This book develops an integrated approach to understanding the American economy and national elections. Economic policy is generally seen as the result of a compromise between the President and Congress. Because Democrats and Republicans usually maintain polarized preferences on policy, middle-of-the-road voters seek to balance the President by reinforcing in Congress the party not holding the White House. This balancing leads, always, to relatively...

As events highlight deep divisions in attitudes between America and Europe, this is a very timely study of different approaches to the problems of domestic inequality and poverty. Based on careful and systematic analysis of national data, the authors describe just how different the two continents are in the level of their State engagement in the redistribution of income. They go through various possible economic explanations for the difference, including...