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The article explores on the rise of the U.S. as the world's dominant economy to the geographic advantages. Topics mentioned include the increase of the American tariff barriers since the civil war, the country's ability to export manufactured goods and to access inexpensive raw materials and the importance of power politics during capitalism or social imperialism.

The conventional wisdom is that class divisions once prevailed but in recent decades have gradually declined. Indeed, many now suggest that the working class has been voting Republican since the 1980s. The historical evidence on voting in presidential elections does not indicate that there was a decline since the 1950s. If anything, the well-off and more educated have moved somewhat more Democratic, lessening class divisions. There has, however, been a change since the 2008 election, with the working class - whether only whites or all - moving away from the Democrats. This may not mean a decline of the working class voting their interests. It may be that the economic recovery of recent years has done little to help the working class and they have taken a gamble that a businessman will help their job prospects more. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have long been interested in examining how race and class each shape citizens' political attitudes. To date, however, there have been few efforts to untangle how race and class intersect to shape Americans' political identities and attitudes about public policies. We argue that it is important to investigate attitudes inter-sectionally. Pooling the 2012 and 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Studies to obtain large numbers of observations of non-whites and individuals with high incomes, we observe patterns of partisan identity, beliefs about racial prejudice, and attitudes about public policies. Our results suggest that race and class intersect in different ways for different groups in society. Increasing income erodes differences in attitudes between Latinos and whites, but has no effect on the large gap in attitudes between African Americans and whites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared to other affluent democracies, class conflict has not been very intense nor as much of an organizing principle in American politics. However, as wages stagnate for the working class and economic inequality grows, class conflict is becoming increasingly salient. Yet, reviewing recent political science studies, I argue that rather than politics becoming a clearer class "war" between the upper and lower classes, the growing class bias in political mobilization and participation, and the resulting overrepresentation of upper class actors, has prevented a clear articulation of lower class interests or the development of broad policies that benefit virtually all Americans, leading to policies that increasingly benefit upper class individuals and organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses original survey data to explore the landscape of support for a number of aspects of what might be called "the American Dream:" the notion that hard work is rewarded, and individuals succeed and fail due primarily to their own efforts. In general, I find that Americans generally endorse the idea that hard work leads to success and that economic mobility is possible for those willing to put in the effort, but that there is significant individual and contextual variation in support for those beliefs. I find that most variation in support for meritocratic belief is a function of simple partisan politics: differences between liberals and conservatives, and between Democrats and Republicans, are far more important to explaining meritocratic belief than any other sociodemographic factor. But attributes of the context in which one lives matter as well. Among other things, this paper highlights the importance of local economic decline as an important topic for future research: those who live in communities that have seen their relative economic fortunes drop over the past decade are less likely to believe in meritocracy than those who have seen their communities thrive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Common markers of social class include income, wealth, education and family background. Though these capture staple pedestrian elements of class, they understate something substantial - social class is produced by political experiences. Building on this observation, I argue that social class is constructed and reinforced via political institutions that differentially affect the daily experiences and life trajectories of Americans. Viewing class through this lens (instead of more simply as a function of income or education) enables clarity on two critical features of the American political system: (1) its deeply racialized institutional practices (2) its dual inclusionary/exclusionary governance structures. Most broadly, this essay pushes us beyond a view of class as a set of variables that affect political outcomes and towards inquiry into the ways that political institutions produce class. Ultimately, such a conceptual pivot illuminates additional pathways for transforming economic and political relations in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the contributions of the American political scientist Morris Fiorina to the study of partisanship and mass polarization in the U.S. Topics mentioned include the influential work of Fiorina in the voting rights of the Americans on the national elections in the country, the rise and fall of unemployment rates which embroiled in foreign wars and the underlying partisan identification in respond to the political changes in the country wherein partisanship functions both as a stable psychological construct and as a temporary political summary judgment of group performance.

Politicians in the US tend to be vastly better off than the people they represent. But why, and does it matter? In the last decade, scholar of US politics have revived an old line of inquiry into the causes and consequences of government by the privileged, or what I call white-collar government. This article briefly reviews what scholars have learned, and what we still need to know. Most research to date has focused on the effects of government by the privileged; just as the shortage of female politicians seems to bias policy on gender issues, the shortage of politicians from lower-income and working-class backgrounds appears to tilt economic policy in favor of the more conservative positions typically favored by more affluent Americans. Why, then, do so few lower-income and working-class Americans go on to become politicians? On this point, scholars have more hunches than hard evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the statement of the American political scientist Morris P. Fiorina regarding the political system and economic condition in the U.S. Topics mentioned include the shifts between the social disruption and politics associated with the prevalence of violence in the country, the partisanship of the Democratic Party due to the performance of the Johnson Administration along with the changes in the Nixon Administration and the influence of social identity to the voting rights of the minorities and liberals.

Since its origins in the late 19th century, the most salient characteristics of the progressive state have been marginalism in economics, the geatly increased use of scientific theory and data in policy making, and the encouragement of broad electoral participation. All have served to make progressive policy less stable than classical and other more laissez-faire alternatives. However, the progressive state has also performed better than alternatives by every economic measure. One of the progressive state's biggest vulnerabilities is commonly said to be its susceptibility to special interest capture. The progressive state makes many decisions via either legislation or administrative agencies, and both are thought to be prone to special interest control at the expense of the public. Nevertheless, the superior economic performance of the progressive state calls that conclusion into question. How can a state policy that is so prone to special interest capture also produce superior results? One severe weakness of the capture argument against the progressive state is that it uses the free market as a baseline for identifying what is in the public interest. Under such a standard, any political theory that believes that market failure is more widespread and in need of correction will generate too many false positives suggesting capture. In fact, special interest capture often explains failures to regulate as much as special interest regulation itself, and today the former dominates the latter on many important issues. Ironically, one exacerbating factor in producing such capture is the structural features of the Constitution itself, which place much higher burdens on those seeking to regulate than on those seeking to resist regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including the social class in American politics, the historical record of class voting in presidential elections and the public attitudes of the Americans towards politics.