“The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized 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.”
WASHINGTON, April 16 (UPI) — Oligarchy is a form of government in which power is vested in a dominant class and a small group exercises control over the general population.A new study from Princeton and Northwestern Universities concluded that the U.S. government represents not the interests of the majority of citizens but those of the rich and powerful.
“Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens” analyzed extensive data, comparing nearly 1,800 U.S. policies enacted between 1981 and 2002 with the expressed preferences of average and affluent Americans as well as special interest groups.
The resulting data empirically verifies that U.S. policies are determined by the economic elite.
“The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized 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,” says the peer-reviewed study.
The 42-page study analyzes U.S. politics through the framework of four major theoretical traditions — Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, Economic Elite Domination, Majoritarian Pluralism and Biased Pluralism — concluding that U.S. political policies rarely align with the majority of citizens.
What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of “populistic” democracy, who want governments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
The report consoles that “Americans do enjoy many features
central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association” but goes on to warn that “we believe that if policymaking is dominated
by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.”
It’s a sad state of affairs for Americans. Citizens when they unite for a common goal or purpose have power to change the direction of the government. However, the citizenry is fragmented and divided, and will thus remain essentially impotent and voiceless, until they come together under one banner for peace and justice for all.
It is sad that the profits of large corporations, for example, appear to have more influence on our lawmakers than the well being of the majority of its citizens ~ For example it is disheartening that the U.S. has not yet banned GMO food products yet Europe has banned GMO foods because of the harmful and dangerous effects GMO foods have on our health ~ Studies show that many of the major U.S. food companies/corporations hide GMO ingredients in their popular food products ~ Some of these products use words like “healthy” in their labels ~ Government/our lawmakers can do so much more to protect the majority in this case rather than protecting the interest of the few(the corporations)~