Affluence and Influence (Princeton
University Press, 2013)
AFFLUENT INDIVIDUALS AND BUSINESS CORPORATIONS have vastly more influence on federal government policy than average citizens, according to research by Princeton University and Northwestern University.
The researchers used a data set comprised of 1,779 policy issues over a 30-year period to estimate how much influence affluent citizens, organized interest groups and ordinary citizens each have on policy outcomes. They found that affluent citizens, those at the 90th-income percentile, have the most influence, followed by organized interest groups. However, the preferences of average citizens have no discernable, independent effect on policymaking at all, the researchers found.
“If democracy means that all citizens should have a say in shaping government policy, our findings cast doubt upon just how democratic U.S. policymaking actually is,” said Martin Gilens, a professor of politics at Princeton and a member of the executive committee of the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He conducted the study, for the fall 2014 issue of the academic journal Perspectives on Politics, with co-author Benjamin Page, the Gordon Scott Fulcher Professor of Decision Making at Northwestern University.
Gilens is the author of the 2013 prize-winning book Affluence and Influence (Princeton University Press).
–By B. Rose Huber
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