Eamon Doyle - Is America a Democracy or an Oligarchy?

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Published in 2022 by Greenhaven Publishing, LLC

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Copyright 2022 by Greenhaven Publishing, LLC

First Edition

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Articles in Greenhaven Publishing anthologies are often edited for length to meet page requirements. In addition, original titles of these works are changed to clearly present the main thesis and to explicitly indicate the authors opinion. Every effort is made to ensure that Greenhaven Publishing accurately reflects the original intent of the authors. Every effort has been made to trace the owners of the copyrighted material.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Doyle, Eamon, 1988- editor.

Title: Is America a democracy or an oligarchy? / Eamon Doyle, book editor.

Description: First edition. | New York: Greenhaven Publishing, 2022. |
Series: At issue | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Audience: Ages 15+ | Audience: Grades 1012 | Summary: Anthology of viewpoints that examine the development of the United States from political, social, and economic perspectives to determine whether the country can still be considered a democracy. Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020051419 | ISBN 9781534508156 (library binding) | ISBN 9781534508149 (paperback) | ISBN 9781534508255 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: DemocracyEconomic aspectsUnited StatesJuvenile literature. | OligarchyUnited StatesJuvenile literature. | United StatesPolitics and governmentJuvenile literature.

Classification: LCC JK1726 .I77 2022 | DDC 330.973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020051419

Manufactured in the United States of America

Website: http://greenhavenpublishing.com

Contents

Kimberly Amadeo

Matthew Johnston

The Guardian

Arthur Foulkes

Michael Sandel

Daniel T. Rodgers

Liz Kennedy

Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh

Jake Johnson

Bernie Sanders

Bhaskar Sunkara

Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza

Jake Rosenfeld

Dan Sanchez

Introduction

D emocracy is commonly understood to mean government of and by the people. In other words, the basic idea of a democratic system is to invest regular citizens with a degree of power over how and by whom they are governed. This power is what distinguishes democratic governance from, for instance, the unmitigated power held by a dictator in an authoritarian state or a king in a monarchical system.

In the contemporary world, most democracies operate based on systems of elected representation wherein citizens participatory power is represented by a right to vote in free elections; citizens elect representatives to serve in official positions and to advance their interests as much as possible while doing so. (The catch for the politicians is that if they fail to protect their constituents interests while in office, they are likely to lose their position in the next election.) Its a straightforward idea, but the reality quickly becomes more complicated when you consider the broader context of an electoral system, a capitalist economy, political parties, and the various ways in which these and other peripheral dynamics interact. Such complexity ensures that no two democracies or elections are exactly alike.

Indeed, the modern world contains examples of socialist democracies, liberal democracies, and illiberal democracies, as well as democratic activity ranging from radical to conservative, populist to aristocratic, progressive to libertarian. The democratic ideal is broad enough to encompass all such political diversityso long as elections are free and fair, and elected officials primary incentive is to serve the interests of their constituents. Democracy in America has certainly seen more than its share of political and ideological diversity. In recent years, however, some concerned observers have argued that contemporary America has drifted from its democratic bearings and now more closely resembles an entirely different form of government: oligarchy.

If we think of democracy as government of and by the people, then we can think of oligarchy as government of and by the few usually wealthy and well-connected elites. Kimberly Amadeo, president of WorldMoneyWatch and author of 2010s Beyond the Great Recession, defines oligarchy in the following terms:

An oligarchy is a power structure that allows a few businesses, families, or individuals to rule. Those few ruling members have enough power to create policies that benefit them to the exclusion of the rest of society. They maintain their power through their relationships with each other. [] They become an organized minority, while average citizens remain an unorganized majority. The oligarchs groom protgs who share their values and goals. It becomes more difficult for the average person to break into the group of elites.

Pundits who argue that the United States is closer to an oligarchy than a democracy usually begin by throwing a spotlight on wealth inequality and, in parallel with Amadeos latter point, declining economic mobility.

But what do income inequality and economic mobility have to do with democratic politics? In an editorial published in the Guardian, Yale University political scientist Jacob Hacker and his colleague Nathaniel Loewentheil examined what happens to democracy when massive wealth inequality coincides with private campaign funding:

Money doesnt just give big spenders the chance to express a view or support a candidate; it gives them leverage to reshape the American economy in their favor. And as the richest have pulled away from the rest of America, the policies they wantextremely low tax rates on the wealthy at a time of record deficits, rampant underinvestment in our future, special treatment for corporations that are imposing major environmental costs and financial risks on our societyare increasingly at odds with the policies the country desperately needs.

This analysis puts a spotlight on the basic problem raised by contemporary observers of American politics: When an ostensibly democratic system struggles to respond to urgent popular imperatives and instead primarily serves the interests of a donor class, the nature of the political environment has fundamentally changed.

This isnt the first time that observers have questioned the democratic integrity of the US political system in this way. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuryan era that historians often refer to as the Gilded Agesaw massive concentrations of private wealth and business titans who used that wealth to gain access, favor, and influence with the political leaders of the time. Citizens and political activists viewed these conditions as a threat to democracy and organized to push for reforms. Consequently, the Gilded Age in the United States was followed by a period known as the Progressive Era, during which a more populist concept of democracy rose to prominence. The Princeton historian Daniel T. Rodgers elaborates: