[bestbits] RE: [be US Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy, says Scientific Study

Tue Apr 15 08:02:28 EDT 2014

A couple of points before I rush off.

It is to my mind quite bizarre to equate democracy with governmentalism.
Democracy is giving the people voice (including dare I say through
independent media) and the means to turn those voices into actions.
Government is a means, perhaps the best means to do this but in no sense is
it the only means and certainly doesn't involve a commitment to incumbent
governments (or inter-governments) or their actions.

Second, the issue with MSism is not its relation (or not) to democratic
"principles" however high minded or rhetorically compelling. The question is
its relation to democratic practices i.e. substituting decision making by
the few and self-selected for decision making by the many operating through
accountable and transparent processes.

M

From: Mike Godwin (mgodwin at INTERNEWS.ORG) [mailto:mgodwin at INTERNEWS.ORG] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2014 4:19 AM
To: michael gurstein; 'Internet Governance Caucus List'; 'bestbits'
Subject: Re: [bestbits] FW: US Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy, says
Scientific Study

My own personal view, which I have to stress does not purport to represent
my employer, is more nuanced. I think all governments, from the most
democratic to the most authoritarian, share certain self-perceptions and
assumptions that tend to run against the radically democratic potentialities
of online media. (In my own work, I run into this constantly - the
perception that the internet is so inherently disruptive that it must be
controlled in one way or another. It's how, until very recently, democratic
governments even thought of the traditional press.) This isn't malice or
selfishness - instead, this is an "occupational hazard" if your occupation
is being a government, and nobody is immune, really. Multi-stakeholderism at
its best, in my view, formalizes the necessity of taking input from
non-governmental "outsiders." I think that's the right outcome,
democratically speaking. (I also happen to think that the USG's favoring
multi-stakeholderism--at least as it does right now--is a happy
circumstance, because institutional governmental self-interest over the long
term tends to favor governmental--or inter-governmental--bodies most of the
time.)

So my "solution space" for internet governance tends to center on
multi-stakeholderism, clearly, but of course multi-stakeholderism has to be
structured correctly, and multi-stakeholderism is to be valued not in itself
but to the extent that it serves democratic values. (A multistakeholder
system favoring corporate dominance is no better than one favoring
institutional government dominance, and of course, as I think you agree,
might be worse.) By contrast, I don't view the ITU (for example) as being a
leading candidate for serving those values.

We have a number of models to pick from. And as Laura DeNardis suggests in
her recent writings, we may actually need to pick different models for
different particular governance spaces and roles.

-Mike

-- 

Mike Godwin | Senior Legal Advisor, Global Internet Policy Project

 <mailto:mgodwin at internews.org> mgodwin at internews.org | Mobile 415-793-4446

Skype mnemonic1026

Address 1601 R Street NW, 2nd Floor Washington, DC 20009 USA

INTERNEWS | Local Voices. Global Change.

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From: michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com>
Date: Tuesday, April 15, 2014 at 6:50 AM
To: Mike Godwin <mgodwin at internews.org>, 'Internet Governance Caucus List'
<governance at lists.igcaucus.org>, 'bestbits' <bestbits at lists.bestbits.net>
Subject: RE: [bestbits] FW: US Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy, says
Scientific Study

Mike,

Do I take you as saying below that you would trade (even the opportunity) of
influence via democratic participation for the many; in return for the (in
my opinion) illusion of not being "excluded" for the few via
multistakeholderism?

M

From: Mike Godwin (mgodwin at INTERNEWS.ORG) [mailto:mgodwin at INTERNEWS.ORG] 
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2014 2:48 PM
To: michael gurstein; 1Net List; Internet Governance Caucus List; bestbits
Subject: RE: [bestbits] FW: US Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy, says
Scientific Study

Convergence is not causality. Lots of interested stakeholders may
legitimately prefer multistakeholder models from ones on which they are
baseline excluded.

Sent from my iPhone using Mail+ for Outlook <http://taps.io/mailplus>  

From: michael gurstein
Sent: 4/14/14, 4:07 PM
To: 1Net List, Internet Governance Caucus List, bestbits
Subject: [bestbits] FW: US Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy, says Scientific
Study

I guess the below explains the overwhelming pressure from the USG to have
multistakeholderism implemented for global (Internet) governance since MSism
would be the political form through which oligarchies would exert (and mask)
their power in global decision making processes.

Of course it also suggests why significant elements of CS in Internet
Governance processes would also support MSism since they are in many cases
the direct beneficiaries of these oligarchies.

M 

From: sid-l at googlegroups.com [mailto:sid-l at googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of
Sid Shniad
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2014 11:20 AM
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: US Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy, says Scientific Study

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/04/14

Common Dreams     April 14, 2014 

US Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy, says Scientific Study

"The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule,
near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy." 

by Eric Zuesse 

In America, money talks... and democracy dies under its crushing weight.
(Photo: Shutterstock)A
<http://www.princeton.edu/%7Emgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20materials/Gilens%20
and%20Page/Gilens%20and%20Page%202014-Testing%20Theories%203-7-14.pdf>
study, to appear in the Fall 2014 issue of the academic journal Perspectives
on Politics, finds that the U.S. is no democracy, but instead an oligarchy,
meaning profoundly corrupt, so that the answer to the study's opening
question, "Who governs? Who really rules?" in this country, is: 

"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, ..." and then they go
on to say, it's not true, and that, "America's claims to being a democratic
society are seriously threatened" by the findings in this, the first-ever
comprehensive scientific study of the subject, which shows that there is
instead "the nearly total failure of 'median voter' and other Majoritarian
Electoral Democracy theories [of America]. 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."

To put it short: The United States is no democracy, but actually an
oligarchy.

The authors of this historically important study are Martin Gilens and
Benjamin I. Page, and their article is titled
<http://www.princeton.edu/%7Emgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20materials/Gilens%20
and%20Page/Gilens%20and%20Page%202014-Testing%20Theories%203-7-14.pdf>
"Testing Theories of American Politics." The authors clarify that the data
available are probably under-representing the actual extent of control of
the U.S. by the super-rich:

Economic Elite Domination theories do rather well in our analysis, even
though our findings probably understate the political influence of elites.
Our measure of the preferences of wealthy or elite Americans - though
useful, and the best we could generate for a large set of policy cases - is
probably less consistent with the relevant preferences than are our measures
of the views of ordinary citizens or the alignments of engaged interest
groups. Yet we found substantial estimated effects even when using this
imperfect measure. The real-world impact of elites upon public policy may be
still greater.

Nonetheless, this is the first-ever scientific study of the question of
whether the U.S. is a democracy. "Until recently it has not been possible to
test these contrasting theoretical predictions [that U.S. policymaking
operates as a democracy, versus as an oligarchy, versus as some mixture of
the two] against each other within a single statistical model. This paper
reports on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes
measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues." That's an enormous
number of policy-issues studied.

What the authors are able to find, despite the deficiencies of the data, is
important: the first-ever scientific analysis of whether the U.S. is a
democracy, or is instead an oligarchy, or some combination of the two. The
clear finding is that the U.S. is an oligarchy, no democratic country, at
all. American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it's pumped by the
oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation's "news" media).
The U.S., in other words, is basically similar to Russia or most other
dubious "electoral" "democratic" countries. We weren't formerly, but we
clearly are now. Today, after this exhaustive analysis of the data, "the
preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule,
near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy." That's
it, in a nutshell.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of
<http://www.amazon.com/Theyre-Not-Even-Close-Democratic/dp/1880026090/ref=sr
_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1339027537&sr=8-9> They're Not Even Close: The Democratic
vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010,and of
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007Q1H4EG> CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event
that Created Christianity. 

-- 

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