Democracy doesn’t exist
So now we know: the United States is not a democracy. That’s what two US academics, Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, argue in a newly published study called “Testing theories of American politics: elites, interest groups, and average citizens”, which compiles the replies to polls carried out between 1981 and 2002 among the US electorate proposing more than 2,000 changes to the law, and whether those changes were implemented. The conclusion? That elite and interest groups make a substantial impact on US government policies, while popular initiatives from the wider electorate never get anywhere.
An edited version of the piece can be read in this article posted on Talking Points Memo: “Princeton study: US no longer an actual democracy”, or in this great interview with one of the authors on the same site. The study has gone viral in some circles in the United States. The outcome of the research, in line with Gilens’ book, “Affluence and influence: economic inequality and political power in America”, backs up previous studies, and echoes Lawrence Lessig’s presentation on TED called “We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim”, which I would heartily recommend. It’s been seen by more than a million times, and has also been published in book format in Lesterland: the corruption of Congress and how to end it, or the recent funding initiative for a Super PAC to end all PACs (Political Action Committees raise money to lobby Congress or influence candidates). If you haven’t seen Lessig’s presentation, take the time:
Gilens and Page’s research only confirms what many ordinary people have suspected for years: that the result of elections matters least. It doesn’t matter who you vote for, in reality democracy is simply a system designed to make sure that the same people’s interests are served. I have written about this many times, and it is something that I have seen close up on the occasions when I have come into close contact with the people who make the decisions in my own country, and that has led me to put as much distance between myself and them as possible. In recent years, as we have seen how the internet has come to play a bigger role in helping civic groups organize, governments everywhere have become worried at this new threat to their hegemony.
There is no such thing as democracy: at best we are given the chance to elect a number of theoretical representatives, most of who have not been chosen by us to stand in our name, but on behalf of powerful minorities. The reality is that most countries that consider themselves advanced democracies are run by a small clique of corrupt politicians acting on behalf of an oligarchy.
Technology offers us far better ways to organize society than our bankrupt democracies currently do. But technology on its own can’t do the job. We would first have to overcome resistance to change, to fear of doing things differently, and that despite what some would have us believe, people are capable of running their own affairs. The idea that a small group of experts is somehow better qualified to run things on our behalf is nonsense, and only shows just how rotten our political system has become.
The really important thing about technological development is that it will end up being able to initiate the disruption in the industry that needs it most: politics.
(En español, aquí)
