I recently came across the following image on Facebook. It was posted by “The Other 98%”, a liberal group with over 1.6 million likes.
Actually,
the constitution never mentioned democracy.
Do a search for the term!
You won't find it.
When "democracy"
was mentioned in the Federalist Papers, the documents justifying the
Constitution, it was brought up as an inadequate form of governance which could
lead to such horrors as "an abolition of debts [or] an equal division of
property", which would be prevented in the federal US republic.
That comes from James Madison,
considered the father of the Constitution. He continued that “Hence it is that
such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have
ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property;
and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in
their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of
government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect
equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly
equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their
passions."
Again, Madison was afraid
of the violations of "rights of property" and the call to have equal
possessions which would occur in a democracy. For Madison, democracy leads to
some form of socialism.
Madison was right.
The constitution was set up
to prevent this.
Citizens United, then, was
merely the equivalent of having your motor boat leak gas in the middle of the
BP oil spill. Something to feel bad about normally, except that you have much
bigger problems to worry about.
I want to expand on this point. The “Citizens United” case receives a lot of attention from liberals. A group exists with the name “End Citizens United”. But I would argue that the problems of democracy in the United States began long before Citizens United vs FEC. Efforts to create democracy in the United States must take this into account.
We need not take a radical view of democracy to make this point. Let us restrict our understanding of “democracy” to mean having the views of the majority of the population enacted into public policy. This is not a good understanding of democracy. It ignores power imbalances involved in the creation of public opinion. It assumes that a majority should be able to dictate commands to a minority. But let’s keep this definition for now, despite the problems with it. My rationale is that it allows us to ask the question “Is the government responsive to public opinion, and therefore democratic?” fairly easily. A more complex understanding of democracy would not be so testable.
When the United States Constitution was first adopted, only white male property owners could vote in both states. About 20% of the country was enslaved. Women could not vote, in most states.[1] Even poor white men were frequently barred from voting. Through struggle, the right to vote was expanded and by the 1960’s when the ability to vote was no longer determined by race, gender, or class, at least not openly. Restrictions continue though. Felons are frequently disenfranchised while incarcerated and after they are released. Thanks to racial disparities in the prison system, felon disenfranchisement has a disproportionate impact on African-Americans and other people of color. According to a report by the NAACP, approximately 30% of African-American men are expected to be disenfranchised at some point in their lifetime, based on current incarceration patterns, and 13% of African-American men are currently disenfranchised.[2] Thus, while the right to vote has been expanded, it is still not a universal right among American citizens, despite claims to the contrary.
I want to expand on this point. The “Citizens United” case receives a lot of attention from liberals. A group exists with the name “End Citizens United”. But I would argue that the problems of democracy in the United States began long before Citizens United vs FEC. Efforts to create democracy in the United States must take this into account.
We need not take a radical view of democracy to make this point. Let us restrict our understanding of “democracy” to mean having the views of the majority of the population enacted into public policy. This is not a good understanding of democracy. It ignores power imbalances involved in the creation of public opinion. It assumes that a majority should be able to dictate commands to a minority. But let’s keep this definition for now, despite the problems with it. My rationale is that it allows us to ask the question “Is the government responsive to public opinion, and therefore democratic?” fairly easily. A more complex understanding of democracy would not be so testable.
When the United States Constitution was first adopted, only white male property owners could vote in both states. About 20% of the country was enslaved. Women could not vote, in most states.[1] Even poor white men were frequently barred from voting. Through struggle, the right to vote was expanded and by the 1960’s when the ability to vote was no longer determined by race, gender, or class, at least not openly. Restrictions continue though. Felons are frequently disenfranchised while incarcerated and after they are released. Thanks to racial disparities in the prison system, felon disenfranchisement has a disproportionate impact on African-Americans and other people of color. According to a report by the NAACP, approximately 30% of African-American men are expected to be disenfranchised at some point in their lifetime, based on current incarceration patterns, and 13% of African-American men are currently disenfranchised.[2] Thus, while the right to vote has been expanded, it is still not a universal right among American citizens, despite claims to the contrary.
The lack of democracy in the US is not only, or even mostly, a consequence of these explicit voting restrictions. These restrictions affect a minority of citizens, but it is in fact a majority (or at least half) of citizens who have little to no say. We know this thanks to the work of Martin Gilens, a Professor of Political Science at Princeton who has done important research on the responsiveness of government to public opinion. In his book Affluence and Influence, Gilens found that the opinions of people at the 10th and 50th percentile of income had no discernable impact on federal public policy when their opinions disagreed with people at the 90th percentile of income. That is, the federal government was not responsive to people the 10th and 50th income percentiles, and any initial correlation that existed between federal policy making and public opinion at those percentiles was a result of wealthier people (90th percentile) agreeing with people at the 10th and 50th percentiles. The views of the poor, and even people in the middle of the US’ income distribution, simply did not matter in determining public policy.
The implications of this result is that the federal government was not responsive to the wishes of
at least half of the population.
This is clearly inconsistent with the definition of democracy given above.
Quite simply, the United States is not a democracy, if democracy means that the
views of the majority get enacted. It is also not a democracy if “democracy” is
taken to mean that there is some rough equality in the impact that private
citizens have on policy making, since these results demonstrate that the
average citizen has no impact on federal policy.
So the United States is not a democracy. The government responds not to the needs of the poor or middle class but instead the wealthy.[3] Importantly, the data these results come from span from 1981-2002. Before Citizens United. Citizens United could not have decreased the impact that the average citizen had on federal policy making since that impact was already zero. I will not in this post discuss the potential mechanisms for this finding. That would make a good topic for a future post. Summarizing Gilens’ findings is sufficient to debunk the blame mistakenly placed on Citizens United for the problems plaguing our republic, which is all I set out to do at the moment.
So the United States is not a democracy. The government responds not to the needs of the poor or middle class but instead the wealthy.[3] Importantly, the data these results come from span from 1981-2002. Before Citizens United. Citizens United could not have decreased the impact that the average citizen had on federal policy making since that impact was already zero. I will not in this post discuss the potential mechanisms for this finding. That would make a good topic for a future post. Summarizing Gilens’ findings is sufficient to debunk the blame mistakenly placed on Citizens United for the problems plaguing our republic, which is all I set out to do at the moment.
[1]
Voting laws are almost always decided by states. Hence, while I do write of
general trends throughout the paragraph below, some states did not follow those
trends. For example, New Jersey allowed
women to vote throughout the 1790’s.
[2] NAACP,
Defending Democracy: Confronting Modern
Barriers to Voting Rights in America, 2011.
[3]
While people at the 90th percentile aren’t rich, Gilens did not
distinguish between the effect their views had as opposed to people at the 99th
(or 99.9th) percentile), meaning that it would not be impossible
that even the views of the people at the 90th percentile had no
impact on public policy when their views disagreed with those higher up
economically.
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