Entrenchment: Wealth, Power, and the Constitution of Democratic Societies

by Paul Starr

Overview

An investigation into the foundations of democratic societies and the ongoing struggle over the power of concentrated wealth

Much of our politics today, Paul Starr writes, is a struggle over entrenchment—efforts to bring about change in ways that opponents will find difficult to undo. That is why the stakes of contemporary politics are so high. In this wide‑ranging book, Starr examines how changes at the foundations of society become hard to reverse—yet sometimes are overturned. Overcoming aristocratic power was the formative problem for eighteenth‑century revolutions. Overcoming slavery was the central problem for early American democracy. Controlling the power of concentrated wealth has been an ongoing struggle in the world’s capitalist democracies. The battles continue today in the troubled democracies of our time, with the rise of both oligarchy and populist nationalism and the danger that illiberal forces will entrench themselves in power. Entrenchment raises fundamental questions about the origins of our institutions and urgent questions about the future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300238471
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	05/21/2019
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Paul Starr is professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University, cofounder and founding coeditor of The American Prospect magazine and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the Bancroft Prize in American History. He has published seven previous books including The Social Transformation of American Medicine, The Creation of the Media, Freedom’s Power, and Remedy and Reaction.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: The Stakes of Entrenchment xi

1 Understanding Entrenchment 1

Strategic entrenchment 5

Lock-in and the costs of change 11

Social structure and cultural entrenchment 20

Enabling constraints, traps, and contradictions 26

2 Aristocracy and Inherited Wealth 32

Wealth, power, and rules of inheritance 34

The political origins of primogeniture 38

Patrimonial inheritance and oligarchic entrenchment 43

Entrenching a republic: The eighteenth-century solution and its limits 46

3 Racial Slavery as an Entrenched Contradiction 56

The colonial divergence 59

Constitutional entrenchment and the costs of change 66

Slaveholders and national power 78

Overcoming slavery's entrenchment 86

Entrenching abolition-but not equality 92

4 The Conservative Design of Liberal Democracy 105

Entrenchment of electoral rules 108

Counter-majoritarian entrenchment: Supreme courts and central banks 118

Entrenchment through international treaties 126

5 Entrenching Progressive Change 134

Varieties of social protection 140

The great conjuncture 146

The curious case of progressive taxation 157

Lock-in and lock-out 168

6 Democracy and the Politics of Entrenchment 186

Oligarchy as populism 189

Constitutional capture 196

Democracy's stress tests 205

Notes 209

Index 245

Editorial Reviews

"An erudite book featuring important concepts and convincing research."—Kirkus Reviews

“Exceptionally insightful. . . . Starr’s command of both European and American history . . . is most impressive.”—Alan Wolfe, Democracy
 

"With the depth of historic and political insight he is celebrated for, Paul Starr gives us a new and crucial lens through which to view what is happening in America—the entrenchment of great wealth through political power strong enough to lock in that wealth, and, hence, perpetuate its power. Starr’s great achievement is to view the struggle of our era not in narrow partisan terms, but through the framework of increasingly concentrated power, and to reveal the multiple ways it is changing the very definition of American society. A tour de force."—Robert B. Reich, author of The Common Good and Saving Capitalism

“An original framework which casts new light on America’s political and constitutional predicaments in the age of Trump.”—Bruce Ackerman, author of Revolutionary Constitutions: Charismatic Leadership and the Rule of Law

"Written with incisive range and inviting lucidity, Entrenchment sharpens our understanding of how deep inequalities, as well as decent social, economic, and political outcomes, have been produced and protected by institutional design. The book helps guide a much-needed defense of liberal democracy at a time of great stress."—Ira Katznelson, author of When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America

"Entrenchment is Paul Starr’s most ambitious book to date, analyzing how political, social, and economic changes consolidate and endure. Once again, Starr’s brilliant and lucid historical sociology illuminates the present as well as the past."—Sean Wilentz, author of The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln

"A masterful engagement with many of the major challenges we confront. One key theme in this must-read book is the ease with which even complex open systems, such as a sovereign nation, resist transformation."—Saskia Sassen, author of Expulsions

From the Publisher

An original framework which casts new light on America’s political and constitutional predicaments in the age of Trump.”—Bruce Ackerman, author of Revolutionary Constitutions: Charismatic Leadership and the Rule of Law

Bruce Ackerman

"With the depth of historic and political insight he is celebrated for, Paul Starr gives us a new and crucial lens through which to view what is happening in America—the entrenchment of great wealth through political power strong enough to lock in that wealth, and, hence, perpetuate its power. Starr’s great achievement is to view the struggle of our era not in narrow partisan terms, but through the framework of increasingly concentrated power, and to reveal the multiple ways it is changing the very definition of American society. A tour de force."—Robert B. Reich, author of The Common Good and Saving Capitalism

Robert B. Reich

2019-04-10
An examination of how democracies have had difficulty rising, have endured threats of all sorts (wars, economic crises), and now face new and perhaps even more ominous threats.

Starr (Sociology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.; Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle over Health Care Reform, 2011, etc.), the co-founder and co-editor of American Prospect magazine and winner of both the Bancroft Prize and the Pulitzer Prize, returns with a scholarly look at "entrenchment," which he defines as "the making of changes [in our political and social systems] that then become hard to undo and that increase the resistance to stress at the foundations of society." His organization is conventional and historical: He defines the terms, distinguishes between various methods of and paths to entrenchment, and examines the effects of power and wealth, stories of slavery and immigration, and the power of rules established by the powerful (rules designed to retain power—e.g., the cutting of taxes on the wealthy, the control of voting rights, the appointment of like-minded judges). The author also discusses the entrenchment of—and threats to—social welfare programs, and he comments on the notion that some deserve health care and public assistance while others do not. He also looks at two dire threats: "oligarchy and populist nationalism." Although Starr's principal focus is the history of the United States, he also leaps across the pond occasionally to comment about similar situations in the U.K., France, Scandinavia, and other countries dealing with similar issues. He initially avoids any specific references to the current political situation in America, but by the end, he lands on Donald Trump, who "embodies this fusion of oligarchy and populism and the simultaneous pursuit of enrichment and entrenchment." The final pages are admonitory—and apprehensive—as the author expresses a sober concern about the survival of American democracy.

An erudite book featuring important concepts and convincing research, but it's a text whose diction and political leanings will appeal primarily to like-minded academic readers.

Kirkus Reviews