US Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy, says Scientific Study

[Judi Lynn]

Published on Monday, April 14, 2014 by Common Dreams

US Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy, says Scientific Study

by Eric Zuesse

study, to appear in the Fall 2014 issue of the academic journal Perspectives on Politics, finds that the U.S. is no democracy, but instead an oligarchy, meaning profoundly corrupt, so that the answer to the study’s opening question, "Who governs? Who really rules?" in this country, is:

"Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But, ..." and then they go on to say, it's not true, and that, "America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened" by the findings in this, the first-ever comprehensive scientific study of the subject, which shows that there is instead "the nearly total failure of 'median voter' and other Majoritarian Electoral Democracy theories [of America]. 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."

To put it short: The United States is no democracy, but actually an oligarchy.

The authors of this historically important study are Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, and their article is titled "Testing Theories of American Politics." The authors clarify that the data available are probably under-representing the actual extent of control of the U.S. by the super-rich:

Economic Elite Domination theories do rather well in our analysis, even though our findings probably understate the political influence of elites. Our measure of the preferences of wealthy or elite Americans – though useful, and the best we could generate for a large set of policy cases – is probably less consistent with the relevant preferences than are our measures of the views of ordinary citizens or the alignments of engaged interest groups. Yet we found substantial estimated effects even when using this imperfect measure. The real-world impact of elites upon public policy may be still greater.

More:
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/04/14

[MindMover]

1. And we wonder ...

""

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. Sounds right, by and large.

Even our so called 'left wing' elected officials operate within a right wing frame of reference. We elect someone on the left to fix the train wreck the right wing created, and they hire on the same people who created the problems to fix it, and the 'fixes' to the problem of funnelling money from the poor to the wealthy largely end up being 'throw even more money at those who are already wealthy', while making some cosmetic changes that take a few more pennies on the dollar of income from the wealthiest, while ignoring the wealth they've been allowed to exploit out of the rest of us over the span of half a century.

It's how we've returned to Gilded Age levels of wealth inequality, and low levels of labor force participation, while further 'free trade' deals are negotiated in secret in an attempt to finish the job of destroying American labour. Those who have no money, have no real influence. We can elect tool A or tool B, who differ on social issues, but almost always end up supporting those with cash when it comes to economics and labour.

[Journeyman]

3. David Crosby told me this back in early '70, in a KPFK interview . . .

some things you don't need science to explain; it's just self-evident to those who have eyes to see.

[raccoon]

4. Anybody who's been paying attention knows this. Recd. nt

[yurbud]

5. Obama immediately tries to confirm it:

Why wait for them to TELL you what to do when you can ASK?

My favorite line is highlighted below, a definition of "impact investing" that generates a social benefit AND returns a "meaningful" profit.

I wonder if they were talking about the success of privatized prisons and the effort to privatize public education, the latter being pushed by "philanthropists" hoping to set up a cash cow of taxpayer dollars akin to the Department of Defense (with equally lax oversight).

If you needed more confirmation that we live in a country of, by, and for the rich, this is it.

On a crisp morning in late March, an elite group of 100 young philanthropists and heirs to billionaire family fortunes filed into a cozy auditorium at the White House.

Their name tags read like a catalog of the country’s wealthiest and most influential clans: Rockefeller, Pritzker, Marriott. They were there for a discreet, invitation-only summit hosted by the Obama administration to find common ground between the public sector and the so-called next-generation philanthropists, many of whom stand to inherit billions in private wealth.

***

One topic that seemed to generate intense interest among the wealthy heirs was impact investing, which refers to a socially conscious form of investing that seeks to generate both a social benefit and a meaningful financial return.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/fashion/white-house-hosts-next-generation-young-and-rich.html