Jeff Manza

Democratic contraction? Political consequences of felon disenfranchisement in the United States

Universal suffrage is a cornerstone of democratic governance. As levels of criminal punishment have risen in the United States, however, an ever-larger number of citizens have lost the right to vote. The authors ask whether felon disenfranchisement constitutes a meaningful reversal of the extension of voting rights by considering its political impact. Data from legal sources, election studies, and inmate surveys are examined to consider two counterfactual conditions: (1) whether removing disenfranchisement restrictions alters the outcomes of past U.S. Senate and presidential elections, and (2) whether applying contemporary rates of disenfranchisement to prior elections affects their outcomes. Because felons are drawn disproportionately from the ranks of racial minorities and the poor, disenfranchisement laws tend to take more votes from Democratic than from Republican candidates. Analysis shows that felon disenfranchisement played a decisive role in U.S. Senate elections in recent years. Moreover, at least one Republican presidential victory would have been reversed if former felons had been allowed to vote, and at least one Democratic presidential victory would have been jeopardized had contemporary rates of disenfranchisement prevailed during that time.

Citizenship, Democracy, and the Civic Reintegration of Criminal Offenders

Convicted felons face both legal and informal barriers to becoming productive citizens at work, responsible citizens in family life, and active citizens in their communities. As criminal punishment has increased in the United States, collateral sanctions such as voting restrictions have taken on new meaning. The authors place such restrictions in comparative context and consider their effects on civil liberties, democratic institutions, and civic life more generally. Based on demographic life tables, the authors estimate that approximately 4 million former prisoners and 11.7 million former felons live and work among us every day. The authors describe historical changes in these groups; their effects on social institutions; and the extent to which they constitute a caste, class, or status group within American society. The authors conclude by discussing how reintegrative criminal justice practices might strengthen democracy while preserving, and perhaps enhancing, public safety.

Social Policy Responsiveness in Developed Democracies

Do mass policy preferences influence the policy output of welfare states in developed democracies? This is an important issue for welfare state theory and research, and this article presents an analysis that builds from analytical innovations developed in the emerging literature on linkages between mass opinion and public policy. The authors analyze a new dataset combining a measure of social policy preferences with data on welfare state spending, alongside controls for established causal factors behind social policy-making. The analysis provides evidence that policy preferences exert a significant influence over welfare state output. Guided also by statistical tests for endogeneity, the authors find that cross-national differences in the level of policy preferences help to account for a portion of the differences among social, Christian, and liberal welfare state regimes. The results have implications for developing fruitful connections between welfare state scholarship, comparative opinion research, and recent opinion/policy studies.

THE PERSISTENCE OF CLASSES IN POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES

Class structures have undergone important changes in recent decades with the rise of post-industrial societies. Clark and Lipset have recently interpreted these changs as evidence that class is fragmenting and losing its importance. We reject their analysis. The birth of new sources of inequality does not imply the death of the old ones. We review empirical evidence that shows how class-based stratification continues to be a central factor in social stratification. Clark and Lipset also argue that class affects politics, the economy and the family less than it used to. Their conclusion is based on a selective reading of the empirical literature. We discuss the countervailing evidence and conclude that class effects persist.

Ballot manipulation and the menace of negro domination: Racial threat and felon disenfranchisement in the United States, 1850-2002

Criminal offenders in the United States typically forfeit voting rights as a collateral consequence of their felony convictions. This article analyzes the origins and development of these state felon disenfranchisement provisions. Because these laws tend to dilute the voting strength of racial minorities, we build on theories of group threat to test whether racial threat influenced their passage. Many felon voting bans were passed in the late 1860s and 1870s, when implementation of the Fifteenth Amendment and its extension of voting rights to African‐Americans were ardently contested. We find that large nonwhite prison populations increase the odds of passing restrictive laws, and, further, that prison and state racial composition may be linked to the adoption of reenfranchisement reforms. These findings are important for understanding restrictions on the civil rights of citizens convicted of crime and, more generally, the role of racial conflict in American political development.

Social cleavages and political change : voter alignments and U.S. party coalitions

Introduction 1. The Sociological Tradition in Political Behaviour Research 1. Social Cleavages and American Politics 3. Class 4. Religion 5. Gender 6. Race and the Social Bases of Voter Alignments 7. Party Coalitions 8. Social Cleavages in the 1996 Elections 9. Third Party Candidates 10. Conclusion

A Democratic Polity?: Three Views of Policy Responsiveness to Public Opinion in the United States

The capacity of a politicalsystem to respond to the preferences of its citizens is centralto democratic theory and practice. Research and theory about the impact of public opinion on policy making in the United States, however, have produced decidedly mixed views. A number of analysts find a strong and persisting impact of public opinion on public policy. Others reject the idea that the public has consistent views at all or, even if it does, that those views exercise much influence over policy making. In this article, we evaluate the state of the art in the debates over the opinion-policy link in the rapidly growing body of research on public opinion and policy making. After an extensive review and critique of the theoretical and empirical research developing “strong” and “weak” effect views of the impact of opinion on policy, we conclude that a third “contingent” view, highlighting the historical, institutional, and political contingencies, provides the best understanding of the impact of opinion on policy.

Social cleavages and political alignments: U.S. presidential elections, 1960 to 1992

The classics of postwar political sociology argued that a key to understanding political divisions in democratic polities lies with membership in social groups. Much recent scholarship, however, has argued that political cleavages arising out of social group memberships have declined. This study investigates these claims, analyzing the magnitude of and interrelationship among four major social cleavages - race, religion, class, and gender - in U.S. presidential elections since 1960. They improve over dichotomous measures of religion and class and introduce statistical models that permit measurement of relative shifts in the vote choice of the core groups making up each cleavage. Their results do not support claims about the declining magnitude of social cleavages. The race cleavage has increased considerably since 1960, and the gender cleavage more modestly during this period, while the class cleavage has remained stable, and the religion cleavage has declined slightly. They find evidence of a slight increase in social group cleavages in presidential elections from 1960 through 1992. Net of change in the race cleavage, the overall social cleavage has been stable during this period

The social and ideological bases of middle-class political realignment in the United States, 1972 to 1992

Research on the nature and bases of the political alignments of the middle class in the United States has produced extensive disagreements but little resolution of fundamental controversies. We address unresolved questions about the political alignments of the middle class through an investigation of change in voting behavior among two of its principal segments: managers and professionals. Among professionals, but not among managers, there has been a long-term shift away from support for Republican presidential candidates to support for Democratic candidates. Competing hypotheses about the sources of these trends are tested using data from the National Election Studies. Increasingly liberal attitudes toward social issues, not changes in economic evaluations or sociodemographic composition, explain the growing tendency of professionals to vote Democratic and their increasing divergence from managers. Party identification and partisan affect substantially mediate the effects of social group membership, views of the welfare state, and attitudes towards social issues. The relevance of these findings to understanding the Democratic realignment of professionals and the stable Republican alignment of managers is discussed.

Punishment and Democracy: Disenfranchisement of Nonincarcerated Felons in the United States

As levels of criminal punishment have risen in the United States, more and more citizens have been disenfranchised because of a felony conviction. This paper provides an overview and analysis of the unique practice of felon disenfranchisement in the United States today. We focus in particular on the political impact of disenfranchising large numbers of nonincarcerated felons—those who have served their entire sentences and those living in their home communities while completing a term of probation or parole. Our discussion is organized around three key issues relating to felon disenfranchisement: (1) the historical and legal origins of this practice; (2) its practical political impact on recent elections; and, (3) the racial dynamics that color both the history and contemporary effects of felon disenfranchisement in the United States. We discuss how felon disenfranchisement laws in many states appear to be out of step with both international practices and public opinion in the United States and consider contemporary policy proposals.