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

Sat Apr 19 16:23:00 EDT 2014

Just found this:

http://rameznaam.com/2014/04/17/is-the-us-an-oligarchy-not-so-fast/

"In fact, this paper fails to find any strong effect of any variable
that it looked at on the likelihood of policy being enacted. They mask
this a bit by ‘scaling’ all the predictive powers back up to the range
of 0-1 in the next table. Perhaps they intended that as a way to more
clearly show the size of one factor vs another. But it masks the fact
that none of the factors they found had much of any ability to predict
which policies were passed.

The authors might have done better looking at more complex variables such as:

- The percent of voters who supported or opposed a policy.
- The total amount of lobbying dollars spent on either side.
- The total amount of advertising dollars spent on either side.

But they didn’t.

This doesn’t mean that the US isn’t an oligarchy or that lobbyists and
elites don’t have too much power. We don’t know that from this paper.

All we know is that the paper doesn’t prove much of anything. And that
the headlines based on it – while they probably draw a great many
clicks – aren’t accurately passing on what the study says."

On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 8:03 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian
<suresh at hserus.net> wrote:
> Funny, I support MSism and I have yet to see a penny of this "direct benefit
> from oligarchies"
>
> Can we please dispense with the conspiracy theories at least, even if you
> don't like multistakeholderism in the form that it is commonly practiced?
>
> --srs (iPad)
>
> On 15-Apr-2014, at 1:36, "michael gurstein" <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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 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 "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 They're
> Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records,
> 1910-2010,and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created
> Christianity.
>
>
>
> --
>
> ---
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-- 
Cheers,

McTim
"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A
route indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel

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