intervention in the economy. However significant, this
brief interlude of
Byzantine reforms failed to durably challenge the dual polarization
of politics and economics
in the United States. Perhaps the 2008 elections were not as
historic as one might have
expected; perhaps the President, his rhetorical skills
notwithstanding, did not detain the
“power the persuade” that would allow him to overcome institutional
obstacles; or it might be
9 Critical election theory has been dissected and rebuked on both
methodological and empirical grounds. American political scientists
have long debated which elections constitute the true electoral
landmarks that fit with this cyclical pattern, debating e.g.
whether the 1928 election was more “critical” than 1932, or what
year marked the end of the New Deal regime. For a discussion, see
Mayhew (2000).
12
that the critical election that will truly transform American
politics is yet to come (Neustadt,
1990).
Social disruption as historical agent An alternative approach to US
history has further questioned the ability of the US
electoral system to adapt to new challenges. One strand of
historical sociology interprets
radicalism and social movement mobilization as the real engines of
social reform. Under this
scenario, the potential for change lies not in electoral behavior
and critical elections but in
social disruption, i.e. people’s determination to “challenge
authority” and redefine the
contours of democracy (Piven, 2006; Aronowitz, 1996). In the
parlance of social movement
theorists, “cycles of contention” are often prerequisites for
social change. Thus, American
democracy was born out of people’s struggle against colonial
oppression; the creation of the
US welfare state, far from being imposed by political elites, was
their inevitable response to
the mass protests of the 1930s; and the civil rights and health
care reforms of the 1960s were
once again propelled by grassroots movements (Piven, 2006; Kazin,
2011).
Today, the decline of radicalism is therefore the cause of
political inertia in the face of
rampant social inequality. Sociologists have interpreted the
tribulations of the left as the result
of a host of internal and external challenges, among which the
early political victories of the
movement and its inability to sustain mobilization, internecine
conflicts between different
ideological factions as well as repression from political and
economic elites (Domhoff, 1990;
Kazin, 2011). And yet, every time a progressive movement emerges,
be it the Seattle protests
or Occupy Wall Street, scholars are quick to predict the downfall
of the neoliberal regime.
And yet, if contentious action has often been a prerequisite for
social change, it cannot be
understood as inherently conducive to democratic reform. First,
disruptive power is not
confined to progressive causes. The religious right and the Tea
Party are also bona fide protest
movements that cannot be erased from US history. Second, protest
movements are more
likely to fail than to shatter the power structure. Worse, they may
even trigger a conservative
counteroffensive that may roll back earlier achievements – as the
past three decades have
shown. Thus, prospects for social change may not lie in protest
movements per se as much as
in their relationship with the party system, what Piven describes
as “dissensus politics”:
By raising new and divisive issues, movements galvanize groups of
voters, some in support, others in opposition. In other words,
protest movements threaten to cleave the majority coalitions that
politicians assiduously try to hold together. It is in order to
avoid the ensuing defections, or to win back defectors, that
politicians initiate new public
13
policies. The prospect or reality of voter dissensus is the main
source of movement influence on public policy (2006, 104).
This postulate has two implications. First, paradoxically, despite
the rigidities built in the
American democracy and the need to resort to social disruption to
achieve any significant
reform, the solutions to America’s political or socio-economic
illnesses remain within the
framework of the electoral-representative system. As Kazin notes,
political radicals made a
big difference in American history when they were “junior partners
in a coalition driven by
establishment reformers” (2001, xiv). This does not mean that all
roads lead to co-option.
Instead, it shows that the dynamics of change often transcend
conventional dichotomies
between radical and reformist goals, between grassroots movements
and top-down reforms.
Second, theories of electoral realignments and social disruption
need not be mutually
exclusive. In a democratic system – however rigid or imperfect – a
movement’s strength lies
in its signifying power, i.e. its ability to make its political
claims relevant to the electorate.
This power is double-edged insofar as it can fracture electoral
alignments to the benefit or to
the detriment of a protest movement. The current political inertia
may not be due to the lack
of social disruption in American politics, but to the inability of
protest movements to threaten
the two-party system enough to trigger electoral
realignments.
The new cycle of contention Judged by the number of labor reforms
over the past two decades, the “hollowing out” of
the middle class remains, at best, a good catchphrase for electoral
campaigns. Yet beyond the
scope of national elections, labor market polarization has been at
the center of political
protests for more than two decades. As the following examples of
social disruption will show,
American democracy has remained highly contested from both inside
and outside the
electoral-representative system.
Long before the gloomy “lost decade”, American workers began to
mobilize against what
they rightly perceived as the decline of the middle class under the
pressure of globalization.
The spark that lit the fire was the debates surrounding the North
American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA), designed to liberalize trade and investment on
the North American
continent. Fears of offshoring and environmental dumping in Mexico
– the famous “race to
the bottom” of globalization – prompted labor unions,
environmentalists and consumer
advocates to join forces against NAFTA, which long remained the
symbol of everything that
14
was wrong about corporate globalization. While the alterglobalist
movement10 in the United
States is often reduced to the Seattle protests of 1999, it
combined both outside- and inside-
the-Beltway tactics for more than a decade in an attempt to tamper
the dislocating effects of
globalization on the US labor market. Often forgotten is how close
this movement came to
shatter the two-party system in the early 1990s. Capitalizing on
the politics of NAFTA
unveiled by the labor-environmentalism or “blue-green” alliance,
third-party candidate Ross
Perot led a fierce populist campaign11. In the end, he obtained 19%
of the suffrage, the highest
performance of a third-party candidate since Theodore Roosevelt’s
third-party candidacy in
1912.
Perot’s electoral performance represented a first reaction to the
dislocating effects of labor
market polarization, a prime example of dissensus politics which
attested to the impact social
mobilization could have on the electoral sphere12. Indeed,
throughout the nineties, the
Democratic Party struggled to find a common voice on US trade
policy. Despite Bill Clinton’s
efforts to promote a form “globalization with a human face,” his
party was – and remains –
deeply divided between “fair traders” and “free traders”. This
internal divide was conspicuous
when Clinton failed to obtain fast track authority to renew his
trade-liberalizing agenda,
largely because of the mobilization of labor, environmental and
consumer organizations. It
was also at play in the streets of Seattle in 1999, or in
Washington the following year, when
Clinton strove to push for the permanent normalization of US-trade
relations with China. Yet,
despite the disruptive candidacies of Ross Perot in 1992 and Ralph
Nader in 200013, the
alterglobalist movement of the 1990s did not manage to shift labor
market polarization and
the decline of the middle class to the center of American
politics.
Another sign of the contentious politics of globalization was the
anti-sweatshop
campaigns that were launched on US campuses in the late 1990s.
Inspired by the battles of
global justice advocates, student activists throughout the country
mobilized to demand that
university licensees produce their clothes and other products under
decent working conditions
10 Although less common than “antiglobalization,” this term, as
well as the “global justice movement” more accurately reflect the
broad range of ideological perspectives converging under the
umbrella movement advocating that “another world is possible.” 11
He was credited with no less than 39% a few months before the 1992
presidential election (McCann, Rapoport & Stone, 1999, 1).
Admittedly, Perot only represented the nationalist fringe of the
“umbrella” antiglobalization movement, as opposed to more
progressive groups like Public Citizen or the Sierra Club. Yet, as
mentioned earlier, the American left has no monopoly over
disruptive power. 12 For an overview of the antiglobalization
movement in the United States, see Velut (2010). 13 The case of
Ralph Nader can also be interpreted as a consequence of these
tensions within the Democratic Party. The alleged “spoiler” of Al
Gore’s election had indeed been at the center of the alterglobalist
movement through the alliance-building efforts of Public Citizen.
His anti-corporate and anti-establishment platform echoed many
claims defended by Ross Perot.
15
and allow independent monitoring of their subcontractors. Although
anti-sweatshop
campaigns did not explicitly fight against labor market
polarization, they were largely
influenced by labor unions’ vehement opposition to trade
liberalization without enforceable
labor standards. Additionally, the grassroots dimension of the
anti-sweatshop crusade was
also a reflection of the inability of the federal government to
implement labor reforms in the
face of structural economic transformations. Indeed, within a few
years, the model of
“sweatfree communities”14 that emerged at Duke University was
adopted by 180 universities,
before spreading to 118 school districts, 15 counties, 40 cities
and 9 states15.
A very similar illustration of these bottom-up processes was the
rise of living wage
campaigns in the mid-nineties. This time, social mobilization
targeted the lower-class segment
of the domestic labor market, i.e. the vibrant working class at the
bottom of the income
pyramid. In 1994, a coalition of religious and labor activists in
Baltimore mobilized on behalf
of the working poor to demand a living wage for all workers. This
grassroots campaign led to
a city ordinance that would require city contractors to pay a wage
high enough to keep a
family above the poverty line. Soon after, social activists
throughout the country emulated the
Baltimore campaign to win living wage ordinances in more than 120
localities16. Here again,
advocacy efforts were a local, grassroots response to political
inertia in Washington, DC. By
promoting local instead of national reforms, living wage activists
reenacted the bottom-up,
disruptive forms of political participation of the progressive era
and the New Deal, efforts
which culminated with the creation of the federal minimum
wage.
Unlike alterglobalist advocacy, living wage campaigns did not
threaten the establishment
to the extent that it was partly co-opted by the Democratic Party.
During the 2008 election,
Barack Obama capitalized on this grassroots power through the
organizing efforts of the
Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and
the Service
Employees International Union (SEIU). In early 2013, the president
renewed his 2008 pledge
to raise the minimum wage from $ 7.25 to $9 an hour so as to defend
the “true engine of
America’s economic growth – a rising, thriving middle-class”
(Obama, 2013). Whether or not
this pledge was sincere, the Democrats’ plan to raise the minimum
will likely go unheeded in
the face of Republican opposition in Congress.
14 Sweatfree communities are states, cities or counties that have
adopted strict policies restricting public procurement to goods
produced in decent working conditions. 15 The list is available on
http://www.sweatfree.org/ 16 For more detail on living wage
campaigns, see Luce (2002) and Levi, Olson & Steinman
(2003).
16
A final example of the bottom-up pressure building up in American
democracy was the
upsurge of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) in the fall of 2011. This
movement was perhaps the
clearest example of the effects of political inertia and economic
polarization on social
movement mobilization. From a political standpoint, it reflected
the disillusions of the
American left with the two-party system, and most specifically with
Barack Obama, who had
channeled some of this disruptive power in his 2008 grassroots
campaign. On the economic
level, “We are the 99%” was a rebellious cry against social
inequality in America. By its very
nature, OWS was quintessentially a movement against labor market
polarization. Indeed,
beyond widely discussed statistics on wealth and income
disparities, the demographics of
Occupiers captured the anxiety stemming from the ruthless nature of
the labor market.
Disproportionately represented among protesters were young and
educated citizens17 who, in
the aftermath of the crisis had trouble finding job opportunities.
These labor trends were
certainly due to the devastating socio-economic effects of the
Great Recession. Yet, as
mentioned earlier, they reflected the increasing competition at the
top of the skill pyramid.
Perhaps what distinguished OWS from other disruptive forms of
political participation
was its refusal to engage with party politics. This rejection of
the two-party system had less to
do with the supposedly ill-focused agenda of the movement than with
its raison d’être as a
prefigurative form of democracy challenging America’s political
establishment. Or to be more
specific, OWS’s ambivalence towards the electoral system reflected
the internecine tensions
between progressive reformers and anarchists. The latter had a
strong influence on the
trajectory of the movement from its origins and kept the movement
away from reformist
goals. This did not prevent OWS from altering the policy sphere.
Not only did the “American
Fall” of 2011 changed the terms of the debate on social inequality
in America, but various
activist networks throughout the nation survived along after police
evictions and redirected
their energy toward other causes, the most prominent of which were
the relief efforts
undertaken by “Occupy Sandy” in the aftermath of the hurricane.
Yet, as of 2013, the political
legacy of the Occupy movement is incommensurate with the dramatic
hopes raised in the
early days of the encampment in Zucotti Park. This failure was
largely due to the movement’s
inability to challenge the two-party system.
17 According to one study, 37% of participants in one demonstration
organized by OWS were under 30 years old. 76% of them held a
Bachelar’s degree (Milkman, Luce & Lewis, 2012).
17
Conclusion What should be made of this series of contentious
actions? Without historical distance,
these isolated eruptions of discontent may seem like the death
throes of American democracy.
Yet, in effect, these examples of social disruption are not more
scattered than the movements
of industrial workers, agrarians, and women activists that took
place at the end of the 19th
century and were later reconstructed as the umbrella movement of
progressivism. The
challenge of studying history in the making is to decipher cultural
and political hieroglyphics
to anticipate structural change, to distinguish what Braudel calls
“surface disturbances” from
the real “anomalies” of a stalled democratic process that could
foreshadow a paradigm shift
(1976; Kuhn, 1996).
The examples of social mobilization discussed above are the direct
product of the
combined forces of economic and political polarization. They are
reminders of the
tremendous pressure that has built in the American political system
over the past decades.
One obvious lesson from these progressive movements is that
disruptive action is not
inherently conducive to social change. While recent progressive
campaigns did achieve
results at the local level and/or changed the terms of the debates
on globalization, employment
and inequality, they did not fundamentally challenge the political
status quo. The reasons for
their limited results partly lies in their inability to rally a
movement broad enough to disrupt
electoral alignments. By lending its support to the controversial
figure of Ross Perot, the
alterglobalist movement came close to shatter the two-party system.
Antisweatshop and living
wage campaigns were successful at the local level, yet did not
truly connect with national
politics beyond the election 2008. The Occupy movement was perhaps
the most disconnected
from electoral politics, whether at the local or national levels,
which largely explains why its
political legacy remains so elusive.
The dynamics of social change needs not be reduced to dichotomies
between radical and
reformist, electoral processes and disruptive action. The question
is not whether Martin
Luther King or Lyndon Johnson was the real force behind the civil
rights reforms. History has
shown that the key to social change resides in the interconnection
between outsiders and
insiders. Activists need the support of political elites, as
politicians need popular support to
undertake a transformative agenda. Co-optation is not a one-way
street. With enough
leverage, movements can co-opt political elites to join their
causes. If the last twenty years are
any indication, social mobilization against economic and political
polarization is likely to re-
emerge under new forms. Whether the next progressive movement
triggers radical reforms,
18
political indifference or an aggressive backlash will, for better
or worse, depend on its ability
to bridge the gap between disruptive action and electoral
politics.
References cited
and American Democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press. Alvaredo,
Facundo, Tony Atkinson, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. (2013).
“World
Top Incomes Database.” Retrieved May 2013 from http://topincomes.g-
mond.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/#Home
Aronowitz, Stanley. The Death and Rebirth of American Radicalism.
New York: Routledge, 1996.
Autor, David H. (2010). “The Polarization of Job Opportunities in
the U.S. Labor Market,” Center for American Progress and The
Hamilton Project, April. Retrieved May 2013 from
http://economics.mit.edu/files/5554
Autor, David H., Lawrence F. Katz, & Melissa S. Kearney.
(2006). “The Polarization of the U.S. Labor Market,” American
Economic Review 96: 18994.
Bartels, Larry M. (2008). Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy
of the New Gilded Age. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Braudel, Fernand. (1976). The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean
World in the Age of Philip II. New York: Harper & Row.
Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2012). “A Profile of the Working Poor,
2010.” Report 1035. Retrieved May 2013 from
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2010.pdf
Burnham, Walter D. (1970). Critical Elections and the Mainspring of
American Politics. New York: W.W. Norton.
Converse, Philip E. (1962). The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass
Publics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.
De Chantal, François. (2012). “L’impact de Citizens United dans la
campagne de 2012,” Cercles 27, 101-115. Retrieved May 2013 from
http://www.cercles.com/n27/dechantal.pdf
DeParle, Jason, Robert Gebeloff & Sabrina Tavernise. (2011).
“Older, Suburban and Struggling, ‘Near Poor’ Startle the Census,”
The New York Times, November 18. Retrieved May 2013 from
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/19/us/census-measures-those-not-quite-in-
poverty-but-struggling.html
Domhoff, G. William. (1990). The Power Elite and the State. How
Policy is Made in America. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Eisner, Marc A. The American Political Economy. Institutional
Evolution of Market and State. New York/London: Routledge.
Fiorina, Morris P. & Samuel J. Abrams. (2009). Disconnect: The
Breakdown of Representation in American Politics. Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press.
Goldin, Claudia & Lawrence F. Katz. (2008). The Race between
Education and
Technology.Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Hamburger, Tom & Peter Wallsten (2006). One Party Country. The Republican Plan
Dominance in the 21st Century. Hoboken John Wiley & Sons.
International Labor Organization (20102011). “Global Wage Report.” Retrieved May
2013 from http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/---
publ/documents/publication/wcms_145265.pdf
Jaimovich, Nir & Henry E. Siu (2012). “The Trend is the Cycle: Job Polarization and Jobless
Recoveries,” NBER Working Paper 18334.
19
Katz, Lawrence F. & Robert A. Margo. (2013). “Technical Change and the Relative
Demand for Skilled Labor: The United States in Historical Perspective,” NBER Working Paper
18752.
Kazin, Michael. (2011). American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf.
Key, V. O. (1942). Politics, Parties and Pressure Groups. New York:
Thomas Y. Crowell.
Key, V.O. (1955), “A Theory of Critical Elections,” The Journal of
Politics 17 (1), 3-18. Klein, Ezra. (2012. “The History of the
Filibuster, in One Graph,” The Washington Post,
Wonkblog, May 15. Retrieved May 2013 from
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/the-history-of-the-filibuster-in-one-
graph/2012/05/15/gIQAVHf0RU_blog.html
Krugman, Paul. (2007). The Conscience of a Liberal. New York: W. W.
Norton & Co. Krugman, Paul. (2012). “Dollars and Degrees,” The
New York Times, March 6. Retrieved
May 2013 from
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/opinion/07krugman.html Kuhn,
Thomas S. (1996). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago:
University of
Chicago Press. Levi, Margaret, David J. Olson & Erich Steinman.
(2003). “Living Wage Campaigns &
Laws,” WorkingUSA 6 (3): 111-132 (Winter). Luce, Stephanie. (2002).
“The Full Fruits of Our Labor: The Rebirth of the Living Wage
Movement,” Labor History 43 (2): 401-409. McCann, J. A., Ronald B.
Rapoport, and Walter J. Stone. (1999). “Heeding the Call: An
Assessment of Mobilization into H. Ross Perot's 1992 Presidential
Campaign,” American Journal of Political Science, 43(1), 1-28.
Madison, James. (1787). “The
Federalist Papers: No. 10,” The Avalon Project. Retrieved May 2013
from http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp
Mayhew, David. R. (2000). “Electoral Realignments,” Annual Review
of Political Science 3: 449-474.
Milkman, Ruth, Stephanie Luce, & Penny Lewis. Changing the
Subject: A Bottom-Up Account of Occupy Wall Street in New York
City. 29 Jan. 2013. Retrieved June 2013 from
http://sps.cuny.edu/filestore/1/5/7/1_a05051d2117901d/1571_92f562221b8041e.pdf
Minnite, Lorraine C. & Frances F. Piven. (2012). “The Other
Campaign. Who Gets to Vote?”, New Labor Forum 21 (2): 35-40
(Spring).
National Employment Law Project. (2012). “The Low-Wage Recovery and
Growing Inequality,” Data Brief, August. Retrieved May 2013 from
http://nelp.3cdn.net/8ee4a46a37c86939c0_qjm6bkhe0.pdf
Neustadt, Richard. (1990). Presidential Power and the Modern
Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan.
New York: Maxwell Macmillan.
Obama, Barack (2013). “State of the Union Address,” Washington, DC,
February 12. Retrieved May 2013 from
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/02/13/president-obamas-
2013-state-union
Open Secrets. (n.d.). “The Money Behind the Elections.” Retrieved
May 2013 from www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture
Open Secrets. (n.d. B). “2012 Presidential Race.” Retrieved May
2013 from http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. (2013). OECD
Statistics. “Income distribution and poverty.” Retrieved May 2013
from http://stats.oecd.org/
Piven, Frances F. (2006). Challenging Authority: How Ordinary
People Change America. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
20
Saez, Emmanuel. (2012). “Striking It Richer: The Evolution of Top
Incomes in the United States (Updated with 2009 and 2010
Estimates).” Retrieved May 2013 from
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2010.pdf
Scott, Robert. (2010). “Rising China Trade Deficit Will Cost
One-Half Million U.S. Jobs in 2010,” Economic Policy Institute,
Issue Brief 283, September 20. Retrieved May 2013 from
http://www.epi.org/page/-/pdf/ib283.pdf
Schattschneider, E. E. (1960). The Semi-Sovereign People. A
Realist's View of Democracy in America. New York / Chicago / San
Francisco: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Skowronek, Stephen. (1997). The Politics Presidents Make:
Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton. Cambridge: The Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press.
Stiglitz, Joseph. (2012). The Price of Inequality: How Today’s
Divided Society Endangers Our Future. New York: W. W. Norton &
Co.
Sundquist, James L. (1973). Dynamics of the Party System. Alignment
and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States.
Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.
Tavernise, Sabrina. (2011). “NYT, “Soaring Poverty Casts Spotlight
on ‘Lost Decade,’” The New York Times, September 13. Retrieved May
2013 from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/us/14census.html
U.S. Census Bureau. (n.d.), “U.S. Census Bureau Income Report,”
table 5. Retrieved May 2013 from
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/people/