Economic and social inequalities remain a fact of everyday life in the United States, and they have repercussions for political power and democratic representation. Mallory's scholarship explores these inequalities in American political economy.
Centering public policy as both a cause and consequence of inequality, she asks two related questions: Why are specific policy design, implementation, and administrative strategies adopted? Once adopted, how do those features reshape the political preferences and behaviors of policymakers, organized interests, and ordinary Americans—particularly those at the socioeconomic margins?
Centering public policy as both a cause and consequence of inequality, she asks two related questions: Why are specific policy design, implementation, and administrative strategies adopted? Once adopted, how do those features reshape the political preferences and behaviors of policymakers, organized interests, and ordinary Americans—particularly those at the socioeconomic margins?
Democracy Declined: The Failed Politics of Consumer Financial Protection
The University of Chicago Press, Studies in American Politics series, 2020
Winner of the 2017 E.E. Schattschneider award for best dissertation in American government, APSA
Winner of the 2017 Janice N. & Milton J. Esman Prize for outstanding dissertation, Department of Government, Cornell University
Featured in the Washington Post's Monkey Cage Blog
Borrowing has become the American way of life. We increasingly rely on consumer credit to purchase daily necessities and to weather unexpected emergencies. But borrowing to live is a double-edged sword: While access to credit can help ordinary folks afford the American dream, borrowing also exposes people to high interest rates, fees, and mounting debt that can quickly turn into a financial nightmare. Despite this threat, policymakers haven’t put an end to predatory lending, borrowers haven’t leveraged political action to demand better financial protection, and consumer groups haven’t been able to change either trend through lobbying or grassroots mobilization—even in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Why?
Democracy Declined argues that the failure to curb predatory lending through political action is the product of a U.S. political economy of credit—a cycle of policy development and feedback that constrains policymakers and demobilizes borrowers. Drawing on archival and legislative records, interviews, and original survey and experimental data, the book charts how 20th century U.S. policymakers embraced broad access to consumer credit to grow the national economy, motivating them to adopt financial regulations that maintain that access. The resulting policy regime relies on information disclosures that teach borrowers to blame themselves and their banks for financial problems while obscuring government’s role in financial protection, minimizing people’s incentives to turn to electoral or administrative politics to demand change. Compelled by the need to preserve credit access and without the countervailing force of voter mobilization, Democracy Declined shows how the political economy of credit creates a self-perpetuating feedback loop that limits the prospects for meaningful consumer financial reform, threatening the economic security of American borrowers and the U.S. economy while exacerbating existing economic inequality. The book also considers strategies to reverse this trend.
The University of Chicago Press, Studies in American Politics series, 2020
Winner of the 2017 E.E. Schattschneider award for best dissertation in American government, APSA
Winner of the 2017 Janice N. & Milton J. Esman Prize for outstanding dissertation, Department of Government, Cornell University
Featured in the Washington Post's Monkey Cage Blog
Borrowing has become the American way of life. We increasingly rely on consumer credit to purchase daily necessities and to weather unexpected emergencies. But borrowing to live is a double-edged sword: While access to credit can help ordinary folks afford the American dream, borrowing also exposes people to high interest rates, fees, and mounting debt that can quickly turn into a financial nightmare. Despite this threat, policymakers haven’t put an end to predatory lending, borrowers haven’t leveraged political action to demand better financial protection, and consumer groups haven’t been able to change either trend through lobbying or grassroots mobilization—even in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Why?
Democracy Declined argues that the failure to curb predatory lending through political action is the product of a U.S. political economy of credit—a cycle of policy development and feedback that constrains policymakers and demobilizes borrowers. Drawing on archival and legislative records, interviews, and original survey and experimental data, the book charts how 20th century U.S. policymakers embraced broad access to consumer credit to grow the national economy, motivating them to adopt financial regulations that maintain that access. The resulting policy regime relies on information disclosures that teach borrowers to blame themselves and their banks for financial problems while obscuring government’s role in financial protection, minimizing people’s incentives to turn to electoral or administrative politics to demand change. Compelled by the need to preserve credit access and without the countervailing force of voter mobilization, Democracy Declined shows how the political economy of credit creates a self-perpetuating feedback loop that limits the prospects for meaningful consumer financial reform, threatening the economic security of American borrowers and the U.S. economy while exacerbating existing economic inequality. The book also considers strategies to reverse this trend.
"From the Margins to the Center: A Bottom-Up Approach to Welfare State Scholarship"
(w/Jamila Michener and Chloe Thurston), Forthcoming, Perspectives on Politics
(w/Jamila Michener and Chloe Thurston), Forthcoming, Perspectives on Politics
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"Partisan Preemption: the Strategic Use of Federal Preemption Legislation" (w/Alexis Walker), 2016, Publius: the Journal of Federalism, 46(4) Featured in the Washington Post's Monkey Cage Blog Scholars Strategy Network Key Findings Brief |
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"Social Welfare Policy" Forthcoming, in Ed. Nancy Burns, Oxford Handbook of the New Deal |
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"Policy Feedback" (w/Suzanne Mettler), 2017, in Eds. Paul A. Sabatier, and Christopher M. Weible, Theories of the Policy Process, Fourth edition (3rd Edition published in 2014) |
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"Politics of the Policyscape" 2016, in Ed. Ali Farazmand, Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance |
The Uncivil Polity: Race, Poverty and Unequal Legal Protection
(w/Jamila Michener)
In a polity increasingly characterized by adversarial legalism, access to civil legal representation is a fundamental aspect of a free and fair society. Civil statutes protect vital economic, social, and political rights, many of which govern the explicit relationship between citizens and the state (e.g., access to public benefits, immigration disputes). This makes access to civil legal representation a necessary tool for people seeking to capitalize on the benefits and protections that are nominally guaranteed by a broad array of both federal and state policies. Civil protections are especially critical to folks struggling to keep themselves and their families healthy, safe, and financially afloat. Low-income Americans are both disproportionately in need of civil legal safeguards and significantly less likely to have access to them, with low-income women of color bearing the brunt of that unequal access.
We have mounting evidence that access to civil legal representation can affect individual socioeconomic fortunes and income inequality more broadly. Social scientists, however, have little systematic evidence of how political processes and institutions structure civil legal access or how they are subsequently affected by it. This book project explores the political causes and political consequences of unequal access to civil legal representation in the United States. We aim to answer two core questions: 1) How have political institutions (e.g., federalism, political parties) shaped state and federal policies that determine access to civil legal representation over time? 2) How does access (or lack thereof) to civil legal assistance affect the political attitudes and efficacy of low-income Americans? Together, these inquiries fruitfully merge macro-institutional and micro-behavioral approaches to studying the politics of an essential facet of American inequality.
(w/Jamila Michener)
In a polity increasingly characterized by adversarial legalism, access to civil legal representation is a fundamental aspect of a free and fair society. Civil statutes protect vital economic, social, and political rights, many of which govern the explicit relationship between citizens and the state (e.g., access to public benefits, immigration disputes). This makes access to civil legal representation a necessary tool for people seeking to capitalize on the benefits and protections that are nominally guaranteed by a broad array of both federal and state policies. Civil protections are especially critical to folks struggling to keep themselves and their families healthy, safe, and financially afloat. Low-income Americans are both disproportionately in need of civil legal safeguards and significantly less likely to have access to them, with low-income women of color bearing the brunt of that unequal access.
We have mounting evidence that access to civil legal representation can affect individual socioeconomic fortunes and income inequality more broadly. Social scientists, however, have little systematic evidence of how political processes and institutions structure civil legal access or how they are subsequently affected by it. This book project explores the political causes and political consequences of unequal access to civil legal representation in the United States. We aim to answer two core questions: 1) How have political institutions (e.g., federalism, political parties) shaped state and federal policies that determine access to civil legal representation over time? 2) How does access (or lack thereof) to civil legal assistance affect the political attitudes and efficacy of low-income Americans? Together, these inquiries fruitfully merge macro-institutional and micro-behavioral approaches to studying the politics of an essential facet of American inequality.
"The Justice Gap: Mapping State Policy on Civil Legal Representation"
(w/Jamila Michener)
The “justice gap”—the difference between the level of legal assistance necessary to meet the needs of low-income Americans and the level of legal assistance actually available to them—is striking. Between 50 to 80% of people living in poverty in the U.S. have difficulty obtaining civil legal representation (CLR), leaving them without the means to protect their rights in situations ranging from eviction to predatory lending to domestic violence. Despite the significance of CLR to the lives of low-income Americans, particularly women of color, political scientists have paid little attention to the issue. Our paper offers the first systematic examination of civil legal policies in the American states. We draw on an original dataset of all bills proposed across the states to regulate access to CLR from 1990 to 2016 and analyze the sociopolitical determinants for adoption of different measures to expand or limit CLS access. Our results are crucial for understanding this crucial but understudied contributor to the growing economic, social, and political inequality in the United States.
