{"id":8534,"date":"2014-04-18T08:05:33","date_gmt":"2014-04-18T08:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/divineearth.org\/main\/?p=8534"},"modified":"2014-04-21T23:08:02","modified_gmt":"2014-04-21T23:08:02","slug":"the-us-is-not-a-democracy-but-an-oligarchy-study-concludes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/divineearth.org\/main\/the-us-is-not-a-democracy-but-an-oligarchy-study-concludes\/","title":{"rendered":"The US is not a democracy but an oligarchy, study concludes"},"content":{"rendered":"

“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.\u201d<\/p>\n

By JC Sevcik \u00a0\u00a0|\u00a0\u00a0 April 16, 2014 at 5:47 PM<\/div>\n
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The American Flag seen behind a sign for Wall Street near the New York Stock Exchange. UPI\/John Angelillo<\/p>\n
| License Photo<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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WASHINGTON, April 16 (UPI) — <\/span>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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

The resulting data empirically verifies that U.S. policies are determined by the economic elite.<\/p>\n

“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,\u201d says the peer-reviewed study.<\/p>\n

The 42-page study<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly constitute\u00a0troubling news for advocates of \u201cpopulistic\u201d democracy, who want governments to respond\u00a0primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our\u00a0findings indicate, the majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually\u00a0determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and\/or\u00a0with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias\u00a0built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy\u00a0change, they generally do not get it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The report consoles that \u201cAmericans do enjoy many features
\ncentral to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association\u201d but goes on to warn that \u201cwe believe that if policymaking is dominated
\nby powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America\u2019s\u00a0claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Read more: http:\/\/www.upi.com\/Top_News\/US\/2014\/04\/16\/The-US-is-not-a-democracy-but-an-oligarchy-study-concludes\/2761397680051\/#ixzz2zDse9tIq<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“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.\u201d By JC Sevcik \u00a0\u00a0|\u00a0\u00a0 April 16, 2014 at 5:47 PM The \u2026<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,13,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-people","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/divineearth.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/divineearth.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/divineearth.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/divineearth.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/divineearth.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8534"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/divineearth.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8544,"href":"http:\/\/divineearth.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8534\/revisions\/8544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/divineearth.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/divineearth.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/divineearth.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}