1 Advances in Political Economy - Department of Political Science

EDITOR’S PROOF

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

Quandaries of Gridlock and Leadership

in US Electoral Politics

Evan Schnidman and Norman Schofield

1 Introduction

The United States currently faces a number of severe political economic quandaries.

First is the economic quandary of debt. From 1993 to 2001, the US public debt to

GDP ratio fell from 49 % to 33 % but has since risen to about 100 %. Entitlements,

due to the aging “baby boom generation” will, in all likelihood, increase this ratio

even more. The transformation to the global economy coupled with the internet rev-

olution has changed the international structure of comparative advantage and has

had a dramatic effect on employment possibilities and on income and wealth distri-

bution. China, India and Brazil are growing rapidly, and China’s propensity to save,

coupled with its manipulated currency has contributed to the US current account

deficit, as well as facilitated the level of US public debt. The resulting uncertainties

have induced violent swings in global stock markets. In the background is the fear

of the effects of global warming or “weirding” and concerns about how to deal with

the US appetite for oil.^1

Many people now fear that we face a repetition of the 1930’s. While the “Great

Depression” may have started with the market collapse of 1929, it was the failure of

the largest Austrian bank, Kreditanstalt, in 1931 that triggered the sequence of bank

(^1) Too many books to name have addressed these quandaries, but we can mention Galbraith ( 2008 ),
Reich (2010), Milanovic ( 2010 ), Friedman and Mandelbaum (2011), Harvey (2011), Lessig
(2011), Rachman ( 2011 ), Sachs (2011), Steyn (2011), Buchanan (2011), Noah (2012), Stiglitz
(2012), Smith (2012).
E. Schnidman (B)
11 Vandine Street #2, Cambridge, MA 02141, USA
e-mail:[email protected]
N. Schofield
Weidenbaum Center, Washington University in St. Louis, Seigle Hall, Campus Box 1027,
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130-4899, USA
e-mail:[email protected]
N. Schofield et al. (eds.),Advances in Political Economy,
DOI10.1007/978-3-642-35239-3_5, © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
91