Lost in the Quandary: Who’s Driving?

In the study “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens” by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, published in 2014, they investigated the influence of different groups on U.S. policymaking. The researchers analyzed a vast dataset of policy preferences expressed by various income groups and interest groups, comparing them to actual policy outcomes. The key finding of the study was that the preferences of the average American citizen had little to no statistically significant impact on policy decisions. Instead, the study suggested that economic elites and organized interest groups had a more substantial influence on shaping public policy.

“When the alignments of business-oriented and mass-based interest groups are included separately in a multivariate model, average citizens’ preferences continue to have essentially zero estimated impact upon policy change, while economic elites are still estimated to have a very large, positive, independent impact.”

In short, American democracy, as many other democracies today, can be likened to a toy steering wheel mounted at the passengers seat. And in the meantime, while the peasantry are stuck in a quagmire, constantly being bombarded with conflicting information and battling it out over more pressing issues such as if women can have penises, if men should be able to get pregnant, if it is OK to have transgender men compete versus women in women sports and if the weather is getting hotter or colder, the actual driver of the car seems to have taken aim for and is speeding towards a cliff.