The Political Economy of Public Spaces
My last post discussed how policymakers pushed the free market after World War II as a better way of delivering economic prosperity and important social democratic goals, such as political freedom, democratic participation, social integration, and economic equality; their shifting support from modern liberalism to neoliberalism, beginning in the 1980s, resulted in an accelerated dismantling of public spaces. Modern liberalism and neoliberalism are both variants of classical liberalism but are actually quite different from one another.
Classical liberalism emerged to protect individuals from the excessive power of 19th century governments. It includes the work of political economists, like Adam Smith, who advocated free trade as a way of minimizing political interference in people’s lives and the economy (laissez-faire). Smith actually supported government intervention in some important areas, like protecting intellectual property and raising taxes to support education and programs that assisted people during times of need; however, the use of his writings to push unfettered free market capitalism resulted in many negative side effects, such as child labor, squalid living conditions, hunger, the destruction of our natural environment, and poor health due to low pay, bad working conditions, and unsafe food and consumer products.
As evident in the Progressive Era and the New Deal and Great Society programs of Democratic Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, modern liberalism evolved to mitigate these harms. It advocates regulating the private sector, expanding public goods and services, and developing social welfare programs—like unemployment insurance, social security, health care, and food stamps—to promote individual rights, foster economic prosperity, reduce socioeconomic inequality, and protect individuals and society from the risks and insecurities associated with unregulated capitalism.
Modern liberalism also recognized that the concentration of political and economic power in the hands of a small group of wealthy individuals and business leaders had enabled organized interests to use the government for private gain and created hurdles for broader democratic participation. It advocated empowering citizens to fight back through political, social, and economic voice.
Voice is any effort to change a disagreeable situation—such as providing feedback, speaking up, complaining, and expressing criticism. It is the primary way that citizens participate in a democratic society. Some examples of the adopted changes include:
· The 19th and 17th Amendments, which allowed women to vote and citizens to directly elect U.S. senators;
· The Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history; and
· Laws that supported the right of workers to join unions and go on strike.
The community action requirements included in many Great Society programs, like Head Start, are another example of government efforts to foster voice and political inclusion, especially among those who historically suffered from low levels of participation—like minorities, immigrants, low-income Americans, and those with low levels of education—due to both institutionalized restrictions on voice and low levels of trust in public and private institutions.
Modern liberalism further sought to improve citizens’ trust in public institutions by improving transparency and accountability. Sunshine laws, for instance, prevent fraud and corruption behind closed doors by providing the public with access to government data, records, and other information and requiring public agencies to provide sufficient advance notice of government meetings and to hold them in places that are open to the public.
Certainly not everyone shared equally in the American dream of upward mobility through hard work and initiative, but each successive reform effort increasingly leveled the playing field and brought more groups under its umbrella. These reforms would not have been adopted without a push from below and support from above, meaning people used public spaces to voice their demands for reform and policymakers responded through new policies and programs. Policymakers then used public debates to inform and further mobilize citizens. In doing so, the Democratic Party created a political coalition that gave it a governing majority at the state and national levels.
In the 1980s, the New Deal liberal coalition began to fracture with the election of Republican President Ronald Reagan. Since then, Republicans have worked with “New (conservative) Democrats” to replace modern liberalism with neoliberalism. Neoliberalism argues that modern liberal policies create disincentives to work, save, and invest. Rather than staying out of the economy (laissez-faire), it supports using the government to actively promote capitalism at home and abroad. Examples include free trade agreements, providing businesses and (largely) upper-income individuals with tax breaks to incentivize economic investment, deregulating the private sector, and privatizing the public sector, meaning transferring publicly-owned resources—like park lands, hospitals, housing, schools, and prisons—to the private sector or paying privately-controlled entities to offer goods and services that had previously been provided by the government, like education and public safety.
The theory of change is that the prosperity from a dynamic private market will trickle down and avert the need for social welfare and criminal justice programs; however, research shows that a rising tide did not lift all boats as promised. Instead, neoliberalism reduced democratic performance by fostering uneven economic development, increasing crime and socioeconomic inequality, stoking political and economic unrest, and reducing trust (see here, here, and here).
Trust in government, public and private institutions, and fellow citizens has been declining in the United States since the 1980s—when the gap between the rich and the poor began expanding and growing numbers of citizens felt shut out of the American dream. As Americans lost their sense of a shared fate, they also began expressing declining faith in all forms of authority, including the media, the military, and the professions—like doctors, lawyers, and priests (see here and here).
The first step to changing these outcomes is to recognize that policymakers are not neutral actors in the formation, maintenance, and destruction of social trust and social cohesion. The growth of the national government, including, for instance, the creation of national highways and other large-scale public works projects, was especially crucial for fostering bridging and linking ties between otherwise disconnected groups. Some of these public goods and services physically united the country, but they also created new networks that expanded access to political, social, and economic capital. The federal government, with its larger tax base, is often the only actor with the capacity to do so in impoverished communities—where residents get by due to their bonding ties with family and friends yet lack any ties to the external resources that would help them get ahead and make their communities thrive.
Phrased another way, social capital includes our weak ties to people from a wide range of backgrounds, as well as our networks of trust and reciprocity. It is the social glue that holds democracies together, but it is especially critical to foster inclusive ties, meaning those that expand access to the (political, social, and economic) resources that help individuals, groups, and communities thrive, take risks, and get ahead. Many people, for instance, will never participate in politics beyond the individual act of voting; others would never go into business or try to influence political processes on their own yet may do so in the company of others.
The contributions of relationships to the well-being of individuals, groups, and communities, and to the performance of democratic governments are why political scientists and sociologists have expressed such concern about the erosion of social capital since the 1980s and the continued dismantling of the public spaces that contribute to its development. These outcomes have harmed us all, but especially hurt middle- and low-income Americans because they are more reliant on public services and have historically used public-sector employment to enter or stay in the middle class. The same is true in many isolated rural communities, where residents are often more dependent on public services and employment because of a lack of private businesses. Neoliberalism downplays these negative side effects because it values individuals for their ability to contribute to the private economy while denigrating the (public and private) value created by the public sector and committed public servants—like teachers, postal workers, firefighters, police officers, EMTs, conservation workers, food or occupational safety inspectors, public health nurses, doctors, and scientists, and highway maintenance and construction workers.
History shows that the key to fighting back against the growth and misuse of concentrated political, social, and economic power is to choose voice over apathy. Individual acts of voice include voting, running for office, participating in campaigns, testifying in public hearings, serving as poll workers or on juries, boards, and commissions, sending letters to the editor or public officials, and writing public blogs. Collective acts include participating in political, social, and economic groups, organizations, and movements, such as political parties, mutual aid societies, the civil rights movement, the NAACP, unions and farmers’ organizations, professional groups, and worker, consumer, and renter cooperatives. Social groups that have no apparent political or economic purpose—such as bowling leagues, pickup sports games, and book clubs—may also lead to political and economic voice because they provide members with social capital.
In the upcoming posts, I will be discussing how we can take back and improve our public spaces. I hope you will join me. We are stronger when we work together.
In solidarity,
Jody Longo Schmid