Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewWinner of the 2016 Best Book Award, Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association "Levine provides evidence that financially anxious people respond to their stress not by grouping together for action but by becoming less generous with their checkbooks and personal time."--Pacific Standard "This provocative volume identifies the 'self-undermining' political rhetoric inherent in the discussion of important economic issues as the driving reason contemporary working-and middle-class Americans have not produced political movements corresponding to the scale of the financial challenges they face... The research presented here is an interesting, well-defended addition to the literature on the nature of collective political action."--Choice "Powerful and highly accessible... Levine has succeeded in shining a light on the disconcerting reality that many citizens abstain from getting involved in addressing the very issues that deeply affect and permeate their everyday lives."--John V. Kane and Jason Barabas, Journal of Politics
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii 1 Financial Threats and Self-Undermining Rhetoric 1 2 Do Americans View Financial Threats as Important Political Issues? 35 3 Who Mobilizes? 81 4 Why Rhetoric about Economic Insecurity Can Be Self-Undermining 107 5 How People Respond to Participation Requests 117 6 Political Voice across Issues 161 7 Self-Undermining Rhetoric in the Past and Present 193 Appendix A: Multivariate Models from Chapter 2 213 Appendix B: Analysis of the Washington D.C., Interest-Group Community 217 Appendix C: Multivariate Models from Chapter 5 227 Appendix D: Noncompliance in the ACSCAN Donation Experiment 230 Appendix E: Materials for Experiments in Chapter 5 233 Appendix F: Multivariate Models from Chapter 6 243 Appendix G: Details on Variable Coding for Multivariate Models throughout the Book 249 Notes 253 Bibliography 283 Index 297
