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Policy feedback in an age of polarization /Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson --Making what Government does apparent to citizens: policy feedback effects, their limitations, and how they might be facilitated /Suzanne Mettler --Limiting policy backlash: strategies for taming countercoalitions in an era of polarization/Eric M. Patashnik --Asymmetric partisan polarization, labor policy, and cross-state political power-building /Alexander Hertel-Fernandez --A new path for U.S. climate politics: choosing policies that mobilize business for decarbonization /Jonas Meckling --Building climate policy in the states /Samuel Trachtman --Medicaid and the policy feedback foundations for universal healthcare /Jamila Michener --Medicare expansion as a path as well as a destination: achieving universal insurance through a new politics of medicare /Jacob S. Hacker --Antitrust enforcement as federal policy to reduce regional economic disparities /Robert Manduca --Rebuilding labor power in the postindustrial United States /Andrew Schrank --De-policing American's youth: disrupting criminal justice policy feedbacks that distort power and derail prospects /Vesla M. Weaver and Amanda Geller --Feedback effects and the criminal justice bureaucracy: officer attitudes and the future of correctional reform /Amy E. Lerman and Jessie Harney

This article provides an overview of the emerging field of American political economy (APE). Methodologically eclectic, this field seeks to understand the interaction of markets and government in America's unequal and polarized polity. Though situated within American politics research, APE draws from comparative political economy to develop a broad approach that departs from the American politics mainstream in two main ways. First, APE focuses on the interaction of markets and governance, a peripheral concern in much American politics research. Second, it invokes a theoretical orientation attentive to what we call meta politics—the processes of institution shaping, agenda setting, and venue shopping that unfold before and alongside the more visible processes of mass politics that figure so centrally in American politics research. These substantive and theoretical differences expand the study of American politics into neglected yet vital domains, generating fresh insights into the United States' distinctive mix of capitalism and democracy.

This volume brings together leading political scientists to explore the distinctive features of the American political economy. The introductory chapter provides a comparatively informed framework for analyzing the interplay of markets and politics in the United States, focusing on three key factors: uniquely fragmented and decentralized political institutions; an interest group landscape characterized by weak labor organizations and powerful, parochial business groups; and an entrenched legacy of ethno-racial divisions embedded in both government and markets. Subsequent chapters look at the fundamental dynamics that result, including the place of the courts in multi-venue politics, the political economy of labor, sectional conflict within and across cities and regions, the consolidation of financial markets and corporate monopoly and monopsony power, and the ongoing rise of the knowledge economy. Together, the chapters provide a revealing new map of the politics of democratic capitalism in the United States.

As wages stagnate but living costs keep rising, the pressure on working people grows more intense. The issue of living standards has become one of the most urgent challenges for politicians in both Britain and America. 'The squeezed middle' brings together experts from both sides of the Atlantic to ask what the UK can learn from the US. American workers have not benefited from growth for an entire generation - the average American worker earned no more in 2009 than in 1975. Now British workers are undergoing a similar experience. No longer can they assume that when the economy grows their wages will grow with it. This collection brings together for the first time leading economic and policy thinkers to analyse the impact of different policies on those on low-to middle incomes and to explain what lessons the UK can learn from America's 'lost generation'. This timely book is essential reading for everyone concerned about the living standards crisis, an issue which could decide elections as well as shaping the future for millions of working families