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

Tue Apr 15 09:51:36 EDT 2014

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Mike Godwin | Senior Legal Advisor, Global Internet Policy Project
mgodwin at internews.org<mailto:mgodwin at internews.org> | Mobile 415-793-4446
Skype mnemonic1026
Address 1640 Rhode Island Ave. NW, 7th Floor Washington, DC 20036 USA

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From: Mawaki Chango <kichango at gmail.com<mailto:kichango at gmail.com>>
Date: Tuesday, April 15, 2014 at 9:37 AM
To: Mike Godwin <mgodwin at internews.org<mailto:mgodwin at internews.org>>
Cc: michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com<mailto:gurstein at gmail.com>>, Internet Governance Caucus List <governance at lists.igcaucus.org<mailto:governance at lists.igcaucus.org>>, bestbits <bestbits at lists.bestbits.net<mailto:bestbits at lists.bestbits.net>>
Subject: Re: [bestbits] FW: US Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy, says Scientific Study

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 11:19 AM, Mike Godwin (mgodwin at INTERNEWS.ORG<mailto:mgodwin at INTERNEWS.ORG>) <mgodwin at internews.org<mailto:mgodwin at internews.org>> wrote:
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.

Exactly the direction that my own thinking... But I am still to write my self-promised piece on MSism :)

(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.

The only way that makes sense. I think one of the biggest problem we have been facing in our discussion of MSism is that many people are confusing different level of analysis (thus confusing or mis-characterizing aspects of the phenomena to be analyzed.) MSism is a decision-making process and I don't know where anyone could have possibly taken that bogus idea that MSism is the next big thing after democracy (just like democracy once was that next big thing after tyranny, aristocracy, etc.) Those two things are not contiguous (thus mutually exclusive) phenomena on the same plane (say, the timeline of history.) We still are in the era of democracy the benefits of which many peoples on earth are still waiting for. Democracy is not only about voting (it's not even exhaustively defined by that) and exclusively for nation-state governments. It is about getting the consent of the governed (through the inclusion of their concerns) to the matters of governing -- whatever is being governed. It's not because historically, democracy has reached its highest peak (in terms of the maximum people being involved) in the context of national governments where people freely vote that that has to be the only way democracy can be operationalized, much less the only possible meaning for its concept.

When the Greeks coined the word to mean the rule of the people, did people vote? Free citizenship was only extended to a subset of people (probably still a numerical minority) excluding slaves and women, although presumably a larger elite than the one that exclusively ruled before democracy was established. It's not even clear to me whether those free citizens went to the poll to vote as we do today. And until the second half of last century, there were many suffrage movements to extend citizenship to women and (political) minorities for the right to vote, including in very developed countries. So democracy as a concept cannot be frozen into the practice of voting as we know it today (one person, one vote) in the sole context of nation-sates. It an idea that is still with us and still fully has its relevance while we are experimenting with emergent collective decision-making ideas and practices such as MSism.

In that sense, as a decision-making process MSism can prove to be more, or less, democratic, in the sense of getting the consent of the governed (through the inclusion of their concerns) to the matters of governing. If it survives its infancy and grows robust, the specific value MSism may be said to bring is the ability to make collective decisions, particularly policy decisions, at supra- and transnational level where governments are not the only participants or direct actors (I locate the primary value at that level because so far it seems in supra-national spaces, policy decisions have been made directly by government reps voting while in sub-national spaces a full and well-implemented operationalization of democratic principles may lead to outcomes that are as good and legitimate as MSism applied in those spaces.)

As a collective decision-making mechanisms chosen from various models to fit a particular governance space, each instance of MSism will be shaped and will perform based on the actors/stakeholders involved and the resources and tools available in that space. As a result, with multi-stakeholderism the devil will ALWAYS be in the detail (not to say MSism is the only thing for which this applies, so please don't start another useless discussion on this particular point, thanks.)

P.S. Sorry, maybe I should have posted this in the MSism thread... I didn't mean to be that elaborate when I begun to reply. But, hey, that's what it is.

Mawaki

—Mike

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Mike Godwin | Senior Legal Advisor, Global Internet Policy Project
mgodwin at internews.org<mailto:mgodwin at internews.org> | Mobile 415-793-4446<tel:415-793-4446>
Skype mnemonic1026
Address 1601 R Street NW, 2nd Floor Washington, DC 20009 USA

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From: michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com<mailto:gurstein at gmail.com>>
Date: Tuesday, April 15, 2014 at 6:50 AM
To: Mike Godwin <mgodwin at internews.org<mailto:mgodwin at internews.org>>, 'Internet Governance Caucus List' <governance at lists.igcaucus.org<mailto:governance at lists.igcaucus.org>>, 'bestbits' <bestbits at lists.bestbits.net<mailto: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>) [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> [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 study<http://www.princeton.edu/%7Emgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20materials/Gilens%20and%20Page/Gilens%20and%20Page%202014-Testing%20Theories%203-7-14.pdf>, 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 "Testing Theories of American Politics."<http://www.princeton.edu/%7Emgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20materials/Gilens%20and%20Page/Gilens%20and%20Page%202014-Testing%20Theories%203-7-14.pdf> 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 They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<http://www.amazon.com/Theyre-Not-Even-Close-Democratic/dp/1880026090/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1339027537&sr=8-9>,and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.<http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007Q1H4EG>

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