America prides itself on being one of the most successful democratically governed countries. The idea of ​​the American Dream is that all citizens have equal civil liberties and a responsive government. However, the effectiveness of democracy is threatened by growing inequality in the United States. “The dominant view holds that economic development and modernization are key to the continued growth of democracy” (Snider and Faris 2001; United Nations, 2011). In the last decade, American society has experienced significant moments of growing equality. In the 1960s the Civil Rights Movement changed the way different races were viewed. Also in the 1960s, the Women's Rights Movement pushed for equal rights between the sexes. Both of these changes gave all citizens the same political and economic rights that are the cornerstone of democracy. “As America has become equitable across race, ethnicity, gender, and other long-standing forms of social exclusion, it has simultaneously experienced growing gaps in income and wealth” (Jacobs et al 2004). The income gap has not only grown between the poor and the rest of society, but also between the rich, the middle class and the working class. The middle class is now shrinking. “Disparities in wealth and income have recently grown more sharply in the United States than in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and many other advanced industrial democracies” (Jacobs et al 2004). “The influential work of Putnam (1993, 2000), for example, suggests that a general decline in social capital in the Western world could weaken democratic institutions. Similarly, other evidence indicates that voter turnout has declined dramatically in Western nations in recent decades (Franklin 2004).” This...... half of the document......verse of Brown v. Board of Education (New York: New Press, 1996).•Przeworski, Adam. 1991. Democracy and the market. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.•Putnam, Robert. 1993. Making democracy work. Princeton: Princeton University Press.•Putnam, Robert. 2000. Bowling Alone: ​​The Collapse and Rebirth of the American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster.•Snider, Erin A., and David M. Faris. 2011. “The Arab Spring: US Democracy Promotion in Egypt,” Middle East Policy, 18(3): 49–62.•United Nations. 2011. United Nations Development Programme. Arab states empower lives. Resilient nations. <>.•Weakliem, David L., Andersen, Robert and Heath, Anthony F. “The power of directing? A Comparative Study of Public Opinion and Income Distribution” (Storrs, CT: Department of Sociology, University of Connecticut, 2003) pp. 47-48;