The study, entitled Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, was published by political scientists Martin Gilens, of Princeton, and Benjamin Page, of Northwestern, and found that: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policy making is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.
In their conclusion, they have an even more dismal conclusion:
In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover … even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
