{"id":15422,"date":"2014-08-21T11:45:28","date_gmt":"2014-08-21T10:45:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=15422"},"modified":"2014-08-21T11:45:58","modified_gmt":"2014-08-21T10:45:58","slug":"is-the-united-states-really-a-democratic-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=15422","title":{"rendered":"Is the United States really a democratic nation?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I missed this at the time, but I have just come across an academic study published in April 2014. It is written by two academics from Princeton University and Northwestern University and looks at who most influences the making of policy in the American political system.<\/p>\n<p>You can access the full study <a href=\"http:\/\/www.princeton.edu\/~mgilens\/Gilens%20homepage%20materials\/Gilens%20and%20Page\/Gilens%20and%20Page%202014-Testing%20Theories%203-7-14.pdf\">here<\/a>. It&#8217;s a long paper in very academic language, but the conclusion is clear:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;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.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of \u201cpopulistic\u201d 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 <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">not <\/span>rule &#8212; 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.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>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 we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America\u2019s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If you are interested in how the American political system works, you can read my short guide <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/Americanpoliticalsystem.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I missed this at the time, but I have just come across an academic study published in April 2014. It is written by two academics from Princeton University and Northwestern University and looks at who most influences the making of policy in the American political system. You can access the full study here. It&#8217;s a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-us-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15422"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15429,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15422\/revisions\/15429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}