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US Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy, says Scientific Study

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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."

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.

Nonetheless, this is the first-ever scientific study of the question of whether the U.S. is a democracy. "Until recently it has not been possible to test these contrasting theoretical predictions [that U.S. policymaking operates as a democracy, versus as an oligarchy, versus as some mixture of the two] against each other within a single statistical model. This paper reports on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues." That’s an enormous number of policy-issues studied.

What the authors are able to find, despite the deficiencies of the data, is important: the first-ever scientific analysis of whether the U.S. is a democracy, or is instead an oligarchy, or some combination of the two. The clear finding is that the U.S. is an oligarchy, no democratic country, at all. American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it's pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation's "news" media). The U.S., in other words, is basically similar to Russia or most other dubious "electoral" "democratic" countries. We weren't formerly, but we clearly are now. Today, after this exhaustive analysis of the data, “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” That's it, in a nutshell.
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https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/04/14

Can't say I'm surprised but it's nice to have proof. Europe is heading that way too.
 
Nonetheless, this is the first-ever scientific study of the question of whether the U.S. is a democracy.... the first-ever scientific analysis of whether the U.S. is a democracy
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I don't think so?

Today, after this exhaustive analysis of the data, “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” That's it, in a nutshell.
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That's "democracy" on any large scale in a nutshell.
 
They've been teaching this in intro to American Politics for years at my school. Like someone else said, it's nice to see it finally acknowledged.
 
Not that I don't agree with the study but this is flawed for two reasons:

1) Political Science is not a "science" despite having science its name.

2) This is really a semantic argument about what "democracy" means. Semantic arguments are stupid so I won't argue over what somebody calls "democracy".
 
Odrion said:
It's only going to get worse, isn't it?
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Whats going to stop it from continuing to get worse?

People saying "this is normal, everything is fine. You guys are overreacting!"? As that is the only other response to this news. But, its going to take longer for those that think they are well off, to understand this. Then maybe we can get together as one group. The government isn't answerable to the people anymore. There are classifications/top secret/need to know divisions that are greater than the president as well as congress. We have black budets in the trillions, that no one can account for, yet.. We have to pay for our own healthcare? Really America?

Whats with all of our rights being overridden by the government? The complete opposite of our constitution that our politicians pretend to love so much? Why are we bailing out Corporations, when other nations dont and end up better off for it. Its all bullshit.

They can only push us with militarized police forces for so much longer.
 
I would say a large portion of democratic states are oligarchies. It's the illusion of popular power that keeps people docile.
 
Lamel said:
ITT we say really deep, ominous things.
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It's hard to feel hope, man :-(
I absolutely think we're just comfortable enough to accept it. I believe our levels of comfort will increase to make us accept much more.

We'll always be just comfortable enough.
 
Website not loading on my phone. This just seems way too complicated to actually quantify in a meaningful way without making junk up. But again, I'm still working on reading the thing.
 
Well this just can't be true . . . right? John Roberts said that as long as there is no quid pro quo then there is no corruption, right?
John Roberts is lying and he knows it.
 
Lamel said:
The US is more of a republic anyway than pure democracy to begin with.
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Bingo. The US has never been a democracy. If it were, every eligible voter would have to vote on every single thing. That's why we have elected representatives to go and vote for us, hence a republic.
 
Effnine said:
I thought Bush was rock bottom but the recent Supreme Court rulings about elections and campaign finance clearly demonstrate we have a ways to go in our downward spiral ...
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its not a downward trend. its not about right or left. democracy just is oligarchy.
 
SRG01 said:
I would say a large portion of democratic states are oligarchies. It's the illusion of popular power that keeps people docile.
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That is also true. I think it would be hard to find a country not dominated by oligarchies. Anyway that won't stop me from voting even though I know this.
 
Yup, exactly what the founders feared. Democracy has been wiped away slowly but steadily by anti-government fucksticks on the right and the intellectually bankrupt Roberts court. Can't wait until the Scalia and Thomas retire and we get the country back on track.
 
Acceptance is the first step to recovery. More people need to understand this rather than be distracted by the red team blue team ruse.
 
RustyNails said:
Yup, exactly what the founders feared. Democracy has been wiped away slowly but steadily by anti-government fucksticks on the right and the intellectually bankrupt Roberts court. Can't wait until the Scalia and Thomas retire and we get the country back on track.
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The founders feared nothing of the sort. The founders didn't trust regular people to make decisions and that is why we were never a direct democracy.
 
All you have to do is look at the state of the FCC and the Supreme Court rulings re: SuperPACs and individual donation caps.
 
RustyNails said:
Yup, exactly what the founders feared. Democracy has been wiped away slowly
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James Madison: "A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."
 
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