Telling people that American politics is so messy as it is because of formal arguments about first-past-the-post voting is similar to explaining that the way highways get build with formal mathematical formulas about traffic density.
Related data:
A couple years ago, there were a bunch of sensational headlines along the lines of “US is an Oligarchy, not a Democracy, New Study Finds”. The actual study is an interesting read: Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens It correlated the average preferences of average citizens, economic elites, and special interest groups (divided into “mass public interest groups” and “business interest groups”). Interestingly, Table 2 shows that economic elite preferences actually correlate with average citizen preferences at .78. Also, business interest groups correlate with mass public interest group preferences at −0.05, but all interest groups overall at 0.96, so I guess the vast majority of interest groups are business interest groups? Aside from “all interest groups”, business interests seem to correlate negatively with everything else, although not as negatively as I would have thought. They then looked at the probability of various legislation passing, given that various categories were for or against it on average. They focus on cases where, for example, economic elites favor something but average citizens are against it, and compare it to actual policy outcomes passing or failing. They build several models for power and influence, and do a bunch of statistics I haven’t read the details of to try to figure out how much influence various groups have on actual policy outcomes. Eyeballing figure 1, if looks like if 10% of average americans support something, it has maybe a 30% chance of passing, but if 90% of average citizens support something, it has maybe a 31% chance of passing. Conversely, if 10% of economic elites favor a piece of legislation, it has only a 10% chance of passing, but if 90% of them favor it, it has a 60% chance of passing. Both of those graphs were fairly linear, and had a good spread, with lots of legislation with both high support and high opposition. They also tried to graph the net number of interest groups in support or opposition to legislation, vs. the probability of it passing. However, in almost all cases, there were less than 4 more either supporting or opposing each bill, so all their data points are clustered in the center. I’m not sure I believed their model projections outside of that narrow range, but if you believe that weird-shaped s-curve, then more net interest groups in support of a bill does cause it to be much more likely to pass.
Take all this with a grain of salt, though. There have been a couple follow up studies which stepped this back substantially. As Vox puts it “When the rich and middle class disagree, each wins about half the time”:
That leaves only 185 bills on which the rich and the middle class disagree, and even there the disagreements are small. On average, the groups’ opinion gaps on the 185 bills is 10.9 percentage points; so, say, 45 percent of the middle class might support a bill while 55.9 percent of the rich support it.
Bashir and Branham/Soroka/Wlezien find that on these 185 bills, the rich got their preferred outcome 53 percent of the time and the middle class got what they wanted 47 percent of the time. The difference between the two is not statistically significant.
And also:
Bashir also notes that the Gilens and Page model explains very little. Its R-squared value is a measly 0.074. That is, 7.4 percent of variation in policy outcomes is determined by the measured views of the rich, the poor, and interest groups put together. So even if the rich control the bulk of that (and Bashir argues they do not), the absolute amount of sway over policy that represents is quite limited indeed.
That makes you wonder: If only 7.4% of the variance is due to these groups, then what on earth is determining policy??!!
Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!
Right. Obvious answer is obvious.
Or maybe the middle class, since they are conspicuously absent from “rich, the poor, and interest groups put together”? I think “rich” is still being defined as top 10% here, and “poor” as bottom 10%.
Or, some interest groups are much more effective than others, so their preferences will be the main driver of everything, but only weekly correlated with the average interest group preference. The same could be true of certain influential elites, if their opinions diverged from those of the rest of the elites. But, that’s a wild guess on my part. This whole thing is a mess I haven’t even begun to sort out in my head.
Related data:
A couple years ago, there were a bunch of sensational headlines along the lines of “US is an Oligarchy, not a Democracy, New Study Finds”. The actual study is an interesting read: Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens
It correlated the average preferences of average citizens, economic elites, and special interest groups (divided into “mass public interest groups” and “business interest groups”). Interestingly, Table 2 shows that economic elite preferences actually correlate with average citizen preferences at .78. Also, business interest groups correlate with mass public interest group preferences at −0.05, but all interest groups overall at 0.96, so I guess the vast majority of interest groups are business interest groups? Aside from “all interest groups”, business interests seem to correlate negatively with everything else, although not as negatively as I would have thought.
They then looked at the probability of various legislation passing, given that various categories were for or against it on average. They focus on cases where, for example, economic elites favor something but average citizens are against it, and compare it to actual policy outcomes passing or failing. They build several models for power and influence, and do a bunch of statistics I haven’t read the details of to try to figure out how much influence various groups have on actual policy outcomes.
Eyeballing figure 1, if looks like if 10% of average americans support something, it has maybe a 30% chance of passing, but if 90% of average citizens support something, it has maybe a 31% chance of passing. Conversely, if 10% of economic elites favor a piece of legislation, it has only a 10% chance of passing, but if 90% of them favor it, it has a 60% chance of passing.
Both of those graphs were fairly linear, and had a good spread, with lots of legislation with both high support and high opposition. They also tried to graph the net number of interest groups in support or opposition to legislation, vs. the probability of it passing. However, in almost all cases, there were less than 4 more either supporting or opposing each bill, so all their data points are clustered in the center. I’m not sure I believed their model projections outside of that narrow range, but if you believe that weird-shaped s-curve, then more net interest groups in support of a bill does cause it to be much more likely to pass.
Take all this with a grain of salt, though. There have been a couple follow up studies which stepped this back substantially. As Vox puts it “When the rich and middle class disagree, each wins about half the time”:
And also:
That makes you wonder: If only 7.4% of the variance is due to these groups, then what on earth is determining policy??!!
Right. Obvious answer is obvious.
Or maybe the middle class, since they are conspicuously absent from “rich, the poor, and interest groups put together”? I think “rich” is still being defined as top 10% here, and “poor” as bottom 10%.
Or, some interest groups are much more effective than others, so their preferences will be the main driver of everything, but only weekly correlated with the average interest group preference. The same could be true of certain influential elites, if their opinions diverged from those of the rest of the elites. But, that’s a wild guess on my part. This whole thing is a mess I haven’t even begun to sort out in my head.
But it’s probably Moloch.
People like Robert Moses are neither “the rich” nor “the poor”. The same goes for various burocrats who have power inside of governments.