US Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy, says Scientific Study

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

Is BOCES A Model for Municipal Reform?

While critics, including Governor Spitzer, say New York State has too many local governments, a promising cost-saving reform may be creation of still more local entities — regional cooperative entities similar to the BOCES organizations that serve school districts — the Rockefeller Institute’s deputy director, Robert B. Ward, suggests. His article, BOCES: A Model for Municipal Reform?, appears in the Winter 2007 edition of the New York State Bar Association’s Government, Law and Policy Journal.

The Daily Digit

From Data Detective Lenny:

The Daily Digit, from Governing.com provides an interesting statistical factoid related to government. For example, today's fact is:

Number of workers without proper immigration documents caught by Suffolk County, N.Y., officials in two sweeps of a total of 33 contractors working for the county after a law was approved requiring 6,000 county contractors to affirm that their employees were not illegal immigrants:

One
Source: New York Times, 2/19/08

I was intrigued by this one:

Number of votes received by Sen. Hillary Clinton from Syracuse, N.Y., voters in the Feb. 5 Democratic primary, according to unofficial results:
6,001

Number of votes received by Sen. Barack Obama in Syracuse:
6,001

Odds of such a tie occurring, according to a Syracuse University mathematics professor:

Less than 1 in a million
Source: Syracuse Post-Standard, 2/7/08