Noam Lupu – författare

Voting behavior is informed by the experience of advanced democracies, yet the electoral context in developing democracies is significantly different. Civil society is often weak, poverty and inequality high, political parties ephemeral and attachments to them weak, corruption rampant, and clientelism widespread. Voting decisions in developing democracies follow similar logics to those in advanced democracies in that voters base their choices on group affiliation, issue positions, valence considerations, and campaign persuasion. Yet developing democracies differ in the weight citizens assign to these considerations. Where few social identity groups are politically salient and partisan attachments are sparse, voters may place more weight on issue voting. Where issues are largely absent from political discourse, valence considerations and campaign effects play a larger role. Campaigns and Voters in Developing Democracies develops a theoretical framework to specify why voter behavior differs across contexts.

Why the underrepresentation of the working class in political office is an inevitable side effect of electoral democracy itselfWhy do so few working-class people go on to hold elected office? In the average democracy, working-class jobs make up about seventy percent of occupations, but only two percent of national legislators come from working-class jobs. In Keeping Workers Off the Ballot, Nicholas Carnes and Noam Lupu show that this disparity is not because working-class people are less appealing to voters, less interested in running, or less qualified. And the problem isn’t limited to certain countries, campaign finance regimes, or electoral systems. Carnes and Lupu argue that it is the nature of elections themselves that keep workers off our ballots and out of office.Carnes and Lupu point to two inherent features of elections that discourage working-class candidates throughout democracies across the globe. Running for office naturally involves taking on significant personal burdens—giving up time, energy, and certainty about the future—that are prohibitive to people in lower-wage, labor-intensive, and more precarious occupations such as manual laborer, retail clerk, and home health aide. Party gatekeepers in turn have strategic incentives to favor potential candidates who can more easily meet the demands of running, and as a result, they pass over qualified working-class people. Carnes and Lupu argue that workers won’t have a seat at the table in our political system unless parties form institutionalized partnerships with strong worker organizations or democracies embrace alternative forms of leadership selection that directly harness the perspectives of ordinary citizens.

Why the underrepresentation of the working class in political office is an inevitable side effect of electoral democracy itselfWhy do so few working-class people go on to hold elected office? In the average democracy, working-class jobs make up about seventy percent of occupations, but only two percent of national legislators come from working-class jobs. In Keeping Workers Off the Ballot, Nicholas Carnes and Noam Lupu show that this disparity is not because working-class people are less appealing to voters, less interested in running, or less qualified. And the problem isn’t limited to certain countries, campaign finance regimes, or electoral systems. Carnes and Lupu argue that it is the nature of elections themselves that keep workers off our ballots and out of office.Carnes and Lupu point to two inherent features of elections that discourage working-class candidates throughout democracies across the globe. Running for office naturally involves taking on significant personal burdens—giving up time, energy, and certainty about the future—that are prohibitive to people in lower-wage, labor-intensive, and more precarious occupations such as manual laborer, retail clerk, and home health aide. Party gatekeepers in turn have strategic incentives to favor potential candidates who can more easily meet the demands of running, and as a result, they pass over qualified working-class people. Carnes and Lupu argue that workers won’t have a seat at the table in our political system unless parties form institutionalized partnerships with strong worker organizations or democracies embrace alternative forms of leadership selection that directly harness the perspectives of ordinary citizens.

While economic inequality has risen in every affluent democracy in North America and Western Europe, the last three decades have also been characterized by falling or stagnating levels of state-led economic redistribution. Why have democratically accountable governments not done more to distribute top-income shares to citizens with low- and middle-income? Unequal Democracies offers answers to this question, bringing together contributions that focus on voters and their demands for redistribution with contributions on elites and unequal representation that is biased against less-affluent citizens. While large and growing bodies of research have developed around each of these perspectives, this volume brings them into rare dialogue. Chapters also incorporate analyses that center exclusively on the United States and those that examine a broader set of advanced democracies to explore the uniqueness of the American case and its contribution to comparative perspectives. This book is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

While economic inequality has risen in every affluent democracy in North America and Western Europe, the last three decades have also been characterized by falling or stagnating levels of state-led economic redistribution. Why have democratically accountable governments not done more to distribute top-income shares to citizens with low- and middle-income? Unequal Democracies offers answers to this question, bringing together contributions that focus on voters and their demands for redistribution with contributions on elites and unequal representation that is biased against less-affluent citizens. While large and growing bodies of research have developed around each of these perspectives, this volume brings them into rare dialogue. Chapters also incorporate analyses that center exclusively on the United States and those that examine a broader set of advanced democracies to explore the uniqueness of the American case and its contribution to comparative perspectives. This book is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Why have so many established political parties across Latin America collapsed in recent years? Party Brands in Crisis offers an explanation that highlights the effect of elite actions on voter behavior. During the 1980s and 1990s, political elites across the region implemented policies inconsistent with the traditional positions of their party, provoked internal party conflicts, and formed strange-bedfellow alliances with traditional rivals. These actions diluted party brands and eroded voter attachment. Without the assured support of a partisan base, parties became more susceptible to short-term retrospective voting, and voters without party attachments deserted incumbent parties when they performed poorly. Party Brands in Crisis offers the first general explanation of party breakdown in Latin America, reinforcing the interaction between elite behavior and mass attitudes.