I’ve been looking through a book that arrived here yesterday, [amazon_link id=”B008AU9LZM” target=”_blank” ]Affluence & Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America[/amazon_link] by Martin Gilens, a Princeton political scientist. Although I haven’t read it at all carefully, paging through makes it clear that there is important evidence here that in the United States public policies have increasingly been shaped in the interests of the top 1% (not even the 10%) of the income distribution. There does not appear to be any ranting at all, not a vampire squid in sight. This is serious, empirical social science and lots of it, careful multivariate regression analysis.
The conclusion: “The patterns of responsiveness found in previous chapters often corresponded more closely to a plutocracy than a democracy.”
The influence of the rich is sometimes tempered a little by a closely divided Congress and legislative gridlock, and by an approaching Presidential election. Otherwise, the very rich have bought policies, literally – campaign donations prove be the main channel of influence. Professor Gilens is not optimistic about the prospects for campaign finance reform. Yet as he warns:
“Further concentration of political influence among the country’s affluent threatens both the perception and the reality of a shared political community so central to the health of even the modestly democratic republic we currently enjoy.”
So this rather dense-looking work of political science has a sobering message for the United States, and for all of us non-Americans who used to greatly admired what was, once, the world’s leading example of democracy and opportunity.
[amazon_image id=”B008AU9LZM” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America[/amazon_image]
I wonder how much of that is beneficial to both the rich and poor alike, e.g. food stamps that benefit big agribusiness and people on welfare.
Well I have not read this book but it is something that definitely interests me. I hope his methodology was not based just on campaign donations, since it is obvious who donates the most.
On the Plutocracy – I think almost any of the current democracies on the Western Hemisphere works this way. Politics has always been a game for the rich. The poor were kept straight away. Their position got just a little bit better with possibility to vote, but we can see it lead nowhere.
In regard of current economic situation, one of the most interesting studies could be comparison between Canada and USA. We are now observing the increasing trend of immigration to Canada from US, which is something that have not happened for many years. From the political point of view, there has to be some hidden hope regarding the Canadian political system, since people feel safer over the border more than on the American side.
I haven’t read it either, just paged through, but the methodology looks detailed and robust. I’ve subsequently discovered this Boston Review Forum on the book:
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.4/ndf_money_politics_demoracy_representative_government.php
Money has always spoken but I really don’t think things were this bad two or three decades ago – between the second world war and around 1980 both inequality and the power of money were more restrained.