Princeton Study: The U.S. Is Not ‘Losing’ Its Democracy, It’s Already Long Gone
By
Richard Enos
Richard Enos
In Brief
The
notion that citizens of the United States don’t actually live in a
democracy has been picking up steam for decades, with scars from
economic, social and political decay inflicting themselves ever more
deeply into our psyches as the years move on.
You would think that, with the rise of
science and technology, we would have been able to build a far more
prosperous nation. Instead, we have seen a vast reduction in our
standard of living, and are being forced to work longer and harder
in increasingly menial and unfulfilling jobs across the board. We are
ever more being subjected to the control-hungry vicissitudes of
mega-corporations that are swallowing up American entrepreneurship and
prosperous self-employment.
The notion that we as individuals are
failing ourselves as a nation, and somehow have earned the massive and
growing national debt as a result of our own poor decisions and
ineptitude, is only valid if you still believe that we are living in a
democracy, where the majority of individuals directly make policy. If in
fact the United States ever fully operated this way, the least we can
say is that our democracy is currently broken.
Of course, if you are in the small
coterie of economic elites at the top of the pyramid, you don’t feel
that anything is broken. In fact, in the back rooms where all the
important meetings take place, you likely spend part of the time
congratulating each other because things are going exactly according to
plan.
Princeton Study
A study by two political scientists at
Princeton and Northwestern, Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page,
analyzed 1,779 recent policy outcomes found that “economic elites and
organized groups representing business interests have substantial
independent impacts on U.S. government policy,” while average citizens
“have little or no independent influence.”
The research had two parts: First, they
measured the amount of political influence various groups have in
America. Then, they checked this against some technical definitions of
democracy, oligarchy, and other forms of government.
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In our latest episode of The Collective Evolution Show on CETV,
Joe Martino and I discuss this study and the broader notion of whether
the system itself is simply broken and can be fixed, or if we should
start thinking about how we can move away from it altogether. The
opening clip is below, and for the full episode and hundreds of other
inspiring shows and interviews, you can start a free 7-day trial on CETV today.
The Wealthy Have More Influence
The chart below shows how much political
influence different groups have in America today. Not only do the
wealthy have the most influence, ordinary voters have basically none.
To have “political influence” in this
case means that Congress responds to you by passing the laws and
policies you like. Low influence means you’re ignored — Congress passes
laws that have no relationship to what you want.
Special interest groups also have sway
over public policy. The researchers divided them into two types. “Mass”
interest groups, which represent large groups of organized citizens,
have a small amount of power. Business groups, like trade associations,
have a moderate amount, likely because they can afford to spend more
on lobbying and political donations.
None of this means that ordinary people never get
what they want from Congress. Sometimes public opinion data matched up
with things Congress actually did. However the vast majority were also
outcomes favored by the wealthy and business interests. Statistically
speaking, the government doesn’t care what 90% of Americans think.
America Is an Oligarchy
The authors defined four possible
systems we might have: (1) democracy, (2) oligarchy, or semi-democratic
systems dominated by (3) interest groups generally or (4) business
groups especially. You can look at the chart below and judge for
yourself: America in 2014 matches mostly with the oligarchy model — an
oligarchy of wealthy individuals. In fact, the general public has even
less influence than it does in a typical oligarchy model.
The problem here isn’t the existence of
wealth, or that wealthy Americans have political opinions. It’s that the
government is representing only 10% of the American people. Everyone
else is living with something less than democracy.
The authors make the following
observations: Organized groups regularly lobby and fraternize with
public officials; move through revolving doors between public and
private employment; provide self-serving information to officials; draft
legislation; and spend a great deal of money on election campaigns.
At its heart, this is a problem of
corruption – caused by money in our political system. Such corruption is
fundamentally opposed to the ideals of our republic because “the public
is likely to be a more certain guardian of its own interests than any
feasible alternative.”
The Takeaway
While some might argue that introducing
new campaign finance laws as well as anti-corruption legislation is the
answer, we have to remember that the foxes remain in charge of the hen
house, and there is always resistance from lawmakers to introduce,
implement, and enforce legislation that will reduce their power
and ultimately find them guilty of having obtained their power through
corrupt means. More than likely this problem will only get solved when
we amass the collective will to walk away from this system, and create
one that is more aligned with our values and aspirations.
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