Majoritarian Electoral Democracy

Theories of majoritarian electoral democracy, as positive or empirical theories, attribute U.S. government policies chiefly to the collective will of average citizens, who are seen as empowered by democratic elections. Such thinking goes back at least to Tocqueville, who (during the Jacksonian era) saw American majorities as “omnipotent”—particularly at the state level—and worried about “tyranny of the majority.” ^Footnote1 It is encapsulated in Abraham Lincoln’s reference to government “of the people, by the people, for the people,” and was labeled by Robert Dahl “populistic democracy.” ^Footnote2

An important modern incarnation of this tradition is found in rational choice theories of electoral democracy, in which vote-seeking parties or candidates in a two-party system tend to converge at the mid-point of citizens’ policy preferences. If preferences are jointly single-peaked so that they can be arrayed along a single dimension, the “median voter theorem”—posited verbally by Harold Hotelling, proved by Duncan Black, and popularized by Anthony Downs in his Economic Theory of Democracy—states that two vote-seeking parties will both take the same position, at the center of the distribution of voters’ most-preferred positions. Under the relevant assumptions, public policy that fits the preferences of the median voter is not only the empirically-predicted equilibrium result of two-party electoral competition; as the “Condorcet winner” it also has the normative property of being the “most democratic” policy, in the sense that it would be preferred to any alternative policy in head-to-head majority-rule voting by all citizens. ^Footnote3

Subsequent “chaos” results by social choice theorists, starting with Kenneth Arrow, have indicated that the median voter prediction follows logically only for unidimensional politics. If citizens’ preference orderings are not unidimensional and are sufficiently diverse, majority rule—hence also two-party electoral competition—might not lead to any equilibrium outcome at all. ^Footnote4 It is important to note, however, that what might theoretically happen will not necessarily ever happen in practice. Real-world outcomes depend upon how institutions are organized and how preferences are actually configured.

Despite the “chaos” results, and despite many criticisms of the median-voter theorem as simplistic and empirically inapplicable or wrong, ^Footnote5 a good many scholars—probably more economists than political scientists among them—still cling to the idea that the policy preferences of the median voter tend to drive policy outputs from the U.S. political system. A fair amount of empirical evidence has been adduced—by Alan Monroe; Benjamin Page and Robert Shapiro; Robert Erikson, Michael MacKuen, and James Stimson (authors of the very influential Macro Polity); and others—that seems to support the notion that the median voter determines the results of much or most policy making. This evidence indicates that U.S. federal government policy is consistent with majority preferences roughly two-thirds of the time; that public policy changes in the same direction as collective preferences a similar two-thirds of the time; that the liberalism or conservatism of citizens is closely associated with the liberalism or conservatism of policy across states; and that fluctuations in the liberal or conservative “mood” of the public are strongly associated with changes in the liberalism or conservatism of policy in all three branches of government. ^Footnote6

The fly in the ointment is that none of this evidence allows for, or explicitly assesses, the impact of such variables as the preferences of wealthy individuals, or the preferences and actions of organized interest groups, which may independently influence public policy while perhaps being positively associated with public opinion—thereby producing a spurious statistical relationship between opinion and policy.

Recent research by Larry Bartels and by one of the present authors (Gilens), which explicitly brings the preferences of “affluent” Americans into the analysis along with the preferences of those lower in the income distribution, indicates that the apparent connection between public policy and the preferences of the average citizen may indeed be largely or entirely spurious. ^Footnote7

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.O. 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 corresponding with their current policy preferences. ^Footnote8 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. ^Footnote9 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.S. policy making is dominated by individuals who have substantial economic resources, i.e., 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 occupancy 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 interests, and social interactions.

For example, C. Wright Mills’ important book, The Power Elite, offers a rather nuanced account of how U.S. social, economic, political, and military elites have historically alternated in different configurations of dominance. 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. ^Footnote10 Our focus here is on theories that emphasize the policy-making importance of economic elites.

Analyses of U.S. politics centered on economic elites go back at least to Charles Beard, who maintained that a chief aim of the framers of the U.S. 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.S. 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. ^Footnote11

Our third and fourth theoretical traditions posit that public policy generally reflects the outcome of struggle among organized interest groups and business firms. ^Footnote12

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 apparently 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-feared issuance of inflationary paper money that might cater to local majority factions of farmer-debtors but would be costly to merchant creditors. ^Footnote13

In the twentieth century, Arthur Bentley’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 influence. 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 punishment) heed all “potential” groups that would form if their interests were trampled upon. ^Footnote14

Robert Dahl’s analysis of New Haven city politics was Madisonian or Truman-like in its insistence that many (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 implicitly) a picture of group struggle that results in more or less majoritarian results. ^Footnote15

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. ^Footnote16

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 unrepresentative universe of interest groups—characterized by E.E. Schattschneider as a heavenly chorus with an “upper-class accent,” and more recently dubbed by Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba, and Henry Brady an “unheavenly chorus.” Theories of biased pluralism generally 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. ^Footnote17

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 industrial 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 Pierson’s 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. ^Footnote18

Marxist and neo-Marxist theories of the capitalist state hold that economic classes—and particularly the bourgeoisie, 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.” ^Footnote19 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. ^Footnote20

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 legislation, and spend a great deal of money on election campaigns. ^Footnote21 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.S. labor movement has become so weak. ^Footnote22

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. ^Footnote23 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.S. 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 little 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. More recently, Fred McChesney has made the ingenious argument that campaign contributions from interest groups may not represent quid pro quo bribery attempts by groups, but instead result from extortion by politicians who threaten to harm the groups’ interests. ^Footnote24

Very few studies have offered quantitative evidence concerning the impact of interest groups based on a number of different public policies. Important exceptions include the work of Mark Smith and that of Frank Baumgartner, Jeffrey Berry, Marie Hojnacki, David Kimball, and Beth Leech. ^Footnote25

Mark Smith examined 2,364 “business unity” issues—over a period of four decades—on which the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (arguably a reasonable proxy for business groups as a whole, on this particular set of issues where most businesses agreed) took a public stand for or against. He then calculated six measures of the Chamber’s annual rate of “success” at getting the action or inaction it favored from Congress. ^Footnote26 The Chamber’s average success rate in terms of proportion of bills enacted or defeated appears to have been fairly high, ^Footnote27 but Smith did not argue that such success necessarily demonstrates influence. (A batting-average approach to influence would have to assume that stand-taking is unrelated to expectations of success. Further, in order to gauge business’s independent impact and avoid spurious results, data on stands taken by other actors would need to be included as well.) Instead, Smith devoted most of his effort to analyzing the over-time correlates of high or low success, such as variations in the public “mood” and in the partisan composition of Congress.

Frank Baumgartner and his colleagues, in their meticulous examination of 98 cases of congressional policy making in which interest groups were active, investigated whether the magnitude of group resources that were deployed was related to outcomes across those cases. In their multivariate analyses, Baumgartner et al. found a modest tendency for policy outcomes to favor the side that enjoyed greater resources (PAC contributions, lobbying expenditures, membership size, etc.). ^Footnote28

Prior to the availability of the data set that we analyze here, no one we are aware of has succeeded at assessing interest-group influence over a comprehensive set of issues, while taking into account the impact of either the public at large or economic elites—let alone analyzing all three types of potential influences simultaneously.