Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
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In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page present historical data that show that average Americans, even when represented by majoritarian interest groups, have negligible influence in shaping public policy. In sharp contrast, the economic elites and their business-oriented interest groups wield tremendous influence in public policy.
Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez have shown that the flow of income to the top has resulted in a concentration of wealth that is not only self-sustaining but likely to perpetuate the transfer of more wealth to the wealthiest, at a cost to everyone else.
This combination – a concentration of wealth at the top with the domination of policymaking by the economic elite, does not bode well for new policies that would be established for the common good.
In health care reform, the common good would have been served by improving coverage through the removal of financial barriers to care and by expanding coverage to everyone. Instead, the interests of the economic elite were served by increasing the market for private insurance products that, for the majority, increased financial barriers to care and reduced choice of providers, while leaving tens of millions of the most vulnerable without any coverage. More wealth moves to the passive investors at the top, while the deterioration in coverage requires average Americans to spend more out-of-pocket through higher deductibles.
We desperately need a well-designed single payer system if we want everyone to have the health care that they should have. At this point it appears that the economic elites are not going to allow single payer, and we will have no say.
Even though our Constitution laid the plans for a democracy, by fiat we now have a plutarchy (plutocratic oligarchy). Although Gilens and Page have shown that our Majoritarian Electoral Democracy has “only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy,” perhaps the people can still change that. Although recent history demonstrates citizen inertia, that does not necessarily lock in the future. Think of Social Security, Medicare, and the Civil Rights Act.
A decade ago, in a book review for the NEJM on “Universal Coverage: The Elusive Quest for National Health Insurance” by Rick Mayes, I wrote the following: “Mayes does give us hope. Although he acknowledges that critical junctures are rare, he notes that they do occur, especially in response to unmet social needs. Perhaps the deterioration in insurance coverage that has taken place may have brought us much closer to our next critical juncture than most of us realize.” (https://www.pnhp.org/news/2005/july/rick-mayes-on-the-elusive-quest-for-national-health-insurance)
So what can we do to reverse the process under which “policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans”? Will citizen action through education, coalitions and grassroots efforts be adequate? In spite of such ongoing efforts, we have certainly fallen short so far.
History has taken us to a point wherein the economic elite rules. Can the people revitalize democracy, or is the wealthy ruling class too powerful? If the elite are not responsive to our needs, will our nation be ripe for civil unrest? At the moment, citizen inertia continues to empower the economic elite.
And how much worse would it be right now if Dems never won elections due to people saying “this dem isn’t far enough left therefore I won’t vote”?
How far right would things have flown?
Voting for the lesser of 2 evils reduces harm now. And when the lesser of 2 evils isn’t pushed that things are allowed to shift further to shit.
Let me be more blunt. We do not live in a democracy. Voting is fundamentallly unable to change that.
idk man there’s a literal genocide going on right now I think we’re past the point of quibbling over minor differences in the deree of evil.
A genocide being perpetrated by Republicans.
Who can forget these 16 states (blue states) introducing trans refugee bills. Does that look like something republicans would do?
The parties are not the same, there are differences between them.
Study: Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens:
From the abstract:
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public comment by Don McCanne, MD, regarding the study::