A 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."
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.
More from Common Dreams
See also:
CEO Pay Soars, Workers Toil in Capitalism's New Gilded Age
Krugman: Worried About Oligarchy? You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet
No comments:
Post a Comment