Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics

Medicaid is the single largest public health insurer in the United States, covering upwards of 70 million Americans. Crucially, Medicaid is also an intergovernmental program that yokes poverty to federalism: the federal government determines its broad contours, while states have tremendous discretion over how Medicaid is designed and implemented. Where some locales are generous and open handed, others are tight-fisted and punitive. In Fragmented Democracy, Jamila Michener demonstrates the consequences of such disparities for democratic citizenship. Unpacking how federalism transforms Medicaid beneficiaries' interpretations of government and structures their participation in politics, the book examines American democracy from the vantage point(s) of those who are living in or near poverty, (disproportionately) Black or Latino, and reliant on a federated government for vital resources.

• Segregation by Design: Local Politics and Inequality in American Cities
• Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity
• White Identity Politics (Cambridge Studies in Public Opinion and Political Psychology)
• The Government-Citizen Disconnect
• Politics in the American States: A Comparative Analysis
• Why States Matter
• Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide
• Class Attitudes in America: Sympathy for the Poor, Resentment of the Rich, and Political Implications
• The Turnout Gap: Race, Ethnicity, and Political Inequality in a Diversifying America
• Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream