American democracy sold to the highest bidder

Aristotle measured the quality of democracy by the extent to which politics constrains the economically powerful, allowing the preferences of the landless to be reflected in public policy. According to a new analysis, American democracy gets a failing grade on Aristotle’s test while the countries of northern Europe are star pupils.

Path-breaking recent research has established a causal relationship between preferences of elite earners and public policy outcomes: the income bias. Aristotle’s maxim in the context of the US is the precise hypothesis that Benjamin Page at Northwestern and Martin Gilens of Princeton tested in research. CONT.

George Tyler, LSE USAPP