Dani Rodrik
It
is hardly news that the rich have more political power than the poor,
even in democratic countries where everyone gets a single vote in
elections. But two political scientists, Martin Gilens of Princeton
University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, have recently
produced some stark findings for the United States that have dramatic implications for the functioning of democracy – in the US and elsewhere.
The
authors’ research builds on prior work by Gilens, who painstakingly
collected public-opinion polls on nearly 2,000 policy questions from
1981 to 2002. The pair then examined whether America’s federal
government adopted the policy in question within four years of the
survey, and tracked how closely the outcome matched the preferences of
voters at different points of the income distribution.
When
viewed in isolation, the preferences of the “average” voter – that is, a
voter in the middle of the income distribution – seem to have a
strongly positive influence on the government’s ultimate response. A
policy that the average voter would like is significantly more likely to
be enacted.
But,
as Gilens and Page note, this gives a misleadingly upbeat impression of
the representativeness of government decisions. The preferences of the
average voter and of economic elites are not very different on most
policy matters. For example, both groups of voters would like to see a
strong national defense and a healthy economy. A better test would be to
examine what the government does when the two groups have divergent
views.
To
carry out that test, Gilens and Page ran a horse race between the
preferences of average voters and those of economic elites – defined as
individuals at the top tenth percentile of the income distribution – to
see which voters exert greater influence. They found that the effect of
the average voter drops to insignificant levels, while that of economic
elites remains substantial.
The implication is clear: when
the elites’ interests differ from those of the rest of society, it is
their views that count – almost exclusively.
The
implication is clear: when the elites’ interests differ from those of
the rest of society, it is their views that count – almost exclusively.
(As Gilens and Page explain, we should think of the preferences of the
top 10% as a proxy for the views of the truly wealthy, say, the top 1% –
the genuine elite.)
Gilens
and Page report similar results for organized interest groups, which
wield a powerful influence on policy formation. As they point out, “it
makes very little difference what the general public thinks” once
interest-group alignments and the preferences of affluent Americans are
taken into account.
These
disheartening results raise an important question: How do politicians
who are unresponsive to the interests of the vast majority of their
constituents get elected and, more important, re-elected, while doing the bidding mostly of the wealthiest individuals?
New research shows how the wealthiest people dominate policy-making in the US.
Part
of the explanation may be that most voters have a poor understanding of
how the political system works and how it is tilted in favor of the
economic elite. As Gilens and Page emphasize, their evidence does not
imply that government policy makes the average citizen worse off.
Ordinary citizens often do get what they want, by virtue of the
fact that their preferences frequently are similar to those of the
elite. This correlation of the two groups’ preferences may make it
difficult for voters to discern politicians’ bias.
But
another, more pernicious, part of the answer may lie in the strategies
to which political leaders resort in order to get elected. A politician
who represents the interests primarily of economic elites has to find
other means of appealing to the masses. Such an alternative is provided
by the politics of nationalism, sectarianism, and identity – a politics
based on cultural values and symbolism rather than bread-and-butter
interests. When politics is waged on these grounds, elections are won by
those who are most successful at “priming” our latent cultural and
psychological markers, not those who best represent our interests.
A politician who represents the interests primarily of economic elites has to find other means of appealing to the masses.
Karl Marx famously said that religion is “the opium of the people.” What
he meant is that religious sentiment could obscure the material
deprivations that workers and other exploited people experience in their
daily lives.
In
much of the same way, the rise of the religious right and, with it,
culture wars over “family values” and other highly polarizing issues
(for example, immigration) have served to insulate American politics
from the sharp rise in economic inequality since the late 1970s. As a
result, conservatives have been able to retain power despite their
pursuit of economic and social policies that are inimical to the
interests of the middle and lower classes.
Identity
politics is malignant because it tends to draw boundaries around a
privileged in-group and requires the exclusion of outsiders – those of
other countries, values, religions, or ethnicities. This can be seen
most clearly in illiberal democracies such as Russia, Turkey, and
Hungary. In order to solidify their electoral base, leaders in these
countries appeal heavily to national, cultural, and religious symbols.
In
doing so, they typically inflame passions against religious and ethnic
minorities. For regimes that represent economic elites (and are often
corrupt to the core), it is a ploy that pays off handsomely at the
polls.
Widening
inequality in the world’s advanced and developing countries thus
inflicts two blows against democratic politics. Not only does it lead to
greater disenfranchisement of the middle and lower classes; it also
fosters among the elite a poisonous politics of sectarianism.
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