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Democracy in America?: What Has Gone Wrong and What We Can Do About It
UPDATED FOR THE TRUMP AND POST-TRUMP ERAS WITH A NEW "A CRITICAL JUNCTURE"
America faces daunting problems--stagnant wages, high health care costs, neglected schools, deteriorating public services. How did we get here? Through decades of dysfunctional government. In Democracy in America? veteran political observers Benjamin I. Page and Martin Gilens marshal an unprecedented array of evidence to show that while other countries have responded to a rapidly changing economy by helping people who've been left behind, the United States has failed to do so. Instead, we have actually exacerbated inequality, enriching corporations and the wealthy while leaving ordinary citizens to fend for themselves.
What's the solution? More democracy. More opportunities for citizens to shape what their government does. To repair our democracy, Page and Gilens argue, we must change the way we choose candidates and conduct our elections, reform our governing institutions, and curb the power of money in politics. By doing so, we can reduce polarization and gridlock, address pressing challenges, and enact policies that truly reflect the interests of average Americans.
This book lays out a set of proposals that would boost citizen participation, curb the power of money, and democratize the House and Senate.
America faces daunting problems--stagnant wages, high health care costs, neglected schools, deteriorating public services. How did we get here? Through decades of dysfunctional government. In Democracy in America? veteran political observers Benjamin I. Page and Martin Gilens marshal an unprecedented array of evidence to show that while other countries have responded to a rapidly changing economy by helping people who've been left behind, the United States has failed to do so. Instead, we have actually exacerbated inequality, enriching corporations and the wealthy while leaving ordinary citizens to fend for themselves.
What's the solution? More democracy. More opportunities for citizens to shape what their government does. To repair our democracy, Page and Gilens argue, we must change the way we choose candidates and conduct our elections, reform our governing institutions, and curb the power of money in politics. By doing so, we can reduce polarization and gridlock, address pressing challenges, and enact policies that truly reflect the interests of average Americans.
This book lays out a set of proposals that would boost citizen participation, curb the power of money, and democratize the House and Senate.
352 pages, Paperback
Published April 2, 2020
41 people are currently reading
238 people want to read
About the author
Benjamin I. Page
40 books20 followersBenjamin I. Page is a Gordon S. Fulcher Professor of Decision Making at Northwestern University. He is also a Faculty Associate at the Institute for Policy Research. Page holds a PhD from Stanford University and a JD from Harvard Law School.
Page works on American politics and U.S. foreign policy, specializing in public opinion, democratic policy making, the media, and economic inequality. He is best known for his work (with Robert Y. Shapiro) on the “rationality” of public opinion: the general stability, coherence, and responsiveness to new information of Americans’ collective policy preferences. He is currently studying the political attitudes and behavior of wealthy Americans – the top 1% of U.S. wealth-holders – investigating how they often disagree with average citizens but tend to get their way in policy making. Page’s past civic involvement has been limited, but he is now committed to helping Americans understand the barriers that stand in the way of democratic responsiveness.
Professor Page's interests include public opinion and policy making, the mass media, empirical democratic theory, political economy, policy formation, the presidency, and American foreign policy. He is author of a number of articles, including "Effects of Public Opinion on Policy" and "What Moves Public Opinion," both in the American Political Science Review, and of 11 books, including Living with the Dragon: How the American Public Views the Rise of China (with Tao Xie, Columbia University Press, 2010); Class War?: What Americans Really Think about Economic Inequality (with Lawrence R. Jacobs, University of Chicago Press, 2009); The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans' Policy Preferences (with Robert Shapiro, University of Chicago Press, 1992), Who Deliberates: Mass Media in Modern Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 1996) and What Government Can Do: Dealing with Poverty and Inequality (with James Simmons, University of Chicago Press, 2000). His research interests include public opinion, policy making, the mass media, and U.S. foreign policy. He is currently engaged in a large collaborative project to study Economically Successful Americans and the Common Good.
Page works on American politics and U.S. foreign policy, specializing in public opinion, democratic policy making, the media, and economic inequality. He is best known for his work (with Robert Y. Shapiro) on the “rationality” of public opinion: the general stability, coherence, and responsiveness to new information of Americans’ collective policy preferences. He is currently studying the political attitudes and behavior of wealthy Americans – the top 1% of U.S. wealth-holders – investigating how they often disagree with average citizens but tend to get their way in policy making. Page’s past civic involvement has been limited, but he is now committed to helping Americans understand the barriers that stand in the way of democratic responsiveness.
Professor Page's interests include public opinion and policy making, the mass media, empirical democratic theory, political economy, policy formation, the presidency, and American foreign policy. He is author of a number of articles, including "Effects of Public Opinion on Policy" and "What Moves Public Opinion," both in the American Political Science Review, and of 11 books, including Living with the Dragon: How the American Public Views the Rise of China (with Tao Xie, Columbia University Press, 2010); Class War?: What Americans Really Think about Economic Inequality (with Lawrence R. Jacobs, University of Chicago Press, 2009); The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans' Policy Preferences (with Robert Shapiro, University of Chicago Press, 1992), Who Deliberates: Mass Media in Modern Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 1996) and What Government Can Do: Dealing with Poverty and Inequality (with James Simmons, University of Chicago Press, 2000). His research interests include public opinion, policy making, the mass media, and U.S. foreign policy. He is currently engaged in a large collaborative project to study Economically Successful Americans and the Common Good.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 20, 2019
I believe the intent of the authors and the thrust of their argument is most clearly given in their own words, as follows:
"In this book we argue that gridlock and inaction in Washington result from two main causes: clashes between our two sharply divided political parties and obstructive actions by corporations, interest groups, and wealthy individuals. The many “veto points” in our complex political system (that is, the many opportunities for one or another political actor to thwart policy change) are used to prevent the enactment of policies that most Americans want.
"The non-responsiveness and dysfunction of government are close related to undemocratic features of our political system. Our laws and institutions make it hard for ordinary citizens to have an effective voice in politics. They permit corporations, interest groups, and the wealthy to exert a great deal of influence over what the government does. And they allow donors and highly ideological political activists to dominate the parties’ nominations of candidates for office, so that the two parties are pushed in sharply contrasting directions – contribution to gridlock. (Pp. 3-4)
"It follows that our problems can be more effectively addressed if we reform our political system to achieve more democracy: more equal opportunity for all citizens to shape what their government does and policies that better address the needs of all Americans.
"If the political parties are democratized, for example, so that each of them is forced to appeal more to the voters and less to the party’s donors and activists, they will differ less sharply from each other. That will reduce gridlock….
"Similarly, if we reform elections so that all citizens have an equal voice, and if we mute the influence of political money and organized interests, public officials will more faithfully reflect what ordinary Americans want….
"In the course of American history, the health of democracy and the extent of economic equality have tended to rise and fall together. Each has affected the other. (P. 4)
"…a core element of democracy is political equality – an equal voice for each citizens…. (We will see that voters in the United States tend to be quite unrepresentative of the citizenry as a whole.)
"… In today’s America, a relatively small, unelected set of people exerts a great deal of influence over who appears on the ballot and who has a realistic chance to win: those who supply the money. (P. 6)
"The Money Problem. A crucial part of this picture is that both parties need enormous amounts of money, but – under our current system – that money mostly comes from a very small set of megadonors. In 2012, for example, a tiny sliver of the U.S. population – just one-tenth of one-tenth of 1 percent of Americans – provided almost half of all the money spent in federal elections. (p. 7)
"…The result: U.S. government policy often reflects the wishes of those with money, not the wishes of the millions of ordinary citizens who turn out every two years to choose among the preapproved, money-vetted candidates for federal office. (Pp. 7-8)
"If we want true majoritarian democracy, what really matters is whether – and to what extent – ordinary citizens can control what their government does. (P. 8)
"Most Americans do not devote a great deal of thought to politics. But they do have easy, direct access to some information that is highly relevant to public police: the size of their Social Security checks; what is happening to their jobs and wages, the…condition of the roads they drive on; price rises or declines in grocery stores or at gasoline pumps. On some of these day-to-day pocketbook concerns – and on such matters as neighborhood crime, the challenge of holding down a job with no paid sick leave, the difficulty of finding affordable child care, or the (un)reliability of public transportation – ordinary Americans may actually have better firsthand information than elites who live more rarefied, sheltered lives. (P. 11)
"As a result, most Americans – on most major issues – are able to form a general idea about what they want the government to do. They develop underlying tendencies of opinion. When the uncertain beliefs and opinions of millions of people are combined, the random noise is reduced. Collective preferences tend to be solid. They tend to reflect the underlying needs and values of the whole body of citizens, in light of the best available information from experts and commentators. (Pp. 11-12)
"As a general matter we believe that the expressed preferences of the American people deserve much more respect from policy makers than they currently get…. We believe that majority rule – even when we ourselves happen to disagree with the majority – tends to produce public politics that benefit the largest number of people and promote the common good. We believe that more democracy in the United States today would yield better policies: “better” in the sense that they would advance the interests and preferences of more Americans." (P. 13)
As I suspect you have gleaned from the above, the authors believe that our many very serious problems begin – but do not end with – the dominant role that money plays at all levels in our political process. It determines who has a chance to even be considered to run for office, who is most likely to prevail in political contests, and who will be successful in retaining an office once elected. It inextricably, therefore, is interwoven with everything that politicians see, assess, and favor or oppose, since those with the most money possess relative electronic megaphones compared to the average citizen.
Furthermore, since today’s elections are so phenomenally expensive, much of the time that officeholders could otherwise devote to studying and promoting policy matters important to their constituents is, instead, diverted to endless fund-raising.
No wonder, then, that grave inequality has come to exist and continues to grow. The authors observe that “economic inequality and democracy are in serious conflict” because the general public is “virtually powerless.” Money has made “a mockery of one person/one vote.
Again and again, however, the U.S. political system has failed to provide sufficient public goods that majorities of Americans want and need. Examples include environmental protection; up-to-date trains, highways, mass transit, and other transportation infrastructure; immigration reform; protection against gun violence; high-quality, affordable schools and colleges; and regulation of the economy, especially the financial sector. (P. 73)
As have so many before them, they also note how gridlock serves the interest of the status quo and is caused, in no small measure, by the two major parties – especially because of what has happened to the Republicans over the course of recent decades – become more ideologically at extreme odds with each other.
This polarization is caused and sustained by a number of things, including partisan primaries, partisan gerrymandering, the skillful manipulation of hot-button issues by those who wish to foster doubt and rage, and the intentional sowing of knowingly false and misleading “information” that feeds extreme tribalism.
Their helpful litany of what can be done is also familiar if, sadly, hard to implement because the control levers are in the hands of those who stand to lose if any change is made:
Curbing the role of money at all levels
Full disclosure of major spending to influence issues or to support or oppose candidates
Fully disclose which lobbyists are paid to influence which issues, as well as the amounts they receive to do so and which they contribute to political operatives in seeking to make it happen
Increase the diversity of so-called “think tanks” and other issue-oriented groups so that the issues most important to the American public receive adequate lobbying support
Reinvigorate organized labor, a major cause in the weakening of wages and job protections, as well as in the loss that union opposition to big money once represented
Remove barriers to elections, including:
o Stopping all purges of voter rolls, and,
o Halting all efforts intended to suppress votes
o Moving to universal voter registration
Insist that legislation passed by one chamber of Congress be allowed to be considered by members of the other chamber
Implement ranked voting as an important means of advancing more moderate and diverse candidates
Move towards multi-member districts which would allow proportional representation to replace the almost universally used current method of winner take all since the former is a superior means of reflecting the popular will
Reforming the Electoral College
That these may strike many as “pie in the sky” is less, I believe, than because they ideas are at all impractical or unworkable and more because most doubt there is any way to persuade existing power brokers to consider, let alone adapt, them.
Which is why, in their next to the last chapter, the authors encourage us to recognize that, without creating a true social movement for greater democracy – as has been done in the past, with the Populists/Progressive efforts of the late 19th and early 20th century and in the tremendous advances made during the New Deal of the 1930s – little is likely to change.
But “the people” have been in the near-death grip of the wealthy and powerful before, and the one thing they do not have – and have never had – is the interests of the majority in their hearts of the support of the majority for their selfish policies.
This is a book rich in fact, argument, and recommendations that would be a great one-stop read for someone who wants to catch up fast with both how we got here as well as in searching for helpful suggestions for how we get out and move on!
"In this book we argue that gridlock and inaction in Washington result from two main causes: clashes between our two sharply divided political parties and obstructive actions by corporations, interest groups, and wealthy individuals. The many “veto points” in our complex political system (that is, the many opportunities for one or another political actor to thwart policy change) are used to prevent the enactment of policies that most Americans want.
"The non-responsiveness and dysfunction of government are close related to undemocratic features of our political system. Our laws and institutions make it hard for ordinary citizens to have an effective voice in politics. They permit corporations, interest groups, and the wealthy to exert a great deal of influence over what the government does. And they allow donors and highly ideological political activists to dominate the parties’ nominations of candidates for office, so that the two parties are pushed in sharply contrasting directions – contribution to gridlock. (Pp. 3-4)
"It follows that our problems can be more effectively addressed if we reform our political system to achieve more democracy: more equal opportunity for all citizens to shape what their government does and policies that better address the needs of all Americans.
"If the political parties are democratized, for example, so that each of them is forced to appeal more to the voters and less to the party’s donors and activists, they will differ less sharply from each other. That will reduce gridlock….
"Similarly, if we reform elections so that all citizens have an equal voice, and if we mute the influence of political money and organized interests, public officials will more faithfully reflect what ordinary Americans want….
"In the course of American history, the health of democracy and the extent of economic equality have tended to rise and fall together. Each has affected the other. (P. 4)
"…a core element of democracy is political equality – an equal voice for each citizens…. (We will see that voters in the United States tend to be quite unrepresentative of the citizenry as a whole.)
"… In today’s America, a relatively small, unelected set of people exerts a great deal of influence over who appears on the ballot and who has a realistic chance to win: those who supply the money. (P. 6)
"The Money Problem. A crucial part of this picture is that both parties need enormous amounts of money, but – under our current system – that money mostly comes from a very small set of megadonors. In 2012, for example, a tiny sliver of the U.S. population – just one-tenth of one-tenth of 1 percent of Americans – provided almost half of all the money spent in federal elections. (p. 7)
"…The result: U.S. government policy often reflects the wishes of those with money, not the wishes of the millions of ordinary citizens who turn out every two years to choose among the preapproved, money-vetted candidates for federal office. (Pp. 7-8)
"If we want true majoritarian democracy, what really matters is whether – and to what extent – ordinary citizens can control what their government does. (P. 8)
"Most Americans do not devote a great deal of thought to politics. But they do have easy, direct access to some information that is highly relevant to public police: the size of their Social Security checks; what is happening to their jobs and wages, the…condition of the roads they drive on; price rises or declines in grocery stores or at gasoline pumps. On some of these day-to-day pocketbook concerns – and on such matters as neighborhood crime, the challenge of holding down a job with no paid sick leave, the difficulty of finding affordable child care, or the (un)reliability of public transportation – ordinary Americans may actually have better firsthand information than elites who live more rarefied, sheltered lives. (P. 11)
"As a result, most Americans – on most major issues – are able to form a general idea about what they want the government to do. They develop underlying tendencies of opinion. When the uncertain beliefs and opinions of millions of people are combined, the random noise is reduced. Collective preferences tend to be solid. They tend to reflect the underlying needs and values of the whole body of citizens, in light of the best available information from experts and commentators. (Pp. 11-12)
"As a general matter we believe that the expressed preferences of the American people deserve much more respect from policy makers than they currently get…. We believe that majority rule – even when we ourselves happen to disagree with the majority – tends to produce public politics that benefit the largest number of people and promote the common good. We believe that more democracy in the United States today would yield better policies: “better” in the sense that they would advance the interests and preferences of more Americans." (P. 13)
As I suspect you have gleaned from the above, the authors believe that our many very serious problems begin – but do not end with – the dominant role that money plays at all levels in our political process. It determines who has a chance to even be considered to run for office, who is most likely to prevail in political contests, and who will be successful in retaining an office once elected. It inextricably, therefore, is interwoven with everything that politicians see, assess, and favor or oppose, since those with the most money possess relative electronic megaphones compared to the average citizen.
Furthermore, since today’s elections are so phenomenally expensive, much of the time that officeholders could otherwise devote to studying and promoting policy matters important to their constituents is, instead, diverted to endless fund-raising.
No wonder, then, that grave inequality has come to exist and continues to grow. The authors observe that “economic inequality and democracy are in serious conflict” because the general public is “virtually powerless.” Money has made “a mockery of one person/one vote.
Again and again, however, the U.S. political system has failed to provide sufficient public goods that majorities of Americans want and need. Examples include environmental protection; up-to-date trains, highways, mass transit, and other transportation infrastructure; immigration reform; protection against gun violence; high-quality, affordable schools and colleges; and regulation of the economy, especially the financial sector. (P. 73)
As have so many before them, they also note how gridlock serves the interest of the status quo and is caused, in no small measure, by the two major parties – especially because of what has happened to the Republicans over the course of recent decades – become more ideologically at extreme odds with each other.
This polarization is caused and sustained by a number of things, including partisan primaries, partisan gerrymandering, the skillful manipulation of hot-button issues by those who wish to foster doubt and rage, and the intentional sowing of knowingly false and misleading “information” that feeds extreme tribalism.
Their helpful litany of what can be done is also familiar if, sadly, hard to implement because the control levers are in the hands of those who stand to lose if any change is made:
Curbing the role of money at all levels
Full disclosure of major spending to influence issues or to support or oppose candidates
Fully disclose which lobbyists are paid to influence which issues, as well as the amounts they receive to do so and which they contribute to political operatives in seeking to make it happen
Increase the diversity of so-called “think tanks” and other issue-oriented groups so that the issues most important to the American public receive adequate lobbying support
Reinvigorate organized labor, a major cause in the weakening of wages and job protections, as well as in the loss that union opposition to big money once represented
Remove barriers to elections, including:
o Stopping all purges of voter rolls, and,
o Halting all efforts intended to suppress votes
o Moving to universal voter registration
Insist that legislation passed by one chamber of Congress be allowed to be considered by members of the other chamber
Implement ranked voting as an important means of advancing more moderate and diverse candidates
Move towards multi-member districts which would allow proportional representation to replace the almost universally used current method of winner take all since the former is a superior means of reflecting the popular will
Reforming the Electoral College
That these may strike many as “pie in the sky” is less, I believe, than because they ideas are at all impractical or unworkable and more because most doubt there is any way to persuade existing power brokers to consider, let alone adapt, them.
Which is why, in their next to the last chapter, the authors encourage us to recognize that, without creating a true social movement for greater democracy – as has been done in the past, with the Populists/Progressive efforts of the late 19th and early 20th century and in the tremendous advances made during the New Deal of the 1930s – little is likely to change.
But “the people” have been in the near-death grip of the wealthy and powerful before, and the one thing they do not have – and have never had – is the interests of the majority in their hearts of the support of the majority for their selfish policies.
This is a book rich in fact, argument, and recommendations that would be a great one-stop read for someone who wants to catch up fast with both how we got here as well as in searching for helpful suggestions for how we get out and move on!
Read
March 20, 2024these mfs need an editor, the repetition in this book is so annoying.
January 16, 2020
Democracy in America? is a mostly boring, repetitive book but a decent reference in terms of the fine work that its authors, political scientists Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens, have done. The impetus for this book was Gilens and Page study of public policy over the past 20 years that concluded that any American not in the top 20% of the income brackets has virtually no influence on major issues such as health care, gun rights, the environment, nuclear power, and so on. They surmised that the United States is not a democracy but a plutocracy, a country run by the wealthy.
What does this book add to the original study? The recommendation that the only thing that would make the United States more democratic is a massive social movement, a broad coalition of worker, minority, religious, environmental, and scientific organizations mobilizing and coordinating to push for massive reform at all levels of government. America has a long history of doing this when the majority of citizens experience hardships and have to push book. You saw this mass mobilization with the agrarian Populist movement, the Progressive movement during the Gilded Age, the labor strikes and voting rights activists that set off Roosevelet's New Deal, and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.
Mass movements require protests, strikes, sit-ins, petitioning local, state, and national governments for legislation, voting for compromise candidates, and actual people getting together in real spaces and doing things and coordinating their actions. Change will also require help from middle- and upper-class Americans and middle- and upper-class institutions that would be willing to work together and push for broader democracy.
Again, this is a decent reference book, and for that reason I like it, but it was kind of a slog and extremely redundant.
What does this book add to the original study? The recommendation that the only thing that would make the United States more democratic is a massive social movement, a broad coalition of worker, minority, religious, environmental, and scientific organizations mobilizing and coordinating to push for massive reform at all levels of government. America has a long history of doing this when the majority of citizens experience hardships and have to push book. You saw this mass mobilization with the agrarian Populist movement, the Progressive movement during the Gilded Age, the labor strikes and voting rights activists that set off Roosevelet's New Deal, and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.
Mass movements require protests, strikes, sit-ins, petitioning local, state, and national governments for legislation, voting for compromise candidates, and actual people getting together in real spaces and doing things and coordinating their actions. Change will also require help from middle- and upper-class Americans and middle- and upper-class institutions that would be willing to work together and push for broader democracy.
Again, this is a decent reference book, and for that reason I like it, but it was kind of a slog and extremely redundant.
June 3, 2023
Total leftist propaganda
This poorly thought out slow read couches Socialist ideals as Democracy. While the USA Federalist system can certainly be improved that improvement is not likely to manifest by penalizing Capitalist economics in favor of government imposed wealth redistribution. One can,however, make a good case of getting corporate money out of our political party system thus limiting the influence of lobbyists in
creating less egalitarian policy that often penalizes the average citizen. Limiting political cronieism by using term limits would also help.
This poorly thought out slow read couches Socialist ideals as Democracy. While the USA Federalist system can certainly be improved that improvement is not likely to manifest by penalizing Capitalist economics in favor of government imposed wealth redistribution. One can,however, make a good case of getting corporate money out of our political party system thus limiting the influence of lobbyists in
creating less egalitarian policy that often penalizes the average citizen. Limiting political cronieism by using term limits would also help.
February 5, 2020
Leaving aside their ideas - some (a lot?) of which aren't good or by any means feasible - this is a very poorly written and incredibly redundant book. Read one or two chapters and you have their argument; no need to bother with all 270 pages.
February 25, 2019
Repetitive
Although interesting, the book becomes very repetitive very soon. The reform proposals are well developed though, and the diagnostic is precise.
Although interesting, the book becomes very repetitive very soon. The reform proposals are well developed though, and the diagnostic is precise.
June 2, 2019
"Their" candidate has won. So what can "we" do to make sure "our" candidate wins every time. Wonderful discourse from an academic paper pusher that wants more attention than his sinecure can offer.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews