Member-only story
The Average American Has No Influence on Public Policy
Examining how the average American has no influence on policy outcomes compared to the wealthy
A recent study conducted at two top universities concluded that the concept of an American democracy might have become more of a fable than a fact. Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, from Princeton and Northwestern Universities, respectively, set out to answer the question: ‘Who really rules [in America]?’ Their discoveries challenge some of the most fundamental ideas that we hold about our government:
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.”
After systematically reviewing key variables for over 1,779 policy issues, Gilens and Page found that the impact of the everyday citizen is practically negligible. It was nearly impossible to find cases where the general populace actually had a true impact.
They also explore an important concept that they dub the ‘second face’ of power. This can easily be understood through an experience most American voters have presumably encountered at one point in their lives: the choice between two evils. Gilens and Page discovered that while the American populace holds a wide range of concerns, only a very narrow set of issues are ever discussed within the arena of federal government. The economic elite are the ones who determine which issues are even brought to the table. The public is then left to choose between options that have already been handpicked by a tiny portion of society.
Below are a series of charts and diagrams that I have annotated and turned into GIFs. They clearly illustrate how little preferences of the average American have on public policy. The question researchers were studying was “does the government represent the people?”
The X-axis on the graph below represents public support for any given idea. For example, 0% on the X-axis represent ideas that not a single American wants. On the other extreme of the X-axis is 100%, which represents ideas that everyone supports.
