Larry Bartels | |
|---|---|
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| Born | (1956-05-16)May 16, 1956 (age 68) |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Yale University (BA,MA) University of California, Berkeley (PhD) |
| Academic work | |
| Institutions | Vanderbilt University Princeton University University of Rochester |
Larry Martin Bartels (born December 16, 1956)[1] is an Americanpolitical scientist and the Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions and Shayne Chair in Public Policy and Social Science atVanderbilt University. Prior to his appointment at Vanderbilt, Bartels served as theDonald E. Stokes Professor of Public Policy and International Relations and founding director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at theWoodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs atPrinceton University. He was elected a Member of theAmerican Philosophical Society in 2019.
Bartels received hisB.A. in political science with distinction fromYale College in 1978, hisM.A. in political science, also from Yale, in 1978, and hisPh.D. in political science from theUniversity of California, Berkeley in 1983. He was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995.[1] He has published three books,Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of The New Gilded Age (Princeton, 2008),Campaign Reform: Insights and Evidence, edited withLynn Vavreck (University of Michigan Press, 2000), andPresidential Primaries and The Dynamics of Public Choice (Princeton, 1988).
His rebuttal toThomas Frank'sWhat's the Matter with Kansas?, entitledWhat's the matter with What's the matter with Kansas was published in theQuarterly Journal of Political Science in 2006. While Frank asserts that theconservativeRepublican Party has been able to lureworking class voters away from theliberalDemocratic Party, which better represents their economic interests, with value issues, such asabortion andsame-sex marriage, Bartels points out that the working class, despite being socially more conservative, is still overwhelmingly Democratic, more so than in the past.[2]
In his empirical analysis, Bartels finds that both college graduates and working-class people are mostly Democratic, the former having become more Democratic over the past years. He attributes the gain made by Republicans to the loss of theSolid South, with middle and high income whites from Southern states standing out as having become more Republican.[3]
In his 2008 book,Unequal Democracy: The political economy of the new gilded age, Bartels demonstrates that income inequality expanded under Republican presidential administrations and narrowed under Democratic presidential administrations since the early 1970s, whenincome inequality first started to expand. Under Republican presidents, rich families saw substantial net gains in their income, while poorer families saw negligible gains, producing a significant net increase in income inequality. By contrast, under Democratic presidents, poor families did slightly better than rich families proportionally, lessening income inequality.
However, all income brackets, from the bottom 20% to the top 5% of the population, saw significantly greater increases in income under Democratic presidents than under Republican presidents. In other words, had Democratic presidents been in office since the 1970s, income inequality may have lessened since the 1950s instead of growing into what Bartels calls "The New Gilded Age" of the early 21st century. Bartels's findings led him to conclude that "economic inequality is, in substantial part, a political phenomenon."[5]
In January 2025, President Biden awarded Bartels theNational Medal of Science.[6]
