Quote of The Day #7

“When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” – Martin Gilens & Benjamin Page, ” Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, forthcoming this Fall

Wow. The second shoe drops.

Whilst we are all absorbing the impact of Piketty – and I repeat: go read it before you comment on capitalism henceforth – in come Gilens and Page with a blockbuster paper that shreds any concept that America is a functioning democracy, where by democracy we mean a state whose policies are influenced by popular sentiment.

We are an oligarchy, with a slew of special interest groups providing a supporting cast to an economic elite who manage to direct policy to their advantage. Not always, but often enough to skew society prodigiously. Having established with their research that American policymaking is dominated by an elite, Gilens and Page end:

“Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.”

Double wow.

All of a sudden we have solid research confirming what many of us have been arguing on the basis of simple observation: to all intents and purposes America is an oligarchy not a democracy.

The acid test is that applied by Gilens and Page. Just how often does actual policy match what appears to be majority opinion. The answer they find is that it matches depressingly infrequently. The elite governs on behalf of themselves with the rest of us benefitting only to the extent that our wishes fall into line with those of the elite. If they clash then tough on us.

As it happens the majority and the few have closely aligned interests some of the time. So it can appear, as it did for many years after the Reagan revolution, that the new course for the nation was in all our interests. But that was an illusion. It was a mirage concocted by the convergence of opinions and was not reflective of any substantial power of the majority or resonance with its beliefs. It was a mere coincidence.

And as the Reagan revolution ground the middle class down, abetted by both Bush presidencies and Clinton as well, the preferences of the elite began to diverge from those of the majority. Significantly as it turns out. This was especially true in the Great Recession and is reflected in the enormous influence over subsequent policy. Policies that helped the majority were generally impossible to put in place, whereas policies that assisted the elite were passed in abundance. The only great exception being health care reform, and even there the influence of the elite and business groups made its passage tenuous and its success terribly difficult to achieve.

This fits neatly with the Piketty thesis. So neatly that it is downright scary.

The huge point of all this is that the constant accumulation of ever greater shares of wealth by an elite allows it to exert ever greater power on the political stage. This much is obvious. It has also been overlooked by most analysts of American policy because it was always held as self-evident that America remained a functioning democracy and that the majority had some influence over their own fate. So observed outcomes must, in some way, reflect what the majority “wanted”. Or, at least, this would be the conclusion drawn by those under the misguided thrall of rational theory which holds that our major political parties naturally converge on positions that reflect the majority because that assures those parties of continued power.

Rational theory, of course, never adequately accounts for the real world. It looks pretty, and can be expressed in dynamite formal terms, but is has an unfortunate tendency to miss the efforts of real people. In this case the efforts of an elite to garner a disproportionate amount of power. Perhaps this is because the elite contains many of the academics who propound rational theory.

In any case, the conjunction of the Piketty book and the Gilens and Page paper ought to stir the blood of anyone who values democracy. I know it has my attention.