Mallory E. SoRelle’s debut book, Democracy Declined: The Failed Politics of Consumer Financial Protection, is a colorful, incisive, eye-opening yet completely persuasive description of the politics of consumer credit in the United States. It uses a broad range of methodological tools to argue that federal policies and institutions built to govern consumer lending practices are neither fair to consumers nor deliberately biased in favor of lenders. SoRelle argues convincingly that consumer credit institutions are a product of path-dependent choices dating back to the New Deal and are perpetuated by perverse incentives that prioritize a high-growth economy over consumer protection.

SoRelle’s case is compelling in large part because it does not blame particular actors. She asserts that neither politicians nor banks and their many lobbyists are responsible for the increasing inequality that is fueled by unequal access to consumer credit and the consequences of easy access to disadvantageous credit. She also does not blame a public that fails to take its complaints to government, nor does she fault consumer advocacy groups that are unable to influence elected representatives and government regulators to make effective changes to improve the fairness of the system. Instead, SoRelle cleverly and rigorously explores the incentives and the natural tendencies of consumers, interest groups, regulators, and legislators. This approach allows her to explain complex and puzzling phenomena such as why lawmakers consistently require disclosure over rules and consequences; why borrowers turn to their banks—or to no one—when they are unable to pay off their loans; and why federal agencies fail to implement policies that prevent risky consumer loans.

SoRelle first lays out two distinctive features of consumer credit as a public policy issue: it is both privatized and personalized. The privatization of consumer credit describes the pervasive tendency of borrowers to appeal to lenders rather than to legislatures or government agencies when they find themselves in intractable debt. She extends the logic of now Senator Elizabeth Warren’s refrain that a citizen would not be allowed to buy a toaster that had a 1-in-5 chance of burning down the house, but citizens routinely refinance mortgages that have a 1-in-5 chance of putting the family out on the street. SoRelle shows, and then aims to explain, just how reluctant citizens are to appeal to government when they enter into very risky loan agreements.

The personalization of debt means that when borrowers experience challenges in paying off their installment loans (i.e., loans for auto or home purchases that are repaid on a schedule) or revolving credit (credit cards, overdraft protection), they are much more likely than with toasters and other tangible consumer products to blame themselves for purchasing a good that no longer serves their needs and in fact hurts them in myriad ways. The psychology of personal responsibility has enabled lenders to take advantage of borrowers’ feelings of guilt over not being able to pay off their debts—along with the accumulated fines, fees, and interest.

Both of these features of consumer credit are facilitated by the historic tendency of presidents and congressional representatives to encourage the widespread purchase of goods on credit over the economic security of borrowers. Using an original dataset of historical acts of Congress, combined with archival information from congressional hearings and other sources, SoRelle paints a clear picture of lawmakers’ continual choice to require lenders to disclose their practices rather than to reform them.

SoRelle then asks why public interest groups and the mass public have failed to push back against policies that tend to disadvantage them. She first uses archival evidence from a now defunct consumer advocacy organization to describe the frequency of different kinds of messages the group used to try to mobilize individuals to demand policy change. Using original survey experiments, SoRelle evaluates different frames and finds that the organization’s two most frequently used frames—that current lending practices are predatory and that consumers are victims in need of protection—did not mobilize randomly selected citizens to say that they would contact government to advocate for policy changes regarding consumer credit. SoRelle proposes that public interest groups change their messages to ones that she has found to be more likely to be successful: messages that focus on individuals’ financial security and messages that emphasize the government’s responsibility to ensure Americans’ economic security.

SoRelle then asks whether public interest groups might be more successful in their mobilization attempts if they directed them to certain kinds of individuals, which is an intriguing possibility given that racial minorities, single women, and low-income borrowers are more likely to receive unfavorable loan terms than their counterparts (Traub and Ruetschlin 2012). She conducts an original survey in which she finds that such marginalized borrowers are more likely to blame and turn to government than the more favorably treated groups. She poses this as an optimistic counterexample to studies that suggest that interest organizations with greater resources tend to be more successful in policymaking.

Finally, SoRelle shifts her empirical analysis to the executive branch of government. She argues convincingly that fragmentation of consumer credit regulation across at least five federal agencies facilitates “regulatory arbitrage”—the tendency of the regulated to use conflicting agency rules to shield themselves from regulation. Importantly, although all of these agencies share a mandate to stabilize and support the American economy, none of them has consumer protection as its primary mission. Because of this, they are not very receptive to lobbying by consumer advocacy groups.

But SoRelle responds to this troubling finding with positive data about the 10-year-old Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The CFPB now serves as a clearinghouse for consumers’ complaints about damaging lending practices, and SoRelle finds that citizen complaints about credit card companies, banks, and lenders have all increased in salience (becoming more common among complaints) since the public portal was created. She argues that if the agency is protected from legislation that weakens it, the agency promises to defend consumers and hold lenders in check.

Following the trail of questions her research naturally generates, SoRelle astutely identifies and then cleverly explains several paradoxes surrounding consumer credit: the dominance of disclosure laws over laws that constrain lenders, the treatment of easy access to credit as a helpful form of welfare for low-income Americans, the failure of unelected bureaucrats to support lenders rather than to protect borrowers, and the unintended consequences of the New Deal. The subjects of her analysis range from members of Congress and federal agencies to consumer groups and marginalized borrowers. Her methods—both quantitative and qualitative—her perceptive theoretical arguments, and her elegant writing style enable SoRelle to make a compelling case. Although some readers may conclude that SoRelle is too forgiving of politicians and lenders for their failure to fully democratize consumer credit, most readers will appreciate her rich account of one of the oldest and yet most modern issues facing Americans, their economy, and their government.