Levers of Power
Levers of Power
How the 1% Rules and What
the 99% Can Do about It
Kevin A. Young, Tarun Banerjee,
and Michael Schwartz
First published by Verso 2020
© Kevin A. Young, Tarun Banerjee, and Michael Schwartz 2020
This book contains excerpts from the following previously published articles: Kevin Young and Michael Schwartz, “Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: How Corporate Power Shaped the Affordable Care Act,” New Labor Forum 23, no. 2 (2014): 30–40 © 2014 The Murphy Institute, City University of New York; Kevin Young and Michael Schwartz, “A Neglected Mechanism of Social Movement Political Influence: The Role of Anticorporate and Anti-Institutional Protest in Changing Government Policy,” Mobilization 19, no. 3 (2014): 239–260 © 2014 Mobilization: An International Quarterly; Kevin A. Young, Tarun Banerjee, and Michael Schwartz, “Capital Strikes as a Corporate Political Strategy: The Structural Power of Business in the Obama Era,” Politics and Society 46, no. 1 (2018): 3–28 © 2018 Sage Publications.
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
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ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-096-9
ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-099-0 (LIBRARY)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-097-6 (UK EBK)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-098-3 (US EBK)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Young, Kevin A., author. | Banerjee, Tarun Kumar, 1948– author. | Schwartz, Michael, 1942–
Title: Levers of power : how the 1% rules and what the 99% can do about it / Kevin A. Young, Tarun Banerjee, and Michael Schwartz.
Description: London ; New York : Verso, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Levers of Power argues that corporations’ influence ultimately derives from their control over the economic resources on which society depends. When business goes on a ‘capital strike’ by refusing to invest in particular locations or industries, it imposes material hardship on specific groups or even the economy as a whole. For this reason, even politicians who are not dependent on corporate campaign cash must strive to keep capitalists happy”— Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020006826 (print) | LCCN 2020006827 (ebook) | ISBN 9781788730969 (paperback) | ISBN 9781788730990 (library binding) | ISBN 9781788730983 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Business and politics—United States. | Corporate power—Political aspects—United States. | Capitalism—Political aspects—United States.
Classification: LCC JK467 .Y68 2020 (print) | LCC JK467 (ebook) | DDC 322/.30973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020006826
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020006827
Typeset in Minion Pro by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
Contents
Introduction: Shadow and Substance
1. Where Laws Come From: Schoolhouse Rock! Reconsidered
2. Seeking Consensus with Industry: The Revision Process in Congress
PART II: IMPLEMENTING (OR NOT) THE LAW
3. The System We Are Beholden to Serve: Business Hegemony in the Executive Branch
4. Attacking the Substance: How Mass Resistance Can Shape the Implementation of Laws
Conclusion: A Different Substance
Appendices A–C: Sources, Data, and Results on Antipoverty Funding in the US South
Figure 1: Articles mentioning healthcare, 1995–2008
Table 1: The Senate Finance Committee’s ties to the healthcare sector (partial list)
Table 2: CAP funding by civil rights movement presence
Figure 2: Predicted CAP funding ($ per poor person) by movement strength
Figure 3: Predicted CAP funding ($ per poor person) by targeting strategy
This book is the result of more than a decade of research and discussion. The conversations began in late 2009, motivated by an emergent pattern that we began calling The Obama Conundrum. Though the new Obama administration had been elected with a strong mandate for “Change We Can Believe In” and enjoyed filibuster-proof control of Congress, it was not delivering major progressive reforms. We began to see this pattern as reflective of a much bigger theoretical question: what are the obstacles to progressive political change in modern-day societies, and how might we overcome them?
Our answer has been shaped by our research and by an ongoing discussion among the authors, with input from a large circle