The Iron Law of Oligarchy - A Couple Views

- Britannica:

The iron law of oligarchy, sociological thesis according to which all organizations, including those committed to democratic ideals and practices, will inevitably succumb to rule by an elite few (an oligarchy). The iron law of oligarchy contends that organizational democracy is an oxymoron. Although elite control makes internal democracy unsustainable, it is also said to shape the long-term development of all organizations—including the rhetorically most radical—in a conservative direction.

- Wikipedia:

The iron law of oligarchy is a political theory first developed by the German-born Italian sociologist Robert Michels in his 1911 book Political Parties. It asserts that rule by an elite, or oligarchy, is inevitable as an "iron law" within any democratic organization as part of the "tactical and technical necessities" of the organization.

Michels' theory states that all complex organizations, regardless of how democratic they are when started, eventually develop into oligarchies. Michels observed that since no sufficiently large and complex organization can function purely as a direct democracy, power within an organization will always get delegated to individuals within that group, elected or otherwise. As he put it in Political Parties, "It is organization which gives dominion of the elected over the electors. [...] Who says organization, says oligarchy."

In 1911 using anecdotes from the histories of political parties and trade unions struggling to operate democratically, Michels considered his argument applicable to representative democracy at large. He believed that "[h]istorical evolution mocks all the prophylactic measures that have been adopted for the prevention of oligarchy."

Technocracy

A post below - this one actually -refers to a person they call a technocrat.

What is that? 

- a proponent, adherent, or supporter of technocracy.

- a technological expert, especially one concerned with management or administration.

What is a Technocracy?

- Wikipedia.

- Investopedia.

- Britannica.

Just one of the many ___oracies that exist

Dear Chat GPT: What types of oligarchies exist?

Dear Kevin: 

Oligarchies are forms of government where a small group of people holds power. There are several types of oligarchies, each characterized by different criteria for membership and power distribution:

Aristocratic Oligarchy: In this type, power is held by a small elite based on hereditary or noble status. Historically, aristocratic oligarchies were common in feudal societies where noble families controlled political and economic affairs.

Plutocratic Oligarchy: Here, power is concentrated among the wealthy elite. Wealth often determines political influence, and members of the oligarchy may include business leaders, wealthy individuals, or corporate entities.

Military Oligarchy: In a military oligarchy, power is held by a small group of military leaders or generals. These regimes often arise from military coups or revolutions and maintain control through military force and authority.

Technological Oligarchy: This type emerged with the rise of technological giants and can refer to a situation where power is held by a small group of individuals who control key technological platforms or industries. Their influence can be substantial due to their control over information and communication technologies.

Theocratic Oligarchy: In a theocratic oligarchy, power is concentrated among a small group of religious leaders or clerics who govern based on religious principles. This form of government is often associated with states where religious law dominates political and social life.

Corporate Oligarchy: Similar to plutocratic oligarchies, corporate oligarchies are characterized by power being concentrated in the hands of a few corporate entities or conglomerates. These entities exert significant influence over economic policy and may have substantial political sway as well.

These types of oligarchies can overlap, and in practice, many oligarchic systems may exhibit characteristics from more than one type. Oligarchies often face criticism for concentrating power among a small group, potentially leading to inequality, lack of representation, and limited political freedoms for the broader population.

Your Friend, 
Chat GPT

Regarding week 11's written assignment

For students want to rewrite for a higher grade, here's some detail missing from the original graph.

- Click here for the original assignment.

And on these for detail.

- Here is the original article: Testing Theories of American Politics:Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.

And some commentary:

- Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy.
- Is America an Oligarchy?
- Princeton Study: U.S. No Longer An Actual Democracy.
- Scholar Behind Viral 'Oligarchy' Study Tells You What It Means.

From The Huffington Post: The Transformation of American Democracy to Oligarchy

Here's a topic I asked 2305 student to consider. It's been popular for the past year or so.

- Click here for it.

Here's some of his reasoning:

A Congress that is trusted by only 7 percent of the people is not a parliament of a democratic state. Some may say that the people can vote out those whom they not like.

But, the facts are,

One, a large majority of the people does not vote in the Congressional elections.

Two, even if they vote, they must pick either a Democrat or a Republican. Thus, the political structure is such that political power is divided between the two parties forever, and perhaps tens of millions of people have no representative in the political system.

Third, lobbyists and interest groups enjoy considerable influence in such elections.

Fourth, the faith of the people in a Congress that, instead of trying to address their needs and pursuing the true national interests of the United States, serves lobbyists, and interest groups, and the oligarchy, will continue to decline.
So, given the strong evidence, has U.S. democracy not been transformed to an oligarchy?

From Reuters: The Echo Chamber: A small group of lawyers and its out-sized influence at the Supreme Court

For 2305 students looking for a topic related to the Supreme Court - a study challenging the idea that the Supreme Court treats all cases equally. It's tough to not read this and not be cynical about the idea that the U.S. is a democracy.

The study has three parts:

1 - The Elites: At America’s court of last resort, a handful of lawyers now dominates the docket.

The marble façade of the U.S. Supreme Court building proclaims a high ideal: “Equal Justice Under Law.”

But inside, an elite cadre of lawyers has emerged as first among equals, giving their clients a disproportionate chance to influence the law of the land.

A Reuters examination of nine years of cases shows that 66 of the 17,000 lawyers who petitioned the Supreme Court succeeded at getting their clients’ appeals heard at a remarkable rate. Their appeals were at least six times more likely to be accepted by the court than were all others filed by private lawyers during that period.

The lawyers are the most influential members of one of the most powerful specialties in America: the business of practicing before the Supreme Court. None of these lawyers is a household name. But many are familiar to the nine justices. That’s because about half worked for justices past or present, and some socialize with them.

They are the elite of the elite: Although they account for far less than 1 percent of lawyers who filed appeals to the Supreme Court, these attorneys were involved in 43 percent of the cases the high court chose to decide from 2004 through 2012.

2 - The Firms: Elite law firms spin gold from a rarefied niche: getting cases before the Supreme Court.

A Reuters examination of about 10,300 court records filed over a nine-year period shows that lawyers at a dozen law firms, including Gibson Dunn, Sidley Austin and Jones Day, have become extraordinarily adept at getting cases before the Supreme Court. The news agency analyzed petitions filed by private attorneys, not those submitted by government lawyers or prison inmates and others who lack representation. Although the high court typically agrees to hear 5 percent of the petitions it receives from private attorneys, Reuters found that lawyers at the top dozen firms were successful 18 percent of the time.These firms were involved in a third of the cases the high court accepted, Reuters found. When the justices agreed to hear cases brought on behalf of Big Business, top firms were involved 60 percent of the time.

A slightly larger group – 31 firms – accounted for 44 percent of all cases the court accepted.

The domination of the Supreme Court docket by firms that commonly represent business interests has a direct, largely unseen effect on consumers seeking to sue corporations: These individuals must select from a much smaller and, in many instances, less successful pool of lawyers to handle their cases.

The reason: Many elite law practices won’t take those cases. The activities of the firms’ corporate clients are so broad, and their concerns so intertwined, that the lawyers point to disqualifying conflicts of interest – some specific, some general.

3 -  The Advocates: In an ever-clubbier specialty bar, 8 men have become Supreme Court confidants.

. . . an even smaller, more elite group of attorneys, including Clement, has come to dominate the final phase of a case: the oral arguments. That phase, a direct give-and-take with the justices, is an attorney’s last chance to sway the decision. A knack for connecting with the justices is crucial.

A Reuters analysis of high court records shows that a group of eight lawyers, all men, accounted for almost 20 percent of all the arguments made before the court by attorneys in private practice during the past decade.

In the decade before, 30 attorneys accounted for that same share.

In this ever more intimate circle, lawyers say, chemistry with the court is key. The October case was a milestone for the 48-year-old Clement: It marked the 75th time he had appeared before the high court, second most among active lawyers in private practice. The following week, at a party celebrating the feat, veteran attorney Lisa Blatt toasted Clement’s success.

“The justices love Paul,” Blatt declared. “They visibly relax when Paul stands up and they are smiling when he sits down.”

Is the United States ruled by 31,976 people?

One of the themes in the early material in this class was that keep a republic - a government based, indirectly, on the people was tough to do. There are forces at work that attempt to constrict power to a smaller handful of elites.

We referred to this as oligarchy, which is a general term describing any system that allows a small elite to rule. More recently the term plutocracy has been used. It refers to ruled by the wealthy. Some argue that the US is becoming more a plutocracy than a democracy. Here's an example.

- Click here for 5 signs America is devolving into a plutocracy.

2305 students will note that the Supreme Court has made recent rulings allowing wealthy people to spend more and more funds on elections. The Center for Responsive Politics conducted a study recently that argued that the increase in spending on elections is driven by the 1% of the 1%.

It might be worth a quick read:

- The Political One Percent of the One Percent in 2014: Mega Donors Fuel Rising Cost of Elections.

From the Washington Post: Where the political 1 percent of the 1 percent live, in 5 maps

This supports the argument that increased inequality in the nation, coupled with the increased ability of people to spend as much money as they wish on campaigns, has made the United States more plutocratic and less democratic.

We may be ruled - more or less - by a group of 32,000 people.

- Click here for the article.

In 2014, one out of every five dollars that was contributed to political candidates came from a group of about 32,000 donors -- one-one-hundredth of one-one-hundredth of the population of the country. Spending by the "1 percent of the 1 percent" has been tracked by the Center for Responsive Politics and the Sunlight Foundation, which on Thursday published an analysis of the last three cycles of activity among this group.

The very short version: A smaller group of bigger donors is composing an increasing amount of political giving.

The donors, CRP and Sunlight found, share a number of things in common. They're usually men, and they come largely from the finance industry, which will perhaps not shock you. But we were interested in a subset of that data, the geography. Most donors live in or near big cities, the groups report -- but the cities near which they live vary pretty dramatically by party.

It's very much worth your time reading the full report.

How Billionaire Oligarchs Are Becoming Their Own Political Parties

Who needs parties when you have money to burn? And the Supreme Court has allowed it to influence the political process. While attention has focused on the rise of the Republican Party due to last week's election, the bigger story might be the increased influence of the donors that determine what the party does.

In 2010, the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court effectively blew apart the McCain-Feingold restrictions on outside groups and their use of corporate and labor money in elections. That same year, a related ruling from a lower court made it easier for wealthy individuals to finance those groups to the bottom of their bank accounts if they so chose. What followed has been the most unbridled spending in elections since before Watergate. In 2000, outside groups spent $52 million on campaigns, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. By 2012, that number had increased to $1 billion.

The result was a massive power shift, from the party bosses to the rich individuals who ran the super PACs (as most of these new organizations came to be called). Almost overnight, traditional party functions — running TV commercials, setting up field operations, maintaining voter databases, even recruiting candidates — were being supplanted by outside groups. And the shift was partly because of one element of McCain-Feingold that remains: the ban on giving unlimited soft money to parties. In the party universe, rich players like the Wylys, Tom Steyer or the Kochs were but single planets among many. The party bosses had to balance their interests against those who brought just as much to the table in the form of money or votes. A party platform has to account for both the interests of the oil industry and those of the ethanol industry; those of the casino industry and those of the anti-gambling religious right; those of Wall Street and those of labor.

From Open Secrets: Money Won on Tuesday, But Rules of the Game Changed

The Center for Responsive Politics points out a few facts regarding spending on the 2014 election:

Perhaps the most striking is this: More money was contributed in this election, but it was received from fewer contributors. Does this mean more power is held by fewer people?

From ProPublica: Old Debts, Fresh Pain: Weak Laws Offer Debtors Little Protection

We're reading through some of Federalist #10 in GOVT 2305 this week and this story reminded me of some of the paper's content. In it Madison argues that political conflict ultimately stems from self interest. We take positions on issues based on how they impact us. Policy tends to be set by which ever side has a majority - so the interests of the majority will be most likely be served.

He offers this little tidbit:

Is a law proposed concerning private debts? It is a question to which the creditors are parties on one side and the debtors on the other. Justice ought to hold the balance between them. Yet the parties are, and must be, themselves the judges; and the most numerous party, or, in other words, the most powerful faction must be expected to prevail.

Based on this, its fair to say that the interests of creditors are far more represented in the legislature that the interests of debtors. The piece in ProPublica illustrates this. It concerns a law that allows wages to be garnished for credit card debt. It's worth considering whether the law presents the best and fairest way to handle credit card debt - or merely one that best secures the interests of the most powerful groups in Congress and those that support them.

- Click here for the article.

The federal law regulating garnishment harkens back to 1968, when the financial life of Americans was much simpler. Time has eroded what even then were modest protections. The law barred creditors from taking any wages from the very poorest of workers, but used a calculation based on the minimum wage to identify them. Since the federal minimum wage hasn't kept pace with inflation, today, only workers earning about $11,000 annually or less— a wage below the poverty line— are protected. The law also allows collectors to garnish a quarter of a debtor's after-tax pay, an amount that government surveys show is plainly unaffordable for many families.

And the law is silent on perhaps the most punishing tactic of collectors: It doesn't prohibit them from cleaning out debtors' bank accounts. As a result, a collector can't take more than 25 percent of a debtor's paycheck, but if that paycheck is deposited in a bank, all of the money in the account can be grabbed to pay down the debt.
State laws, while often more comprehensive than the federal rules, vary widely. Only a handful, for instance, automatically protect a minimum amount of funds in a debtor's account.

When garnishment protections do exist, the burden is usually on debtors to figure out if and how the laws protect their assets.

A "dominant minority"

I just ran across this phrase and am surprised I haven't seen it before.

It has it's own wikipedia page. Here is the text in its entirety:

A dominant minority is a minority group that has overwhelming political, economicor cultural dominance in a country despite representing a small fraction of the overall population (a demographic minority). Dominant minority is also known as alien elites[1] if they are recent immigrants.

The term is most commonly used to refer to an ethnic group which is defined alongracial, national, religious or cultural lines and that holds a disproportionate amount of power.

In both 2305 and 2306 we're going to start reading through the relevant declarations of independence and constitutions. It's worth pointing out that in each case the participants in the political process did not represent a majority of the population. They were part of  dominant minority.

On the national level its worth considering how the governing system was structured so that minority would be able to continue to rule despite adopting a governing and political system that would gradually open up participation. It's worth considering whether the United States is democratic only superficially.

A related term: tyranny of the majority.

Is America Really a Democracy?

Once we get the introductory meetings out of the way, I'd like to start with some provocative questions. None are more so than the idea that despite all that we have been told, that the United States is not - and in fact has never been - a democracy.

What's more, we were never really intended to be.

You'll note that I use the term "republic" or "democratic republic" to refer to the governing arrangement in the United States. It's closer to the truth because it reminds us that the preferences of the general public - at least those who choose to vote - are filtered through governing institutions. This means they are subject to modification. And since those institutions can be more readily influenced by the wealthy - who can contribute to elections, and hire lobbyists and lawyers - the preferences of the general population can be modified in favor of the preferences of the wealthy.

I've compiled a few blog posts on the subject of oligarchy - and its cousin plutocracy - in the United States. These lay out the argument relatively well and offer some supporting evidence.

- oligarchy.
- plutocracy.

So let's hash this out.

Should we give up the pretense that the United States is a democracy and accept that it is a plutocracy?

Weekly Written Assignment #7 - 11 week class only

For GOVT 2305: 

In the early sections of this class, you were introduced to the concepts of democracy, oligarchy and autocracy. We mentioned that while the governing system has aspects of each, we also touched on the allegation that the United States was established to be a democratic republic, and that the nation has become increasingly democratic over time.

The increased levels of equality witnessed over the past few decades have led to some wondering whether the nation has become less democratic, and that we are in fact now an oligarchy. A few articles to that effect have been published recently. Here are a few:

- IS AMERICA AN OLIGARCHY?
- America is an oligarchy, not a democracy or republic, university study finds.
- Scholar Behind Viral 'Oligarchy' Study Tells You What It Means.
- Stop calling the U.S. an oligarchy.

I want you to read these - as well as any other material you find appropriate, and critically evaluate the claim. Is America in fact - now - an oligarchy. Whether you agree or disagree, back up your claim.

For GOVT 2306: 

Texas' ongoing struggles with the national government over gerrymandering and voting rights continues.

In 2012 the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case - Perry v Perez - about the maps the legislature drew following the reapportionment in 2010. Latino groups argued that the map was drawn in a manner that suppressed the Latino vote - which tends to vote Democrat over Republican. There's your political angle.

The court ruled that it was "unclear whether the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas followed the appropriate standards in drawing interim maps for the 2012 Texas elections" so they threw the map out and ordered the case to be reheard. Now they are being reheard, so Texas has to defend how it draws electoral districts once again.

I want you to read up on the current dispute, outline the issues involved in it, and provide an educated prediction about whether Texas will win or lose this case. It's an important case because it will tell us how much leniency the Supreme Court will give Texas in future disputes. This is up in the air following the recent decision in Shelby v Holder - which you should read up on.

Here are links for background - though note the two I provided above:

- Case Information.
- Gerrymandering.
- Texas GOP’s secret anti-Hispanic plot: Smoking gun emails revealed.
- Texas Congressional District Maps Redrawn by GOP to Lessen Democrat and Latino Influence, Lawsuit Claims.
- Texas Fights U.S. Again Over Black, Latino Voting Rights.
- Texas Redistricting Trial Begins; GöPerdämmerung: Twilight of the Grumpy White Legislators.
- TXGOP's anti-Latino redistricting scheme exposed in e-mails.

Introducing Alexander Fraser Tytler

I stumbled across this skeptic of democracy a few moment ago. He was a Scottish judge (among other things) and lived from 1747 - 1813, which made his a contemporary of the people who wrote our Constitution.

His thoughts mirror those 2305 students will come across in different sections in class, including the introductory slides and those on the Federalist 10.

It's not that he does not like democracy, he just seems to not believe that democracies are really democracies.

Here's a bit from the wikipedia entry on him:

In his Lectures, Tytler displayed a cynical view of democracy in general and representative democracies such as republics in particular. He believed that "a pure democracy is a chimera," and that "All government is essentially of the nature of a monarchy."

In discussing the Athenian democracy, after noting that a great number of the population were actually enslaved, he went on to say, "Nor were the superior classes in the actual enjoyment of a rational liberty and independence. They were perpetually divided into factions, which servilely ranked themselves under the banners of the contending demagogues; and these maintained their influence over their partisans by the most shameful corruption and bribery, of which the means were supplied alone by the plunder of the public money."

Speaking about the measure of freedom enjoyed by the people in a republic or democracy, Tytler wrote, "The people flatter themselves that they have the sovereign power. These are, in fact, words without meaning. It is true they elected governors; but how are these elections brought about? In every instance of election by the mass of a people—through the influence of those governors themselves, and by means the most opposite to a free and disinterested choice, by the basest corruption and bribery. But those governors once selected, where is the boasted freedom of the people? They must submit to their rule and control, with the same abandonment of their natural liberty, the freedom of their will, and the command of their actions, as if they were under the rule of a monarch."

So democracy is an illusion. Skeptics in America likely believe the same, and some of the material we will cover in class may well feed that notion.

Tytler is also argued to have developed his own view of the cyclical nature of history. The introductory slides introduce this idea that was common during the enlightenment.

Here's his take on the process:

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.

Is the U.S. now officially an oligarchy?

Some critics argue that we have been one all along and that any pretense that we are a viable democracy - rules by the people and all that - was an illusion. But now it may well be that there is no attempt to maintain that illusion.

That seem to be this author's point - other are making the same argument.

- Click here for the article.

When the dust from the McCutcheon demolition settles, all that’s left are base contribution limits in a larger campaign finance system where America’s oligarchs can choose between unlimited independent expenditures and unlimited aggregate contributions to buy all the political influence they will ever need. The one good thing you can say about the opinion is that maybe it will re-direct some of the money now being expended as independent expenditures to the major political parties in the form of large aggregate contributions, giving candidates and parties a chance to regain some control of the electoral agenda. In that sense, McCutcheon improves the configuration of Buckley’s airless room, but leaves American democracy trapped at “one dollar, one vote.” There is no ignoring the fact that American democracy is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Oligarchs, Inc.

Is the root of oligarchy?

An article in Hazlitt discusses an academic paper that looks at the factors that lead to the role that aggression plays in establishing a hierarchy among school age kids. Maybe we're teaching kids the wrong things about what it takes to get ahead.

The study is titled: Aggression, Exclusivity, and Status Attainment in Interpersonal Networks.

I'm pretty certain its findings tell us something about how political hierarchies form and how these are in turn cemented in constitutional and statutory law.

From the article:

In order to determine who the schools’ “elite” were, Faris scoured old yearbooks, plucking out kids who had been part of the “homecoming court,” prom royalty, or were a “notable”—voted girl with “prettiest eyes,” “biggest flirt,” “most likely to succeed,” etc. He then defined the next highest status category as “friend of the elite”—someone who the elite had mentioned as a friend. The students in the next tier, cruelly named the “hangers-on,” were those who had named a member of the elite as a friend but hadn’t received a friendship nomination back.

In all, the elites represented 5% of the schools, their friends and hangers-on 14%, with the rest of the benighted 81% struggling to break into the top tier. While this social elite was exclusive, it wasn’t a closed system. Over the year, kids moved in and out of the top tier. Faris’s question was simple: what is the best strategy to rise through the ranks?

The sociologist found that being connected to more students actually decreased the likelihood of becoming an elite. Kids who “bridge otherwise distant peers” were far more likely to enhance their social status, but simply having a bunch of friends who all had their own collection of friends was no way to become prom queen. “Elite status is maintained through selectivity, not connectivity, and by denying rather than accumulating relationships,” he writes.

He also found that aggression was a useful tactic. Violence was still seen as antisocial and undesirable, but “reputational aggression”—the teasing, rumour-mongering, gossiping, ostracism, and other non-physical means through which high-school kids ruin one anothers teenage years—actually doubled the chances of a student becoming a friend of the elite, particularly if the aggressor attacked a high-status individual or someone who was close to them socially (your friends, of course, are your biggest adversaries). Victims of aggression, meanwhile, were half as likely as regular kids to join the elite or second tier. Being an asshole enhances your social status at the expense of your victim.

From the Wall Street Journal: The Late, Great American WASP: The old U.S. ruling class had plenty of problems. But are we really better off with a country run by the self-involved, over-schooled products of modern meritocracy?

Is the current meritocracy and improvement over the old ruling class - the WASPocracy?

The author has his doubts.

Much can be—and has been—written about the shortcomings of the WASPocracy. As a class, it was exclusionary and hence tolerant of social prejudice, if not often downright snobbish. Tradition-minded, it tended to be dead to innovation and social change. Imagination wasn't high on its list of admired qualities.

Yet the WASP elite had dignity and an impressive sense of social responsibility. In a 1990 book called "The Way of the Wasp," Richard Brookhiser held that the chief WASP qualities were "success depending on industry; use giving industry its task; civic-mindedness placing obligations on success, and antisensuality setting limits to the enjoyment of it; conscience watching over everything."

Under WASP hegemony, corruption, scandal and incompetence in high places weren't, as now, regular features of public life. Under WASP rule, stability, solidity, gravity and a certain weight and aura of seriousness suffused public life. As a ruling class, today's new meritocracy has failed to provide the positive qualities that older generations of WASPs provided.

Meritocracy is leadership thought to be based on men and women who have earned their way not through the privileges of birth but by merit. La carrière ouverte aux talents:Careers open to the talented, is what Napoleon Bonaparte promised, and it is what any meritocratic system is supposed to provide.

The U.S. now fancies itself under a meritocratic system, through which the highest jobs are open to the most talented people, no matter their lineage or social background. And so it might seem, when one considers that our 42nd president, Bill Clinton, came from a broken home in a backwater in Arkansas, while our 44th,Barack Obama, was himself also from a broken home and biracial into the bargain. Sen. Ted Cruz, the man who leads the tea party, is the son of a Cuban émigré.

Meritocracy in America starts (and often ends) in what are thought to be the best colleges and universities. On the meritocratic climb, one's mettle is first tested by getting into these institutions—no easy task in the contemporary overcrowded scramble for admission. Then, of course, one must do well within them. In England, it was once said that Waterloo and the empire were built on the playing fields of Eton. The current American imperium appears to have been built at the offices of the Educational Testing Service, which administers the SATs.

. . . What our new meritocrats have failed to evince—and what the older WASP generation prided itself on—is character and the ability to put the well-being of the nation before their own. Character embodied in honorable action is at the heart of the novels and stories of Louis Auchincloss, America's last unembarrassedly WASP writer. Doing the right thing, especially in the face of temptations to do otherwise, was the WASP test par excellence. Most of our meritocrats, by contrast, seem to be in business for themselves.

Trust, honor, character: The elements that have departed U.S. public life with the departure from prominence of WASP culture have not been taken up by the meritocrats. Many meritocrats who enter politics, when retired by the electorate from public life, proceed to careers in lobbying or other special-interest advocacy. University presidents no longer speak to the great issues in education but instead devote themselves to fundraising and public relations, and look to move on to the next, more prestigious university presidency.

Democracy is different for the wealthy

Here's a table from Gilen's work referred to below. When shifts in the preferences of high income people change, policies are more likely to change than when those of low or middle incomes do.



This makes sense when we think of policy makers - especially legislators - as being self interested actors who wish to maximize their re-election chances. Back those who can help - or hurt - you.

Does this suggest we ought to consider the US to be more an oligarchy than a democracy? A good discussion question for class.

Why worry at all about the working class vote?

A few posts below some clarifying detail - regionalism - was provided about the white working class vote for Obama and Romney. Buried in some of the links provided was a more ominous note about whether their vote was even worth worrying about as a purely policy making matter, this applies to anyone in, or any group representing, the needs of the lower classes (the poor and kinda not so well off).

Policymakers tend to not pay attention to them, and shifts in their attitudes about public policy tend to have little or no impact on policy. This is not true for the wealthy. This seems like an obvious intuitive point, but some research has been published providing empirical proof.

Here's a link to work done by Martin Gilens who claims that inequity in the responsiveness of elected officials threatens the ability of the US to call itself a democracy:

In a democracy, all citizens—the rich, middle-class, poor alike—must have some ability to influence what their government does. Few people would expect that influence to be identical: those with higher incomes and better connections will always be more influential. But if influence becomes so unequal that the wishes of most citizens are ignored most of the time, a country’s claim to be a democracy is cast in doubt. And that is exactly what I found in my analyses of the link between public preferences and government policy in the U.S.
And here's a link to a recent book - the Unheavenly Chorus  - that looks at the nature of organized interest in the nation and come to the same conclusion:


The Unheavenly Chorus is the first book to look at the political participation of individual citizens alongside the political advocacy of thousands of organized interests--membership associations such as unions, professional associations, trade associations, and citizens groups, as well as organizations like corporations, hospitals, and universities. Drawing on numerous in-depth surveys of members of the public as well as the largest database of interest organizations ever created--representing more than thirty-five thousand organizations over a twenty-five-year period--this book conclusively demonstrates that American democracy is marred by deeply ingrained and persistent class-based political inequality. The well educated and affluent are active in many ways to make their voices heard, while the less advantaged are not. This book reveals how the political voices of organized interests are even less representative than those of individuals, how political advantage is handed down across generations, how recruitment to political activity perpetuates and exaggerates existing biases, how political voice on the Internet replicates these inequalities--and more.

In a true democracy, the preferences and needs of all citizens deserve equal consideration. Yet equal consideration is only possible with equal citizen voice. The Unheavenly Chorus reveals how far we really are from the democratic ideal and how hard it would be to attain it.

2301 and 2305 students who have finished reading through Fed 10 and our subsequent analysis of interest groups should not find these allegations surprising.