Princeton and Northwestern Study: The US is An Oligarchy

By Dennis Loo (4/16/14)

As reported today by the UK's Telegraph, a newly released study by Princeton and Northwestern Universities, Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, concludes:

After sifting through nearly 1,800 US policies enacted in that period [1981-2002] and comparing them to the expressed preferences of average Americans (50th percentile of income), affluent Americans (90th percentile) and large special interests groups, researchers concluded that the United States is dominated by its economic elite.

The peer-reviewed study, which will be taught at these universities in September, says: "The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."

Researchers concluded that US government policies rarely align with the the [sic] preferences of the majority of Americans, but do favour special interests and lobbying oragnisations [sic]: "When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it."

"Independent" influence or impact refers to a variable having a causal impact on the dependent variable. In this instance, the study examined whether or not the premises of different views were validated by the data. The premise of democratic theory, that the average citizens' opinions are the independent variable impacting the dependent variable of government's policy decisions, was not supported by the evidence: "mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."

As the Telegraph article points out, this study comes in the wake of the US Supreme Court's decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission that lifted the existing ceiling on individual contributions to political campaigns on the grounds that those limits allegedly interfere with political free speech. That's right, Virginia, you can now spend unlimited amounts of money to make sure that your views are paid attention to by public officials. Isn't that marvelous? Aren't you glad that you have huge sums of money so that your interests are protected? Aren't you glad you're not one of the beknighted 90% of the population who don't have your assets?

This is why I have argued that systems cannot be changed from within and that the only way change can occur is through actions designed to mobilize people in collective action to get rid of the system and replace it with a radically different system. Any other actions that are based on the flawed notion that public officials can be persuaded to abide by the wishes of the people or that by putting different people into the same offices and within the same system are futile. When the Bolsheviks as part of their larger political strategy ran some individuals for political office prior to the 1917 October Revolution, they did not run on a platform of "vote for me and I will make the system work." They ran on a platform that the system itself is unredemable and that if elected they would use their posts as a platform to expose the system and its workings. Anyone who runs for office in the US and claims that they will make the system work is telling you a lie. The system is working the way it's actually designed to work and it's working in a manner that actually fulfills the assumptions and logic of democratic theory. Democracy isn't a great idea that just needs to be implemented properly. Democracy is an impoverished theory, robbed from its inception of what it allegedly promises to fulfill, authentic popular rule. The problem isn't the practice, the problem is the theory and the conditions that gave rise to it and sustain its pre-eminence theoretically.

Democratic theory, contrary to its proponents and even most of its critics, rules out of hand from the very start the outlandish notion that the people should ever actually come to over time progressively govern every arena of society. Instead, democracy and voting specifically is viewed as the only way that the "ruled" can throw out those who "rule" when the rulers become overly tyrannical. Democratic theory, in other words, provides no means by which the "ruled" can ever become the "rulers" themselves. See, for a much more developed discussion of these points, this link.

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