[governance] Re: [bestbits] FW: US Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy, says Scientific Study
parminder
parminder at itforchange.net
Tue Apr 15 10:09:50 EDT 2014
On Tuesday 15 April 2014 07:07 PM, Mawaki Chango wrote:
>
> SNIP
> . 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 may not be frozen into the practice of voting-- there is a huge
amount of literature and practice of participatory democracy that says
exactly that.. But, can we freeze in not having a vote for corporates -
in fact multiple and exclusive votes, where ordinary people do not have
votes... That is MS decision making...
Why do we need to go beyond participatory democracy as the means of
fulfilling the ideal of democracy and rather jump to MSism which is
simply not democratic in a thousand way.....
parminder
> 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
>
> --
>
> *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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