Reconfirmed: the rich run the whole show in American politics
by David Atkins
We’ve seen studies like it before, but this one is a thorough reconfirmation that the rich get what they want in American politics, the rest of us be damned:
A shattering new study by two political science professors has found that ordinary Americans have virtually no impact whatsoever on the making of national policy in our country. The analysts found that rich individuals and business-controlled interest groups largely shape policy outcomes in the United States.
This study should be a loud wake-up call to the vast majority of Americans who are bypassed by their government. To reclaim the promise of American democracy, ordinary citizens must act positively to change the relationship between the people and our government.
The new study, with the jaw-clenching title of “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” is forthcoming in the fall 2014 edition of Perspectives on Politics. Its authors, Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, examined survey data on 1,779 national policy issues for which they could gauge the preferences of average citizens, economic elites, mass-based interest groups and business-dominated interest groups. They used statistical methods to determine the influence of each of these four groups on policy outcomes, including both policies that are adopted and rejected.
The analysts found that when controlling for the power of economic elites and organized interest groups, the influence of ordinary Americans registers at a “non-significant, near-zero level.” The analysts further discovered that rich individuals and business-dominated interest groups dominate the policymaking process. The mass-based interest groups had minimal influence compared to the business-based interest groups.
I don’t even know how we fix this at a certain point. The biggest problem by far is the ability of corporations to buy elections, and we would need either constitutional amendments or wholesale reversals by the Supreme Court to deal with that.
Many people point to the civil rights era as a demonstration of the way forward, but I don’t think so. The fight to bring justice and equality to specific disenfranchised groups is very different from the broader rich-versus-the-rest-of-us inequality fight. The former are in many ways easier than the latter.
Sure, we can nibble at the edges with fixes like the Affordable Care Act. But the big things that need doing just aren’t going to happen at the federal level. I’m still convinced that making state-by-state fixes is the most promising way to go. Institute single-payer health care and similar policies in a few big blue states, and the rest of the country will slowly follow–or disband.
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