The American Disconnect

We live in a democracy, so why don’t our policy choices reflect the will of the majority? Here’s 10 reasons why.

Over the past several months, I have regularly seen polls reflect significant majorities supporting a policy change that is not being seriously considered by Congress. Democracy is, by definition, majority rule, yet time and again our policy outcomes do not reflect the majority. In our representative democracy, why is there disconnect between the will of the majority and the policies enacted by our democratically elected representatives? The answer to this question is a puzzle. Here are 10 of the pieces.

Minority Interest Groups

A Minority Interest Group (MIG) is any small group of people who exert outsized influence over our public policy choices based on their resources, organization, or tactics. These groups come together through their common interest in driving a policy outcome, whether or not that outcome is in the interest of the democracy as a whole. Let’s start our discussion of the disconnect with the two most obvious and often-cited reasons why MIGs dominate our policy discussions.

1. MIGs are better funded. Groups with deep pockets can pay lobbyists and make political donations that entice policymakers to implement policies that meet their demands. They can purchase provocative advertisements that attack or support a candidate, further encouraging politicians to join their team.
2. MIGs are better organized. Small groups with active supporters can credibly threaten to tilt the vote in support of or against a candidate. They can change the conversation surrounding a candidate through grassroots political action. They know how to mobilize and have the energy and resources to do so effectively.

When you add these together, it always feels like MIGs have the upper hand.

MIGs have the better hand

Yet these two reasons ignore the rules of the game that enable MIGs to exert outsized influence.

How MIGs Thrive In Our Democracy

There are eight characteristics of our democracy that allow MIGs to cajole policymakers and distort the message elected officials receive. These are the systems and institutions that mute the beliefs of the majority and magnify the beliefs of the minority, resulting in votes that determine our laws. I am not suggesting that these systems are intrinsically good or bad; rather, I am arguing that their existence contributes to the disconnect between the national majority and public policy.

1. The Two-Party System: In our two-party system, every candidate (with rare exception) must have the support of Party infrastructure in order to successfully run for office and win. The Parties have existing donor bases, grassroots supporters, and brands that can carry a candidate to victory even if people don’t know their name. Once a candidate arrives in the legislature, being a member of the Party allows them to vote as a block, forcing concessions when they are in the minority and dominating the legislature when they are in the majority. Yet these blocks are a double-edged sword: they enable legislators to accomplish goals but they also create social dynamics that encourage legislators to “go with the Party” even when their constituents do not agree. Every legislator can be cajoled with a threat that the Party will not support him or her in the future. This makes the Party’s will even more powerful than the constituents that policymaker serves, and it gives excessive influence to the Party’s powerbrokers and major donors.
2. Privately funded election campaigns: Underlying the need to be a member of the Party is our privately funded elections. Legislators require the funding of Parties because our candidates need money to hire staff, create marketing materials, advertise, organize, and feed the people who work to ensure the candidate is successful. Unless a candidate is independently wealthy or has a wealthy benefactor, the candidate is a slave to the Party’s willingness to invest. This increases the capacity for manipulation by the Party once that legislator arrives in office.
3. Geographically distributed representatives: Every elected official represents the will of a limited geographic area, not the will of the national majority. The polls noted above are national polls, not local. Local polls are notoriously inaccurate, and all polls are subject to change in the national conversation. This means that policymakers have limited and inaccurate information about the beliefs of their constituents, allowing them to draw their own conclusions about the relevance of polling data to their districts. As an example, peoples’ views on assault rifles have changed almost 20% over the past 4 months. Does that mean that those views have shifted 20% in your district? Policymakers often convince themselves that they know their districts better than everyone else, even if the data disagrees with them. In a geographically representative democracy, what matters is the majority of legislators, not the majority of people. As long as legislators have inaccurate information about their districts and the ability to cast doubt on the majority’s will within their districts, legislators will be more susceptible to the Party and to donor dollars. This is exacerbated by gerrymandering, which I will leave for a future post.
4. Federalism: Our country is a patchwork of state governments balanced against the federal. This means that policy battles are fought between state-level majorities and national majorities. When the national majority is drastically different from the state majority on major policy issues, you see legal battles like those surrounding gay marriage, abortion, and voting rights. National consensus takes a long time to emerge. This is actually good: our system was designed to make change hard so that leaders would have to think deeply and convince broadly. Yet, when you feel the pain of an existing policy that is violent, discriminatory, or inadequate to meet your needs, you want change to happen now. Unfortunately, the same forces that prevent negative change also deter positive change. A strong MIG can exert even greater influence over a state government than over national government because they represent a larger and more vocal proportion of your state. MIGs can thereby score major wins at the state and local level that they could never accomplish at the national level. This is exacerbated by the lack of available information on state-level policy discussions. State-houses are shrouded in mystery, and local papers struggle to keep up.
5. Incumbency: We tend to think that the make-up of our elected offices change every 1–4 years. However, the incumbency advantage proves otherwise. Incumbents historically win 80–90% of the time, adding an extra layer of anti-change bias to our federalist system. We are creatures of habit who tend to vote for the names with which we are familiar and the Party we prefer. This means that elected officials are often elected from their first term through retirement, contributing to a gradually aging leadership with beliefs that were formed long before you joined the conversation. Incumbents are more likely to listen to those with whom they have already formed relationships, tilting the conversation in favor to those who have the policymaker’s ear — Minority Interest Groups.
6. “The Beltway Effect”: At the same time, these elected officials spend the majority of their time around other legislators, lobbyists, and politicos rather than around their constituents. This naturally contributes to a disconnectedness between officials and their constituents. The Beltway Effect is most prominent for national legislators who live in the Beltway surrounding Washington, but it is also true of legislators in state capitals. When legislators spend their time isolated from their constituents, they further distance themselves from the issues impacting their community.
7. Privileged access: Within Washington and in state capitals, there are those who have the time, wealth, and connections to make their voices heard by elected officials. The people who can make their voices heard are those who have the ability to speak directly to their representatives. This disadvantages those who work full-time jobs, have children, struggle to make a living, and do not have access to technology or transportation. Privileged access weights the views of the policymaker about the majority’s beliefs toward the voices he or she hears. Those voices are usually wealthier and better-connected than the voices of their constituent population. Unlike MIGs, the average person can’t travel to where legislators are. Legislators who rarely leave Washington or the state capitals isolate themselves from their constituents, which in turn inhibits our ability to lobby for ourselves.
8. Broken communication between constituents and officials: As mentioned in #7, privileged access allows some voices to be heard louder and more frequently than others. Shouldn’t it be easy to gather the beliefs of your constituents? Mass communication has made it possible to share views across vast distances, but policymakers still rely on letters, emails, and phone calls to figure out the views of their constituents. This seems an antiquated and manipulative way to collect their views. Why not ask constituents directly how you should vote, as some have proposed? The answer is simple: policymakers are afraid of what their constituents will tell them to do. And if they collect hard data that makes the will of their constituents clear, they will be forced to vote along with that data, even when they disagree. It is easier to collect written and vocal feedback, show you are “listening”, and draw your own conclusions. This prevents accountability for going against the expressed views of constituents. It also allows policymakers to surreptitiously consider some opinions more heavily than others: the opinions of those MIGs with privileged access.

What would it mean for the majority to out-organize the minority?

This is the question that ActWorthy is being designed to address. Here is our answer:

• Start local. Grow to the state. Then go national. Build trust with people in your community. Because your policymakers are geographically based, you need to build a majority in your community before branching out to other states. You can then combine local majorities to build a state and national majority.
• As someone who wants to make change, it should be easy for you to get involved in multiple issues. You shouldn’t have to join a new organization’s email list for every issue impacting your society. ActWorthy makes it simple to discover and take action on a variety of local issues impacting your community, without getting overwhelmed.
• If everyone participates, the majority can be heard. By making it simple to participate, ActWorthy gets more people to be involved. The more people who organize together, the harder it is for MIGs to hijack the policy conversation.
• Advertising should be meaningless. Candidates and MIGs spend billions on advertising to influence your opinion. People should form opinions by having conversations with their community members, not listening to cable news and watching commercials. By activating more community members, we can create more conversations where citizens influence citizens rather than dollars influencing citizens. By participating on ActWorthy, you not only magnify your own impact, you diminish the impact of advertising dollars on the public sphere.
• The majority should be transparent. You should know when you’re in the majority based on the number of people who act along with you. You should know when you have to convince more people to take action. ActWorthy makes it clear which actions have the most public support.
• The tools of grassroots organization should be democratized. New Organizers should build on the work of those who came before rather than having to purchase and develop new tools from scratch. The population of politically active citizens should be accessible by all local Organizers who want to make change. ActWorthy democratizes tools for grassroots organizing so that anyone can become a leader.

Want to make change in your community? The time is now. We are here to help. Visit ActWorthy and get involved today.