Piven and Cloward:  Chpts. 12 and 13
Low Income People and the Political Process
 
 

According to Piven and Cloward, when were poor people were most successful in gaining concessions from the political system?
 

How/why were poor people's movements sucessful then?
 

i.e. what kinds of organization, strategies, tactics were most fruitful?

What structural conditions prevailed at these times making their success more likely??
 
 
 
 

Time periods: 1933-1937 and 1963-67

Gains of first period: labor rights, jobs, and welfare legislation

Gains of second period:  civil rights legislation, expanded welfare legislation (AFDC), reinvestment in cities (Great Society programs)
 

Tactics of first period:
disruptive industrial strikes, unemployed marches, and riots

Tactics of second period:
civil disobedience and riots
 

According to Piven and Cloward, why do poor people have to rely on disruptive protest to influence public policy???

How are citizens "supposed to" affect public policy?
 

How do conventional political activities and strategies handicap the poor?
 
 
 
 

Conventional Political Activities:
voting
contacting elected officials
bargaining, negotiating with elected officials

working through collective organizations (e.g. parties, unions, interest groups)

What specific disadvantages do poor people have in engaging in each of these kinds of activities?
 
 

Piven and Cloward offer an important critique of traditional pluralist political theory

They underscore how the "structural features of a formally democratic polity" serve to "accumulate political power" in the hands of the better off.

In other words, the advantages of being better off accumulate in ways that magnify the political power of the better off (even though the may be less numerous than the poor).
 
 
 

Labor Organizing and Unions

What economic trends and forms of production advantaged labor organizing during the 20th Centuries?
 
 
 
 

How has de-industrialization and the shift to service sector economy decreased the likelihood of organizing and maintaining unions?
 

How do these changes affect the ability of working class people to affect American politics?
 
 

Can you link together Piven and Cloward's arguments with what we've learned about Spokane's economy from our class guests - the labor union activists and Dr. Forsythe?
 

How has Spokane's economy changed over the past thirty years and how has this affected the political power of the poor and working class in Spokane??
 

The Decline of Labor Parties

Origins of labor parties:  the emergence of manufacturing based economies in the West

While industrialization generated a working-class politics in the US, why, according to Piven and Cloward, has "the articulation of class politics in electoral arenas" been less overt than in Western Europe???
 
 
 

"American Exceptionalism"
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

i.e., individualist political culture, absence of feudal past, open frontier, rapid economic mobility, regional diversity; racial, ethnic and religious divisions.
 

In short, it is assumed that these inhibit the development of class consciousness in the US
 
 

Piven and Cloward think the American exceptionalism argument is overstated (yet, clearly rely on the regional and race issues in their critique of the Democratic Party).

They put more emphasis on how specific American political institutions have inhibited the development of a labor party and class based politics.
 

What institutions do you think have inhibited these developments???
 
 
 
 
 

Why has the Democratic Party in the US been less overtly class-based then West European labor-oriented parties??
 
 
 

Why has de-industrialization weakened Western labor-oriented parties?
 
 
 
 

In the US, what kinds of electoral realignments should we expect to grow out of "globalization"??
 

Is globalization changing the electoral strategies of the Democratic Party?  Why or why not???
 
 
 
 
 
 

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