TY - BOOK AU - Levine,Adam Seth TI - American Insecurity: Why Our Economic Fears Lead to Political Inaction SN - 9780691162966 AV - HC106.83 .L49 2017 U1 - 330.9730905 23 PY - 2015///] CY - Princeton, NJ : PB - Princeton University Press, KW - Finance, Personal KW - United States KW - Political participation KW - POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Economic Policy KW - bisacsh KW - American National Election Study KW - American insecurity KW - advocacy explosion KW - behavioral economics KW - collective action KW - collective participation KW - college costs KW - consumer psychology KW - economic insecurity KW - education costs KW - financial insecurity KW - financial threats KW - financial well-being KW - health care costs KW - healthcare costs KW - job insecurity KW - job loss KW - mobilization KW - nonparticipation KW - personal finance KW - political action KW - political behavior KW - political change KW - political debates KW - political inaction KW - political mobilization KW - political organizations KW - political participation KW - politics KW - public inaction KW - public policy KW - retirement KW - solicitation KW - spending money N1 - Frontmatter --; Contents --; Acknowledgments --; 1. Financial Threats and Self-Undermining Rhetoric --; 2. Do Americans View Financial Threats as Important Political Issues? --; 3. Who Mobilizes? --; 4. Why Rhetoric about Economic Insecurity Can Be Self-Undermining --; 5. How People Respond to Participation Requests --; 6. Political Voice across Issues --; 7. Self-Undermining Rhetoric in the Past and Present --; Appendix A: Multivariate Models from Chapter 2 --; Appendix B: Analysis of the Washington, D.C., Interest-Group Community --; Appendix C: Multivariate Models from Chapter 5 --; Appendix D: Noncompliance in the ACSCAN Donation Experiment --; Appendix E: Materials for Experiments in Chapter 5 --; Appendix F: Multivariate Models from Chapter 6 --; Appendix G : Details on Variable Coding for Multivariate Models throughout the Book --; Notes --; Bibliography --; Index; restricted access; Issued also in print N2 - Americans today face no shortage of threats to their financial well-being, such as job and retirement insecurity, health care costs, and spiraling college tuition. While one might expect that these concerns would motivate people to become more politically engaged on the issues, this often doesn't happen, and the resulting inaction carries consequences for political debates and public policy. Moving beyond previously studied barriers to political organization, American Insecurity sheds light on the public's inaction over economic insecurities by showing that the rhetoric surrounding these issues is actually self-undermining. By their nature, the very arguments intended to mobilize individuals-asking them to devote money or time to politics-remind citizens of their economic fears and personal constraints, leading to undermobilization and nonparticipation.Adam Seth Levine explains why the set of people who become politically active on financial insecurity issues is therefore quite narrow. When money is needed, only those who care about the issues but are not personally affected become involved. When time is needed, participation is limited to those not personally affected or those who are personally affected but outside of the labor force with time to spare. The latter explains why it is relatively easy to mobilize retirees on topics that reflect personal financial concerns, such as Social Security and Medicare. In general, however, when political representation requires a large group to make their case, economic insecurity threats are uniquely disadvantaged.Scrutinizing the foundations of political behavior, American Insecurity offers a new perspective on collective participation UR - https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400852130?locatt=mode:legacy UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9781400852130 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/cover/covers/9781400852130.jpg ER -