Ivy League study asks if America Still a Democracy and finds out another term might fit better

Democracy, elections and voting at Democracy Chronicles

The Lady Free Thinker has a very blunt assessment of the latest news in their article, “Study Says: America is No Longer a Democracy“. According to the author, “You’ve suspected it for a while now, and a new study agrees — America is no longer  a democracy. Nope, our government caters to the needs of a few, very rich people and special interest groups. So the nation is an oligarchy, and democracy is dead.” There is some concern that democracy is not living up to its expectations surely. According to the latest article by the Huffington Post’s Jeffery Winters:

The Supreme Court has facilitated the conversion of money power into political influence by removing limits on the flow of funds into campaigns and equating the use of money to free speech. This gives a handful of Americans up to 40,000 times the “money voice” of their fellow citizens. My colleagues Ben Page at Northwestern and Marty Gilens at Princeton just produced a study showing that the average citizen has “near-zero” influence over policies the rich care about most. The daily interplay of oligarchy and democracy in America does not end there. Since the 1960s, a sophisticated Wealth Defense Industry has arisen to further shield the ultra-rich from taxation and redistribution.

American oligarchs use their wealth power to fund conservative think tanks that have transformed the estate tax into the “death tax,” and amplified messages like “government is the problem.” Oligarchs also hire armies of tax lawyers, accountants, lobbyists, and wealth management specialists to create complex “tax products” and shelters, and to relocate fortunes to secrecy havens scattered around the globe. This offshore financial dark matter is estimated to be between $5 trillion and $25 trillion, and it is mostly untaxed. The portion of these hidden riches belonging to Americans costs the U.S. treasury $80 billion annually in lost taxes. The question is not whether America is a democracy or an oligarchy. It has always been both. What changes over time is the relative influence of participation versus wealth power. And in recent decades, policy changes have given wealth power the upper hand.

The original study at Yale was reviewed in an article for the Yale University Press Network:

How far the decline has gone is open to dispute, but the need for repair is no longer in question. A first step is to understand the nature of disrepair. It’s not about party politics. Unless the need to restore workability is confronted, the system will be dysfunctional going into the next elections and it will be dysfunctional coming out of them.

American citizens are more cynical than ever about their politicians, but that cynicism is misplaced. They should direct their justified anger against systemic dysfunctions. Political writers are more radical than ever in diagnosis, but reticent in following through to prescription. They need to move beyond complaining and get their question right: How can power be restored to where it should be, to the onstage arena?

It is historically tragic that the question, “Is America still a democracy?” is no longer rhetorical. In the absence of people power, decent representatives will continue to be deflected away from the Constitution’s intention of cooperation for, in George Washington’s words in his first inaugural, the discernment and pursuit of the public good.

America Still a Democracy, But For How Long?

Whether the US is a democracy also rests on what your definition of democracy is. But in many of the best systems, like New York City’s local elections for example, democracy is surely still active. But clearly there are problems that run deep. The system’s integrity is declining and not improving. It is time surely for the United States to reform its election system and solidify a role for itself that is honorable and democratic. Only time will tell.