Ordinary people’s fortunes are increasingly dependent on the performance of the financial industry, a development that has transformed our politics. Jeffrey Chwieroth’s latest book,The Wealth Effect: How the Great Expectations of the Middle Class Have Changed the Politics of Banking Crises, co-authored with Andrew Walter, charts this change and explains why all mainstream political parties now share at least one thing in common.

This latest article presents the key findings and analyses. Jeff Chwieroth and Andrew Walter gave a public lecture hosted by the SRC on their book in April 2019. The video of the lecture is now on online.