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Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens
Author(s): Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page
Source: Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 12, No. 3 (September 2014), pp. 564-
Published by: American Political Science Association
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Articles
Testing Theories of American Politics:
Elites, Interest Groups, and Average
Citizens
Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page
Each of four theoretical traditions in the study of American politics - which can be characterized as theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, Economic-Elite Domination, and two types of interest-group pluralism, Majoritarian Pluralism and Biased Pluralism - offers different predictions about which sets of actors have how much influence over public policy: average citizens; economic elites; and organized interest groups, mass-based or business-oriented. A great deal of empirical research speaks to the policy influence of one or another set of actors, but until recendy it has not been possible to test these contrasting theoretical predictions against each other within a single statistical model. We report on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues. Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have litde or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.
Who sovereign, the governs? broad body or Who largely of really U. powerless? citizens rules? To These sovereign, what questions extent semi- is
the broad body of U. citizens sovereign, semi- sovereign, or largely powerless? These questions
have animated much important work in the study of
American politics. While this body of research is rich and variegated, it can loosely be divided into four families of theories: Majoritarian
A permanent link to supplementary materials provided by the authors precedes the References section.
Martin Gilens is Professor of Politics at Princeton University (mgilens@princeton). His research examines representa- tion, public opinion , and mass media, especially in relation to inequality and public policy. Professor Gilens is the author of Affluence & Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America (2012, Princeton University Press). Benjamin I. Page is Gordon S. Fulcher Professor of Decision Making at Northwestern University (b-page@- northwestern). His research interests include public opinion, policy making, the mass media, and U. foreign policy. He is currently engaged in a large collaborative project to study Economically Successful Americans and the Common Good. For helpful comments the authors are indebted to Larry Bartels and Jeff Isaac, to the anonymous reviewers from Perspectives on Politics, and to seminar participants at Harvard University and the University of Rochester.
564 Perspectives on Politics
Electoral Democracy , Economic-Elite Domination , and two types of interest-group pluralism - Majoritarian Pluralism , in which the interests of all citizens are more or less equally represented, and Biased Pluralism , in which corporations, business associations, and professional groups predominate. Each of these perspectives makes different predictions about the independent influence upon U. policy making of four sets of actors: th t Average Citizen or "median voter," Economic Elites, and Mass-based or Business-oriented Interest Groups or industries. Each of these theoretical traditions has given rise to a large body of literature. Each is supported by a great
deal of empirical evidence - some of it quantitative,
some historical, some observational - concerning the
importance of various sets of actors (or, all too often,
a single set of actors) in U. policy making. This
literature has made important contributions to our
understanding of how American politics works and
has helped illuminate how democratic or undemocratic (in various senses) our policy making process actually is. Until very recently, however, it has been impossible to test the differing predictions of these theories against each other within a single statistical model that permits
one to analyze the independent effects of each set of
actors upon policy outcomes.
Here - in a tentative and preliminary way - we offer such a test, bringing a unique data set to bear on the problem. Our measures are far from perfect, but we hope that this first step doi: 1 0. 1 01 7/S1 53759271 4001 595 © American Political Science Association 2014
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Articles ļ Testing Theories of American Politics
with the preferences of those lower in the income
distribution, indicates that the apparent connection be- tween public policy and the preferences of the average citizen may indeed be largely or entirely spurious.
The "electoral reward and punishment" version of
democratic control through elections - in which voters retrospectively judge how well the results of government policy have satisfied their basic interests and values, and politicians enact policies in anticipation of judgments that they expect will later be made by what V. Key, Jr., called
"latent" public opinion - might be thought to offer
a different prediction: that policy will tend to satisfy citizens' underlying needs and values, rather than corre-
sponding with their current policy preferences We
cannot test this prediction because we do not have - and
cannot easily imagine how to obtain - good data on
individuals' deep, underlying interests or values, as
opposed to their expressed policy preferences. But the evidence that collective policy preferences are generally rather stable over time suggests that expressed collective policy preferences may not often diverge markedly from subsequently manifested "latent" preferences. They may do so only under special circumstances, such as economic recessions or disastrous wars If so, the electoral-reward- and-punishment type of democratic theory, too, predicts that most of the time public policy will respond to the current policy preferences of the average citizen.
Economic-Elite Domination A quite different theoretical tradition argues that U.
policy making is dominated by individuals who have
substantial economic resources, i., high levels of income or wealth - including, but not limited to, ownership of business firms. Not all "elite theories" share this focus. Some emphasize social status or institutional position - such as the occu- pancy of key managerial roles in corporations, or top-level positions in political parties, in the executive, legislative, or judicial branches of government, or in the highest ranks of the military. Some elite theories postulate an amalgam of elites, defined by combinations of social status, economic resources, and institutional positions, who achieve a degree of unity through common backgrounds, coinciding inter- ests, and social interactions.
For example, C. Wright Mills' important book,
The Power Elite , offers a rather nuanced account of how U. social, economic, political, and military elites have historically alternated in different configurations of domi- nance. Mills noted that his elites derived in substantial
proportions from the upper classes, including the very rich and corporate executives, but their elite status was not defined by their wealth Our focus here is on theories that emphasize the policy-making importance of economic elites. Analyses of U. politics centered on economic elites go back at least to Charles Beard, who maintained that
566 Perspectives on Politics
a chief aim of the framers of the U. Constitution was to protect private property, favoring the economic interests of wealthy merchants and plantation owners rather than the interests of the then-majority small farmers, laborers, and craft workers. A landmark work in this tradition is G. William Domhoff 's detailed account of how elites (working through foundations, think-tanks, and an "opinion- shaping apparatus," as well as through the lobbyists and politicians they finance) may dominate key issues in U. policy making despite the existence of democratic elections. Philip A. Burch has exhaustively chronicled the economic
backgrounds of federal government officials through
American history. Thomas Ferguson's analysis of the
political importance of "major investors" might be seen as
a theory of economic elites. Most recently, Jeffrey
Winters has posited a comparative theory of "Oligarchy," in which the wealthiest citizens - even in a "civil oligarchy" like the United States - dominate policy concerning crucial issues of wealth and income protection. Our third and fourth theoretical traditions posit that public policy generally reflects the outcome of struggle among organized interest groups and business firms.
Majoritarian Pluralism
The roots of what we can characterize as theories of
"majoritarian" interest-group pluralism go back to James Madison's Federalist Paper No. 10, which analyzed politics in terms of "factions" - a somewhat fuzzy concept that apparendy encompassed political parties and even popular majorities, as well as what we would today consider organized interest groups, business firms, and industrial sectors. Madison argued that struggles among the diverse factions that would be found in an extensive republic would lead to policies more or less representative of the needs and interests of the citizenry as a whole - or at least would tend to defeat "tyrannical" policies, including the much-fèared issuance of inflationary paper money that might cater to local majority factions of farmer- debtors but would be cosdy to merchant creditors. In the twentieth century, Arthur Bendey's The Process
of Government and then David Truman's monumental
The Governmental Process put groups at the center of
political analysis, laying out a detailed picture of how
organized interest groups might get their way. Truman offered a comprehensive and still-interesting catalogue of
lobbying techniques and other methods of group in-
fluence. He also added an ingenious gloss to Madison
that tends to increase both the plausibility and the
normative appeal of majoritarian interest-group pluralism: the assertion that all interests have at least a minimum of
influence in group-dominated policy making, because
policy makers must (in order to avoid subsequent punish- ment) heed all "potential" groups that would form if their interests were trampled upon. Robert Dahl's analysis of New Haven city politics was Madisonian or Truman-like in its insistence that many
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(all?) diverse interests were represented, though Dahl
focused as much on active members of the general public
as on organized groups. Dahl's analyses of American
politics in terms of "polyarchy" or "pluralist democracy" also come close to our ideal type of majoritarian pluralist theory, since they imply that the wants or needs of the average citizen tend to be reasonably well served by the outcomes of interest-group struggle. Several contemporary analysts of interest-group politics likewise appear to accept (at least implicidy) a picture of group struggle that results in more or less majoritarian results. A major challenge to majoritarian pluralist theories,
however, is posed by Mancur Olson's argument that
collective action by large, dispersed sets of individuals with individually small but collectively large interests tends to be prevented by the "free rider" problem. Barring special circumstances (selective incentives, byproducts, coercion), individuals who would benefit from collective action may have no incentive to personally form or join an organized group. If everyone thinks this way and lets George do it, the job is not likely to get done. This reasoning suggests that Truman's "potential groups" may in fact be unlikely to form, even if millions of peoples' interests are neglected or harmed by government. Aware of the collective action problem, officials may feel free to ignore much of the population and act against the interests of the average citizen.
Biased Pluralism Olson's argument points toward an important variant line
of thinking within the pluralist tradition: theories of
" biased " pluralism, which posit struggles among an un- representative universe of interest groups - characterized
by E. Schattschneider as a heavenly chorus with an
"upper-class accent," and more recendy dubbed by Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba, and Henry Brady an "unheavenly chorus." Theories of biased pluralism gener- ally argue that both the thrust of interest-group conflict and the public policies that result tend to tilt toward the
wishes of corporations and business and professional
associations. Schattschneider suggested that policy outcomes vary with the "scope of conflict": for example, that business- oriented interest groups tend to prevail over ordinary citizens when the scope is narrow and visibility is low.
Grant McConnell added the idea that the actual
"constituencies" of policy implementers can consist of
powerful groups. George Stigler (articulating what some economists have scorned as "Chicago Marxism") analyzed the politics of regulation in terms of biased pluralism: the capture of regulators by the regulated. Charles Lindblom outlined a number of ways - including the "privileged position" of business - in which business firms and their associations influence public policy. Thomas Ferguson has posited an "investment theory" of politics in which "major
investors" - especially representatives of particular indus-
trial sectors - fund political parties in order to get
policies that suit their economic interests. Fred Block's "neo-Polanyian" analysis emphasizes groups. Jacob Hacker and Paul Piersons analysis of "winner-take-all-politics," which emphasizes the power of the finance industry, can be seen as a recent contribution to the literature of biased pluralism. Marxist and neo-Marxist theories of the capitalist state hold that economic classes - and particularly the bour- geoisie, the owners of the means of production - dominate
policy making and cause the state to serve their
material interests. As the Communist Manifesto put it,
"The bourgeoisie has... conquered for itself, in the
modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The
executive of the modern State is but a committee for
managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie." We cannot precisely test the predictions of such theories, because we lack good measures of policy preferences by economic class. (In Marxist theory, neither income nor
wealth accurately signals class position.) We can note,
however, that certain "instrumentalist" Marxist theories,
including the important version put forth by Ralph
Miliband, make predictions resembling those of theories of Biased Pluralism: that interest groups and corporations representing "large scale business" tend to prevail. As to empirical evidence concerning interest groups, it is well established that organized groups regularly lobby
and fraternize with public officials, move through
revolving doors between public and private employment, provide self-serving information to officials, draft leg-
islation, and spend a great deal of money on election
campaigns Moreover, in harmony with theories of
biased pluralism, the evidence clearly indicates that most interest groups and lobbyists represent business firms or professionals. Relatively few represent the poor or even the economic interests of ordinary workers, particularly now that the U. labor movement has become so weak.
But do interest groups actually influence policy?
Numerous case studies have detailed instances in which
all but the most dedicated skeptic is likely to perceive
interest-group influence at work. A leading classic
remains Schattschneider's analysis of the 1928 enactment of the Smoot-Hawley tariff, an astounding orgy of pork- barrel politics Still, many quantitatively-oriented political scientists seem to ignore or dismiss such non-quantitative evidence. There have also been some efforts (particularly during the Cold War era, when unflattering depictions of
U. politics may have been thought unpatriotic) to
demonstrate that interest groups have no influence on
policy at all. Raymond Bauer, Ithiel Pool, and Lewis
Anthony Dexter argued that business had litde or no effect
on the renewal of reciprocal trade authority. Lester
Milbrath, having conducted interviews with lobbyists and members of Congress, rated lobbyists' influence as very low.
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argue that there are likely to be similar but bigger differ-
ences between average-income citizens and the truly
wealthy.
Some evidence for this proposition comes from the
2011 Cooperative Congressional Election Study Based on 13 policy-preference questions asked on this survey, the preferences of the top 2 percent of income earners (a group that might be thought "truly wealthy") are much more highly correlated with the preferences of the top 1 0 percent of earners than with the preferences of the average survey respondent (r= versus .69). 35 Thus, the views of our moderately high-income "affluent" respondents appear to capture useful information about the views of the truly wealthy. In any case, the imprecision that results from use of our "affluent" proxy is likely to produce ««¿surestimâtes of the impact of economic elites on policy making. If we find
substantial effects upon policy even when using this
imperfect measure, therefore, it will be reasonable to infer that the impact upon policy of truly wealthy citizens is still greater.
In order to measure interest-group preferences and
actions, we would ideally like to use an index of the sort that Baumgartner and his colleagues developed for their ninety-eight policy issues: an index assessing the total resources brought to bear by all major interest groups that took one side or the other on each of our 1,779 issues. But it is not feasible to construct such an index for all our cases; this would require roughly twenty times as much work as did the major effort made by the Baumgartner
research team on their cases. Fortunately, however,
Baumgartner et al. found that a simple proxy for their
index - the number of reputedly "powerful" interest
groups (from among groups appearing over the years in Fortune magazine's "Power 25" lists) that favored a given
policy change, minus the number that opposed it -
correlated quite substantially in their cases with the full interest-group index (r=0). Gilens, using a modified version of this simple count of the number of "powerful" interest groups favoring
(minus those opposing) each proposed policy change,
developed a measure of Net Interest Group Alignment.
To the set of groups on the "Power 25" lists (which
seemed to neglect certain major business interests) he
added ten key industries that had reported the highest
lobbying expenditures. (For the final list of included
industries and interest groups, refer to Appendix 1.) For each of the 1,779 instances of proposed policy change, Gilens and his assistants drew upon multiple sources to code all engaged interest groups as "strongly favorable,"
"somewhat favorable," "somewhat unfavorable," or
"strongly unfavorable" to the change. He then com-
bined the numbers of groups on each side of a given
issue, weighting "somewhat" favorable or somewhat
unfavorable positions at half the magnitude of
"strongly" favorable or strongly unfavorable positions.
In order to allow for the likelihood of diminishing
returns as the net number of groups on a given side
increases (an increase from 10 to 11 groups likely
matters less than a jump from 1 to 2 does), he took
the logarithms of the number of pro groups and the
number of con groups before subtracting. Thus, Net Interest-Group Alignment = ln(# Strongly Favor + [0 * # Somewhat Favor] + 1) - ln(# Strongly Oppose + [0 * # Somewhat Oppose] + l).
We also report here results for comparable group
alignment indices that were computed separately for the mass-based and for the business-oriented sets of groups listed in Appendix 1. Our dependent variable is a measure of whether or not the policy change proposed in each survey question was actually adopted within four years after the question was
asked. (It turns out that most of the action occurred
within two years). Of course there was nothing easy
about measuring the presence or absence of policy change for each of 1,779 different cases; Gilens and his research assistants spent many hours poring over news accounts, government data, Congressional Quarterly publications, academic papers and the like. In order to test among our theoretical traditions, we
begin by considering all organized interest groups
together, not distinguishing between mass-based and
business-oriented groups. Within a single statistical model, we estimate the independent impact upon our dependent
variable (policy change) of each of three independent
variables: the average citizens policy preferences (preferences at the fiftieth income percentile); the policy preferences of economic elites (measured by policy preferences at the ninetieth income percentile); and the stands of interest groups (the Net Interest-Group Alignment Index). Later, in order to distinguish clearly between Major- itarian Pluralism and Biased Pluralism, we will use two separate measures of net interest-group alignment, one involving only mass-based interest groups and the other
limited to business and professional groups. The main
hypotheses of interest, summarized in table 1 , follow fairly straightforwardly from our discussion of our four ideal types of theory. In their pure form, theories of Majoritarian Electoral
Democracy (for example, rational models of electoral
competition that include no societal actors other than
average citizens), predict that the influence upon policy of average citizens is positive, significant, and substantial, while the influence of other actors is not.
Theories of Economic-Elite Domination predict pos-
itive, significant, and substantial influence upon policy by economic elites. Most such theories allow for some
(though not much) independent influence by average
citizens, e., on non-economic social issues. Many also
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Articles ļ Testing Theories of American Politics
Table 1
Theoretical predictions concerning the independent influence of sets of actors upon policy
outcomes Sets of Actors
Average Economic All Interest Mass Interest Business Interest
Theory (ideal type)
Majoritarian Electoral Y n n n n
Democracy
Dominance by Economic y Y y n y
Elites
Majoritarian Pluralism y n Y Y Y
Biased Pluralism n n y y Y
n = little or no independent influence y = some independent influence Y = substantial independent influence
allow for some independent influence by business
interest groups - and therefore probably by interest groups taken as a whole - though their emphasis is on wealthy individuals. In general, theories of interest-group pluralism pre-
dict that only organized interest groups will have
positive, significant, and substantial effects upon public
policy. Influence proceeds from groups, not from
wealthy (or other) individuals. Depending upon the
type of pluralist theory, average citizens may or may not be well represented through organized groups, but they
do not have a great deal of independent influence on
their own.
Theories of Majoritarian Pluralism predict that the
stands of organized interest groups, all taken together, rather faithfully represent (that is, are positively and substantially correlated with) the preferences of average
citizens. But since most political influence proceeds
through groups, a multivariate analysis that includes both interest-group alignments and citizens' preferences should show far more independent influence by the groups than
the citizens. Truman's idea of "potential groups" does,
however, leave room for some direct influence by average citizens. Theories of Biased Pluralism, too, see organized interest groups as having much more influence than average citizens
or individual economic elites. But they predict that
business-oriented groups play the major role. Recognizing the complexity of the political world, we must also acknowledge the possibility that more than one of these theoretical traditions has some truth to it: that several - even all - of our sets of actors may have sub- stantial, positive, independent influence on public policy. And we must consider the null hypothesis that none of these theoretical traditions correctly describes even part of what goes on in American politics.
570 Perspectives on Politics
Influence upon Policy of Average
Citizens, Economic Elites, and Interest
Groups
Before we proceed further, it is important to note that even if one of our predictor variables is found (when controlling for the others) to have no independent impact on policy at all, it does not follow that the actors whose preferences are reflected by that variable - average citizens, economic elites, or organized interest groups of one sort or another - always "lose" in policy decisions. Policy making is not necessarily
a zero-sum game among these actors. When one set of
actors wins, others may win as well, if their preferences are positively correlated with each other. It turns out, in fact, that the preferences of average citizens are positively and fairly highly correlated, across issues, with the preferences of economic elites (refer to table 2). Rather often, average citizens and affluent citizens (our proxy for economic elites) want the same things from government. This bivariate correlation affects how we should interpret our later multivariate findings in terms of
"winners" and "losers." It also suggests a reason why
serious scholars might keep adhering to both the Major-
itarian Electoral Democracy and the Economic-Elite
Domination theoretical traditions, even if one of them may be dead wrong in terms of causal impact. Ordinary citizens, for example, might often be observed to "win" (that is, to get their preferred policy outcomes) even if they had no independent effect whatsoever on policy making, if elites (with whom they often agree) actually prevail.
But net interest-group stands are not substantially
correlated with the preferences of average citizens. Taking all interest groups together, the index of net interest-group
alignment correlates only a non-significant .04 with
average citizens' preferences! (Refer to table 2.) This casts grave doubt on David Truman's and others' argument that
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Articles | Testing Theories of American Politics
of economic elites, and the net alignments of organized interest groups - is strongly, positively, and quite signifi- candy related to policy change. Litde wonder that each theoretical tradition has its strong adherents.
But the picture changes markedly when all three
independent variables are included in the multivariate
Model 4 and are tested against each other. The estimated impact of average citizens' preferences drops precipitously, to a non-significant, near-zero level. Clearly the median citizen or "median voter" at the heart of theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy does not do well when
put up against economic elites and organized interest
groups. The chief predictions of pure theories of
Majoritarian Electoral Democracy can be decisively
rejected. Not only do ordinary citizens not have uniquely substantial power over policy decisions; they have litde or no independent influence on policy at all.
By contrast, economic elites are estimated to have
a quite substantial, highly significant, independent
impact on policy. This does not mean that theories of
Economic-Elite Domination are wholly upheld, since our results indicate that individual elites must share their
policy influence with organized interest groups. Still,
economic elites stand out as quite influential - more so than any other set of actors studied here - in the making of U. public policy. Similarly, organized interest groups (all taken together,
for now) are found to have substantial independent
influence on policy. Again, the predictions of pure theories of interest-group pluralism are not wholly upheld, since
organized interest groups must share influence with
economically-elite individuals. But interest-group align-
ments are estimated to have a large, positive, highly
significant impact upon public policy. These results suggest that reality is best captured by mixed theories in which both individual economic elites and organized interest groups (including corporations,
largely owned and controlled by wealthy elites) play
a substantial part in affecting public policy, but the
general public has little or no independent influence. The rather low explanatory power of all three indepen-
dent variables taken together (with an R-squared of
just .074 in Model 4) may partly result from the
limitations of our proxy measures, particularly with respect to economic elites (since our "affluent" proxy is admittedly imperfect) and perhaps with respect to interest groups (since only a small fraction of politically-active groups are included in our measure). Again, the implication of these
limitations in our data is that interest groups and
economic elites actually wield more policy influence than
our estimates indicate. But it is also possible that
there may exist important explanatory factors outside the three theoretical traditions addressed in this analysis. Or there may be a great deal of idiosyncrasy in policy outputs, or variation across kinds of issues, that would be
572 Perspectives on Politics
difficult for any general model to capture. With our
present data we cannot tell. The magnitudes of the coefficients reported in table 3 are difficult to interpret because of our transformations of
the independent variables. A helpful way to assess the
relative influence of each set of actors is to compare how the predicted probability of policy change alters when moving from one point to another on their distributions of policy dispositions, while holding other actors' preferences constant at their neutral points (50 percent favorable for average citizens and for economic elites, and a net interest- group alignment score of 0). These changing probabilities, based on the coefficients in model 4 of table 3, are line- graphed in figure 1 along with bar graphs of the underlying preference distributions. Clearly, when one holds constant net interest-group alignments and the preferences of affluent Americans, it
makes very litde difference what the general public
thinks. The probability of policy change is nearly the
same (around 0) whether a tiny minority or a large
majority of average citizens favor a proposed policy
change (refer to the top panel of figure 1). By contrast - again with other actors held constant -
a proposed policy change with low support among
economically-elite Americans (one out of five in favor)
is adopted only about 18 percent of the time, while
a proposed change with high support (four out of five in favor) is adopted about 45 percent of the time. Similarly, when support for policy change is low among interest groups (with five groups strongly opposed and none in favor) the probability of that policy change occurring is only .16, but the probability rises to .47 when interest groups are strongly favorable (refer to the bottom two panels of figure l).
When both interest groups and affluent Americans
oppose a policy it has an even lower likelihood of being adopted (these proposed policies consist primarily of tax increases). At the other extreme, high levels of support among both interest groups and affluent Americans increases the probability of adopting a policy change, but a strong status quo bias remains evident. Policies with strong support (as defined above) among both groups are only adopted about 56 percent of the time (strongly favored policies in our data set that failed include proposed cuts in taxes, increases in tax exemptions, increased educational spending for K-12, college support, and proposals during the Clinton adminis- tration to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare).
Majoritarian Electoral Democracy
What are we to make of findings that seem to gp against volumes of persuasive theorizing and much quantitative research, by asserting that the average citizen or the "median voter" has litde or no independent influence on public policy? As noted, our evidence does not indicate that in U. policy making the average citizen always loses out. Since
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Figure 1
Predicted probability of policy adoption (dark
lines, left axes) by policy disposition; the
distribution of preferences (gray columns,
right axes)
the preferences of ordinary citizens tend to be positively correlated with the preferences of economic elites, ordi- nary citizens often win the policies they want, even if they are more or less coincidental beneficiaries rather than
causes of the victory. There is not necessarily any
contradiction at all between our findings and past bivariate
findings of a roughly two-thirds correspondence between actual policy and the wishes of the general public, or of a close correspondence between the liberal/conservative "mood" of the public and changes in policy making Our main point concerns causal inference: if interpreted in terms of actual causal impact, the prior findings appear to be largely or wholly spurious.
Further, the issues about which economic elites and
ordinary citizens disagree reflect important matters,
including many aspects of trade restrictions, tax policy,
corporate regulation, abortion, and school prayer, so
that the resulting political losses by ordinary citizens
are not trivial. Moreover, we must remember that in
our analyses the preferences of the affluent are serving
as proxies for those of truly wealthy Americans, who
may well have more political clout than the affluent,
and who tend to have policy preferences that differ
more markedly from those of the average citizens. Thus even rather slight measured differences between pref-
erences of the affluent and the median citizen may
signal situations in which economic-elites want some-
thing quite different from most Americans and they
generally get their way.
A final point: Even in a bivariate, descriptive sense,
our evidence indicates that the responsiveness of the
U. political system when the general public wants
government action is severely limited. Because of the
impediments to majority rule that were deliberately built into the U. political system - federalism, separation of powers, bicameralism - together with further impedi- ments due to anti-majoritarian congressional rules and procedures, the system has a substantial status quo bias.
Thus when popular majorities favor the status quo,
opposing a given policy change, they are likely to get their way; but when a majority - even a very large majority - of the public favors change, it is not likely to get what it
wants. In our 1,779 policy cases, narrow pro-change
majorities of the public got the policy changes they wanted only about 30 percent of the time. More strikingly, even
overwhelmingly large pro-change majorities, with 80
percent of the public favoring a policy change, got that change only about 43 percent of the time.
In any case, normative advocates of populistic
democracy may not be enthusiastic about democracy by
coincidence, in which ordinary citizens get what they
want from government only when they happen to agree with elites or interest groups that are really calling the
shots. When push comes to shove, actual influence
matters.
Economic Elites Economic-Elite Domination theories do rather well
in our analysis, even though our findings probably
understate the political influence of elites. Our measure of the preferences of wealthy or elite Americans - though
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Table 4
The separate policy impact of business-
oriented and mass-based interest groups
Average citizens' preferences.
(.08)
Economic elites' preferences.
####### (.08)***
Mass-based interest groups.
####### (.07)***
Business interest groups.
####### (.08)***
R-sq.
***p<. Note: All predictors are scaled to range from 0 to 1. The dependent variable is the policy outcome, coded 1 if the proposed policy change took place within four years of the survey date and 0 if it did not. Predictors are the logits of the imputed percent of respondents at the fiftieth ("average citizens") or ninetieth ("economic elites") income percentile that favor the proposed policy change, and the Net Interest- Group Alignment Indices described in the text. Standard errors are asymptotically distribution-free, and all analyses reflect estimated measurement error in the predictors, as described in Appendix 2. N= 1,779.
Moreover, when we restricted this same analysis to the smaller set of issues upon which both types of groups took positions - that is, when we considered only cases in
which business-based and mass-based interest groups
were directly engaged with each other - the contrast
between the estimated impact of the two types of groups was even greater. The advantage of business-oriented groups in shaping policy outcomes reflects their numerical advantage within the interest-group universe in Washington, and also the
infrequency with which business groups are found
simultaneously on both sides of a proposed policy
change Both these factors (numerical dominance and
relative cohesion) play a part in the much stronger
correlation of the overall interest-group alignment index with business groups than with mass-oriented groups (. versus .47, table 2). The importance of business groups' numerical advantage is also revealed when we rescale our measures of business and mass-oriented interest-group alignments to reflect the differing number of groups in
each of these categories. Using this rescaled measure,
a parallel analysis to that in table 4 shows that on
a group-for-group basis the average individual business group and the average mass-oriented group appears to be about equally influential. The greater total influence of business groups in our analysis results chiefly from the fact that more of them are generally engaged on each issue (roughly twice as many, on average), not that a single business-oriented group has more clout on average than a single mass-based group.
Taken as a whole, then, our evidence strongly indicates that theories of Biased Pluralism are more descriptive of political reality than are theories of Majoritarian Plural-
ism. It is simply not the case that a host of diverse,
broadly-based interest groups take policy stands - and
bring about actual policies - that reflect what the general public wants. Interest groups as a whole do not seek the same policies as average citizens do. "Potential groups" do not fill the gap. Relatively few mass-based interest groups are active, they do not (in the aggregate) represent the public very well, and they have less collective impact on policy than do business-oriented groups - whose stands tend to be negatively related to the preferences of average citizens. These business groups are far more numerous and active; they spend much more money; and they tend to get their way.
Table 4 also confirms our earlier findings about
economic elites and median voters. When the alignments of business-oriented and mass-based interest groups are
included separately in a multivariate model, average
citizens' preferences continue to have essentially zero
estimated impact upon policy change, while economic
elites are still estimated to have a very large, positive, independent impact.
American Democracy?
Each of our four theoretical traditions (Majoritarian
Electoral Democracy, Economic-Elite Domination,
Majoritarian Interest-Group Pluralism, and Biased
Pluralism) emphasizes different sets of actors as critical in determining U. policy outcomes, and each tradition has engendered a large empirical literature that seems to show a particular set of actors to be highly influential. Yet
nearly all the empirical evidence has been essentially
bivariate. Until very recently it has not been possible to
test these theories against each other in a systematic,
quantitative fashion. By directly pitting the predictions of ideal-type theories against each other within a single statistical model (using
a unique data set that includes imperfect but useful
measures of the key independent variables for nearly two
thousand policy issues), we have been able to produce
some striking findings. One is the nearly total failure of "median voter" and other Majoritarian Electoral Democ- racy theories. When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.
The failure of theories of Majoritarian Electoral
Democracy is all the more striking because it goes against
the likely effects of the limitations of our data. The
preferences of ordinary citizens were measured more
directly than our other independent variables, yet they are estimated to have the least effect.
September 2014 ļ Vol. 12/No. 3 575
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Articles ļ Testing Theories of American Politics
Nor do organized interest groups substitute for direct citizen influence, by embodying citizens' will and ensur- ing that their wishes prevail in the fashion postulated by theories of Majoritarian Pluralism. Interest groups do have
substantial independent impacts on policy, and a few
groups (particularly labor unions) represent average citi- zens' views reasonably well. But the interest-group system as a whole does not. Overall, net interest-group alignments are not significantly related to the preferences of average
citizens. The net alignments of the most influential,
business-oriented groups are negatively related to the
average citizen's wishes. So existing interest groups do not serve effectively as transmission belts for the wishes of the populace as a whole. "Potential groups" do not take up the slack, either, since average citizens' preferences have little or no independent impact on policy after existing groups' stands are controlled for. Furthermore, the preferences of economic elites (as measured by our proxy, the preferences of "affluent" citizens) have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do. To be sure, this does not mean that ordinary citizens always lose out; they fairly often get the policies they favor, but only because those policies happen also to be preferred by the economically-elite citizens who wield the actual influence. Of course our findings speak most directly to the "first
face" of power: the ability of actors to shape policy
outcomes on contested issues. But they also reflect - to some degree, at least - the "second face" of power: the ability to shape the agenda of issues that policy makers consider. The set of policy alternatives that we analyze is considerably broader than the set discussed seriously by policy makers or brought to a vote in Congress, and our
alternatives are (on average) more popular among the
general public than among interest groups. Thus the fate of these policies can reflect policy makers' refusing to consider them rather than considering but rejecting them. (From our data we cannot distinguish between the two.)
Our results speak less clearly to the "third face" of
power: the ability of elites to shape the public's
preferences We know that interest groups and policy makers themselves often devote considerable effort to
shaping opinion. If they are successful, this might help explain the high correlation we find between elite and mass preferences. But it cannot have greatly inflated our estimate of average citizens' influence on policy making, which is near zero.
What do our findings say about democracy in
America? They certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of "populistic" democracy, who want govern- ments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule - at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes.
576 Perspectives on Politics
When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover,
because of the strong status quo bias built into the
U. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
A possible objection to populistic democracy is that
average citizens are inattentive to politics and ignorant about public policy; why should we worry if their poorly- informed preferences do not influence policy making? Perhaps economic elites and interest-group leaders enjoy
greater policy expertise than the average citizen does.
Perhaps they know better which policies will benefit
everyone, and perhaps they seek the common good,
rather than selfish ends, when deciding which policies to support. But we tend to doubt it. We believe instead that - collectively - ordinary citizens generally know their own values and interests pretty well, and that their expressed policy preferences are worthy of respect Moreover, we are not so sure about the informational advantages of elites. Yes, detailed policy knowledge tends to rise with income
and status. Surely wealthy Americans and corporate
executives tend to know a lot about tax and regulatory policies that directly affect them. But how much do they know about the human impact of Social Security, Medi- care, food stamps, or unemployment insurance, none of which is likely to be crucial to their own well-being? Most important, we see no reason to think that informational
expertise is always accompanied by an inclination to
transcend one's own interests or a determination to work for the common good.
All in all, we believe that the public is likely to be
a more certain guardian of its own interests than any
feasible alternative. Leaving aside the difficult issue of divergent interests and motives, we would urge that the superior wisdom of economic elites or organized interest groups should not
simply be assumed. It should be put to empirical test.
New empirical research will be needed to pin down
precisely who knows how much, and what, about which public policies. Our findings also point toward the need to learn more about exactly which economic elites (the "merely afflu- ent"? the top 1 percent? the top one-tenth of 1 percent?) have how much impact upon public policy, and to what ends they wield their influence. Similar questions arise about the precise extent of influence of particular sets of organized interest groups. And we need to know more about the policy preferences and the political influence of
various actors not considered here, including political
party activists, government officials, and other non-
economic elites. We hope that our work will encourage further exploration of these issues.
Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in
previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy,
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Articles | Testing Theories of American Politics
15 Dahl 1956, 1989. Berry 1999 emphasizes the rising
power of "citizen groups." 16 Olson 1965. 17 Schattschneider 1960, 35; Schlozman, Verba, and
Brady 2012, ch. 10-14.
18 Schattschneider 1960, ch. 1; McConnell 1966; Stigler
1971; Lindblom 1977, parts IV and V; Ferguson
1995; Block 2007; Hacker and Pierson 2010.
19 Marx and Engels 1972. This English-language text comes from the 1888 publication edited by Engels.
20 Miliband 1969, ch. 6. Fred Block (1977) makes
a critical distinction between "instrumentalist" Marx- ist theories like Miliband's, in which politically conscious members of ruling class use their economic resources to shape state action in their own material interests, and "structural" theories, in which the capitalist economic system itself tends to shape state policies and the preferences of its citizens - including workers, who are compelled to accept low wages and high capitalist profits for the sake of future investment and growth. On alternative Marxist theories of power, see also Isaac 1987b. For a formalized structural Marxist theory, see Przeworski and Wallerstein 1982. 2 1 Again, our data can do little to distinguish among these or other mechanisms of political influence. We focus on possible sources of influence among individuals and groups in society.
22 Schlozman, Verba, and Brady 2012, ch. 10-14,
especially 321, 329, 356.
23 Schattschneider 1935.
24 Bauer, Pool, and Dexter 1963; Milbrath 1963;
McChesney 1997.
25 Smith 2000; Baumgartner et al. 2009.
26 Smith 2000, ch. 3.
27 Numerical success rates are not reported in Smith 2000, but the "enactment scorecard" line in figure 4. 1 (83) appears to show Chamber success on 60 percent or more of the bills in most years, with very substantial variation from year to year. 28 Baumgartner et al. 2009, 233, 235. These multivariate results may be biased downwards because the regres- sions include as independent variables congressional and executive branch officials' active support for (or opposition to) policy changes. Since officials' behavior may well have been influenced by the interest groups themselves, the inclusion of these predictors restricts the estimates of group influence to direct effects, excluding any indirect impact that was channeled through interest groups' influence over officials. On the other hand, the omission of other influential actors from the analysis could (if their preferences were positively correlated with those of interest groups) produce spuriously inflated estimates of interest-group influence. A further complexity in assessing interest- group influence involves policy cases in which groups
take no stand at all, which are not included in the analysis by either Smith or Baumgartner et al. In- clusion of no-stand cases would be necessary if one sought to assess the extent to which groups affect over- all policy results - though not for assessing the extent of group influence in the cases where influence attempts are actually made. 29 Appreciation for their fine work in assisting with the colossal task of collecting and coding these data goes to Marty Cohen, Jason Conwell, Andrea Vanacore, and
Mark West at UCLA, and Oleg Bespalov, Daniel
Cassino, Kevin Collins, Shana Gadarian, Raymond Hicks, and Lee Shaker at Princeton. 30 Arguments for the normative and empirical relevance of the "survey agenda" are discussed in Gilens 2012, 50-56. Note that if (as we find) the public has litde or no influence on our issues, which tilt toward high salience, it is unlikely that the public has much influence on more technical or obscure matters. 31 In 20 1 2, the tenth percentile of household income was about $12,200, the fiftieth percentile about $51,000, and the ninetieth percentile about $146,000 (U. Census Bureau, 2013). For further detail on these
data, see Gilens 2012, 57-66.
32 Of course the average (median) citizen is not identical to the eligible or actual "median voter." But the generally small magnitude of differences between the policy preferences of voters and those of all citizens (Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980, 109-114; Schlozman, Verba, and Brady 2012, 120-21) suggests that our measure captures the spirit of median voter theories. To the extent that differences exist, we consider the average citizen to be of greater normative - though less empirical - importance. 33 To make an approximate assessment of the fit between the preferences of the median-preference respondent and those of the median-income respondent we calculated the median preference within each of five income groups (at the tenth, thirtieth, fiftieth, seven- tieth, and ninetieth percentiles). For example, if, on a particular non-monotonic item, the five income groups had imputed median preferences of .50, .60, .70 .65 and .55 (for the tenth to ninetieth income percentiles, respectively), then the estimated over-all median preference would be .60 (in this case equaling the preference at the thirtieth income percentile). In most cases the over-all median preference is the same as the median income (fiftieth percentile) preference. When it is not, the preference differences across income levels tend to be small. Using this technique, the median over-all preferences and the median-income preferences track each other very closely: r= .997. 34 This study is one of the few surveys that meets the two criteria of having a sufficiently large sample size
(n=20,150) and a high enough top-coded income
578 Perspectives on Politics
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category to provide information on the policy prefer- ences of very affluent Americans. 35 Correlations of the policy preferences of the top 2 percent with those of the top 10 percent are based on the 76 CCES respondents who reported at least $350,000 in family income. Using the 179 CCES respondents who reported at least $250,000 (roughly the top 4 percent of the income distribution), the corresponding correlations are .97 and .76. Some corroborating evidence comes from a comparison of the Survey of Economically Successful Americans (Page, Bartels, and Seawright 2013), based on a local sample of the wealthiest 1 percent or 2 percent of Americans, and the Inequality Survey (Page and Jacobs 2009), which was based on a representative sample of the American public. Eight policy-preference questions that were included on both surveys showed that the preferences of the top 25 percent of income earners generally fell about half way between those of the average citizen and those of the wealthy. For similar findings concerning the policy preferences of the top 4 percent or so of income earners, see Page and Hennessy 2008. 36 We distinguish conceptually between two sorts of deficiencies in our measures: flaws that affect the relationship between our indictors and their underly- ing concepts (such as the random and correlated measurement errors we discuss in the appendix), and flaws that arise from the imperfect fit between those concepts and the characteristics we would prefer to measure. For example, the adjustments described in the appendix help us to improve our estimates of the preferences of Americans at the ninetieth income percentile, but they cannot help to make those estimates any more accurate as indicators of the preferences of the truly rich Americans whose views we would prefer to include in our models. 37 Baumgartner et al. 2009, 225. We believe that our measure of net interest group alignment (described later) is actually superior to the Fortune 25 proxy examined by Baumgartner et al. because it includes industries that do not lobby through centralized trade organizations, it is nonlinear in net number of groups, and it reflects the extent to which a particular issue is central to the concerns of an interest group or industry. 38 For more detail on the Index of Net Interest Group
Alignment, see Gilens 2012, 127-30.
39 On the measurement of policy change, see Gilens
2012 (60) and note 18 (284).
40 For correlations of individual groups positions with average citizens' preferences see Gilens 2012, 156-57. 41 These particular values for low and high levels of support among affluent Americans and interest groups were chosen because about 1 5 percent of all proposed policy changes generated either less than 20 percent or
more than 80 percent support among the affluent, and about fifteen percent of all proposed changes on which interests groups took a position generated a raw net interest group score of either more than five groups strongly in favor or more than five groups strongly opposed (counting "somewhat" favorable or opposed as one-half of a group).
42 See Monroe 1979, 1998; Page and Shapiro 1983;
Stimson, MacKuen, and Erikson 1995.
43 Perhaps counterintuitively, it turns out that business groups tilted somewhat less toward opposing proposed changes (33 percent opposed, 26 percent in favor) than mass-based groups did (38 percent opposed, 20 percent in favor.) 44 Even if existing organized groups did not reflect the wishes of average citizens, officials' anticipated reac- tions to unformed "potential groups" might in theory provide some representation for average citizens, as David Truman argued they do. But our table 3 finding of negligible independent influence by average citizens when existing organized interest groups' positions are controlled for, leaves little room for potential groups (and officials' anticipation of them) to advance the preferences of ordinary citizens.
45 Schlozman, Verba, and Brady 2012, ch. 10-14,
especially 321, 329, 356.
46 For the 369 out of 1 ,779 cases in which both business- based and mass-based interest groups took a stand, the coefficients are just .09 (n.) for mass groups but .48**
(p<.001) for business groups.
47 For those proposed policy changes on which at least one business-oriented group took a position, another business-oriented group was found on the opposite side less than 5 percent of the time. Interestingly, mass-based groups were somewhat more likely to take stands on both sides of an issue, for example pro-life and pro-choice groups on abortion, or the AARP which opposed the Clinton health reform plan and the AFL-CIO that favored it.
48 For the analysis in table 4, both the business and
mass interest group indices were scaled to run from 0 to 1. When we rescaled these indices to reflect the differing numbers of business and mass-based groups engaged on each issue, the standard deviation of the business alignment index was .158 and the mass-oriented index .096; their associations with
policy outcomes (analogous to those shown in table
4) were almost identical, at .38 (p<.01) and.
(p<.001), respectively.
49 Bachrach and Baratz 1962, Lukes 1974. See Isaac
1987a.
50 On the normative argument, see Dahl 1989,
especially ch. 7. For empirical evidence that its conditions tend to be satisfied, see Page and Shapiro 1992 and Gilens 2011.
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