Money in American Politics: Back to the Future?
Channel: Havens Wright Center for Social Justice
Date: 2022-09-25

A lecture by Thomas Ferguson exploring political finance in the New Gilded Age and its parallels and departures from its predecessor, the Gilded Age, 100 years before, to identify the effect of personal fortune and merger waves on political investment, party alignment, and voter turnout.

This event was co-sponsored by Global Studies at UW-Madison, the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, and the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

Thomas Ferguson is Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and taught formerly at MIT and the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author or coauthor of several books, including Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money Driven Political Systems, and Right Turn: The Decline of the Democrats and the Future of American Politics (with Joel Rogers). His articles have appeared in many scholarly journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Economic History.  He is Contributing Editor at AlterNet, Contributing Editor to The Nation, and a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of the Historical Society and the International Journal of Political Economy. He is also Director of Research at the Institute for New Economic Thinking and a member of its Advisory Board.