Response to Stephen Earl Bennett

Extract

We are gratified that Prof. Bennett has now read the full Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy report that he critiqued in the January 2006 issue of PS, but we find his response puzzling. He characterizes our report as “illustrative of many political scientists' left-wing tilt” and buttresses his assertion, not by analyzing the report itself, but by referring to studies of the political leanings of college faculty. Clearly, the test of our heavily annotated work—the bottom line of which is that “there are no easy conclusions when it comes to changing inequality of political voice” (APSA Task Force 2004, 35)—is whether we have been faithful to the relevant scholarly research. Since Bennett provides no evidence to the contrary, we leave it to the reader to decide who is driven by ideological, rather than scholarly, concern.