Rich People's Movements: Grassroots Campaigns to Untax the One Percent.

BOOK REVIEWS Deana A. Rohlinger, editor Isaac William Martin, Rich People’s Movements: Grassroots Campaigns to Untax the One Percent. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. $21.95 (paperback). Winner of the CBSM Section’s Best Book Award Edwin Amenta University of California, Irvine Scholars studying social movements often seek to explain their causes and consequences. Usually, however, they do not have to ask why the movement exists. It seems obvious at least in retrospect that underlying grievances are severe enough and the institutional recourses distant enough that the rise of a movement seems plaus- ible, possibly inevitable. That is not the case for Isaac Martin in his Rich People’s Movements. He finds that popular political campaigns supporting the rights and privileges of the rich have appeared throughout U.S. history. But why do these campaigns even exist? After all, rich people are by definition doing well, and so do not seem particularly aggrieved. What is more, they can use money to gain privil- eged access to the political process—they do not need to protest to gain the attention of political leaders. Martin also identifies a second puzzle in the typical activists in these campaigns, which do not typically comprise the extremely wealthy. Why would somewhat rich people engage in such extensive political action in behalf of the very rich people who would benefit most from the efforts, but who are sitting them out? Martin solves these puzzles with arguments steeped in historical institutionalist thinking and the literature on policy retrenchment. A central point of historical institutionalism is that shifts in policy transform political possibilities. Policies create new political identities and interests, and any threats to these policies will strongly mobil- ize those who stand to suffer directly, while only weakly affecting and moving the bulk of the pop- ulace. Martin argues similarly that rich people’s movements are mobilized by policy threats, notably those provided by proposed or enacted income tax increases. As with bids to retrench more redistributive policies such as social security, these tax policy threats impinge on rich people collectively and directly, with the benefits of increased revenue being more diffuse. So pro- posed tax increases contrast with the sorts of eco- nomic downturns that often help to instigate poorer people’s mobilizations. Martin also argues that these threats are not sufficient. Policy entre- preneurs are also needed to get these movements going. Explaining campaigns would be enough for most books, but Rich People’s Movements does not stop here. It addresses a second key question about movements regarding their influence. Martin finds that rich people’s movements were some- times influential. But that brings a second puzzle. Generally speaking, bestowing collective benefits on rich people is politically unpopular. When pollsters ask whether taxes should be cut for the rich they usually get negative answers. To explain this influence, Martin partly employs political mediation ideas in the literature on the political consequences of social movements. He argues that these campaigns had great impacts when the political system was dominated by conservatives. He also shows that although these tax mobili- zations were failures, they were certainly influ- ential insofar as they shaped the political agenda and induced like-minded members of Congress to press for substantial tax cuts through legislation. Martin shows that these movements were more influential than most in at least two ways, especially since conservative dominance was a fairly rare occurrence. First, the antitax cam- paigners were able to use their resources to craft policies and funnel them to supportive members of Congress. Moreover, because only rarely did Republicans hold the levers of power, these organ- izations had to come up with other strategies. Specifically, they worked to dominate the Repub- lican Party. This long-term project has paid the government-revenue equivalent of extensive divi- dends, as the tax rate for the highest income group has declined dramatically since World War II. Martin supports his arguments using com- parative and historical analyses. He focuses on five campaigns and locates the principal organi- zations backing them. He demonstrates why cam- paigns appear and when they are influential. In doing so, he leverages numerous historical and organizational comparisons in support of compel- ling arguments about the rise and influence of these movements. He also provides a historical narrative of these connected campaigns. There are fascinating stories involving the left-right political turnarounds of individual leaders—J.A. Arnold of the American Bankers’ League, Edward Rumely of the Committee for Constitu- tional Government, and Vivien Kellems of the