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19 March 2006

Gilens on inequality and representation

Political scientists often try to assess how well the government responds to public policy preferences. Friday's CAPS lecture by Martin Gilens of Princeton University pushes this research in a new direction - asking who the American government is most likely to respond to.

Gilens matches public opinion regarding proposed policy changes to whether these were actually enacted. As we might expect given the structure of American government, the status quo tends to win out and few potential changes that surveys ask about are implemented. Fundamental notions of equal representation, however, fare less well in the empirical analysis. As the abstract of Gilens' recent POQ article says,

When Americans with different income levels differ in their policy preferences, actual policy outcomes strongly reflect the preferences of the most affluent but bear virtually no relationship to the preferences of poor or middle-income Americans.

While understandably concerned with the normative implications of these findings, the audience responded positively. My major question about this research concerns the "black box" mechanism which translates the preferences of the rich into the policies the government enacts. Is it because they participate more in politics? (Bartels says not). Is it because politicians themselves tend to be drawn from the higher end of the income distribution, and so personally hold the same opinions? Or because the wealthy fund parties and candidates, allowing them more influence than someone who only has the power of voting? I have no answers, but would love to see more research in this area.

Posted by Phil Jones at March 19, 2006 9:35 PM