Democracy For Realists (Summer 2020)  Class ID: 3322

Study Leader:  Lloyd Stires (lstires@auxmail.iup.edu)

Helper:  John Olmsted

Recommended reading

Page, B. I., & Gilens, M. (2017). Democracy in America: What has gone wrong and what we can do about it. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Further reading

Bartels, L. (2016). Unequal democracy: The political economy of the new Gilded Age. New York: Russell Sage.

Chomsky, N. (1989). Necessary illusions: Thought control in democratic societies. Boston: South End Press.

Gilens, M. (2012). Affluence and influence: Economic inequality and political power in America. New York: Russell Sage.

Hacker, J. S., & Pierson, P. (2010). Winner-take-all politics: How Washington made the rich richer and turned its back on the middle class. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Hartmann, T. (2020). The hidden history of the war on voting. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler.

Herman, E., & Chomsky, N. (1988). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. New York: Pantheon.

Lessig, L. (2011). Republic, lost: How money corrupts Congress and a plan to stop it. New York: Hachette.

Levitsky, S., & Ziblatt, D. (2018). How democracies die: What history reveals about our future. New York: Viking.

MacLeod, A. (Ed.) (2019). Propaganda in the information age: Still manufacturing consent. New York: Routledge.

Mayer, J. (2016). Dark money: The hidden history of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right. New York: Doubleday.

Mann, T. E., & Ornstein, N. J. (2016). It’s even worse than it looks (Rev. ed.). New York: Basic Books. (Originally published in 2013).

Teachout, Z. (2014). Corruption in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wegman, J. (2020). Let the people pick the president: The case for abolishing the Electoral College. New York: St. Martin’s.

Articles available on the internet (just click on the links):

Packer, G.  (2020).  We are living in a failed state.  (Warning:  This article is critical of President Trump; you may consider it partisan.)

Badger, E.  (2019).  How the rural-urban divide became America’s fault line.

Leonhardt, D.  (2018).  The Senate:  Affirmative action for white people.

Bump, P.  (2018).  In about 20 years, half the population will live in eight states.

Cole, D.  (2020).  Why we need postal democracy.

Gilens, M, & Page, B. I. (2014).  Testing theories of American politics:  Elites, interest groups and average citizens.  (This is the article that got everyone’s attention.)

Gilens, M, & Page, B. I. (2016).  Critics argued with our analysis of U. S. political inequality.  Here are five ways they’re wrong.

Lessig, L. (2015).  The only realistic way to fix campaign finance.

Denison, D. (2017).  Zephyr Teachout:  We’re mired in corruption.

Herman, E. (2018).  The propaganda model revisited.

Videos available on the internet:

Washington Post (2017).  Gerrymandering, explained.

National Popular Vote (2016).  Introduction:  What it is, why it’s needed.

Williams, J.  (2020).  How lynchings affect black voting today.

Vox (2019).  Why American voter registrations are disappearing.

Vox (2104).  The decline of American democracy in one graph.

Princeton U. (2013).  Insights with Martin Gilens.

Quimbee (2017).  Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Summary.

Chomsky’s Philosophy (2014).  Noam Chomsky:  The Propaganda Model.

University Quick Course (2019).  Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model, Part 1.

University Quick Course (2019).  Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model, Part 2.

Week 1 (7/1):  Minority rule: Structural causes

Introduction:  Are we living in a failed state?

Failed state—a political body that has disintegrated to a point where basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government no longer function properly.  A state can also fail when it loses its legitimacy even if it is performing its functions properly. To be a stable state, a government must have both effectiveness and legitimacy.

By democracy, I mean a system in which the political system responds to the wishes of ordinary citizens; where the majority rules.  Included in this is the assumption of political equality—that all citizens have an equal opportunity to influence public policy.

US political system: Multiple veto points

One explanation for the unresponsiveness of our government is that our political system contains multiple veto points—opportunities for one or another political actor or group to prevent the enactment of policies that most Americans want.  Our political system makes it easier to stop new policies than to start them— gridlock by design.

House of Representatives

Malapportionment–when some districts contain many more residents than others.

Baker v. Carr (1962)–”one person, one vote”–both Congressional and state legislative districts required to be roughly equal in population. Nevertheless, there are exceptions, i.e., each state, no matter how small, gets one representative.

Demography

Some areas of the country are more homogeneous than others; or alternatively, some demographic groups are more concentrated within an area, i.e., African-Americans, while other groups are spread out over a larger area.

Republican partisans are more evenly spread over the territories of most states, while Democrat partisans are concentrated in a small number of predominantly urban areas.  This results in Democrats winning by large majorities in the districts they control, while Republicans win by smaller amounts in a greater number of districts.

Gerrymandering

The Constitution leaves the formation of Congressional districts up to the legislatures of the states.  Whichever party controls the legislatures after a censuscan use this power to manipulate district boundaries to their advantage, which is called gerrymandering.

Ex: In PA, Republicans controlled the 2010 redistricting.  In 2012, Democrats won 51% of House votes, but won only 5 of 18 seats.

The two operations used in gerrymandering are called packing and cracking.  Packing involves concentrating the members of the opposition party into a small number of legislative districts; in effect, improving on what demography already does.  But if the opposition party’s cluster is not too large, it may be better to split them up into two or more districts, with your own party having a numerical advantage.  This is called cracking.

Stephanopoulos and McGhee (2014) proposed a mathematical formula to measure the extent to which a state’s districts have been gerrymandered.

For a particular party, wasted votes are either votes for the losing candidate, or votes for a winning candidate that exceed the number needed to win.  The efficiency gap is the difference between the two parties’ wasted votes, divided by the total number of votes cast.  

If the two parties are treated fairly, the efficiency gap should be close to zero.  When it’s not, this gives you a measure of a party’s undeserved vote share.  This raises the possibility that courts could rule that, if the efficiency gap exceeds a certain percentage, the redistricting is unfair.

Vieth v. Jubilirer (2004)–gerrymandering “nonjusticiable.”

Rucho v. Common Cause (2019)–despite hopes of activists, affirms that gerrymandering “nonjusticiable.”

House rules: One party dominance

The House is no longer a majority rules institution.

The Hastert rule prevents any bill from coming before the House if it is opposed by the majority of the majority.  The majority of the majority (51%)  can be as few as 26%.  So under one-party dominance, the majority party can obstruct a policy favored by as many as 74% of House members.  This makes it less likely that bipartisan legislation will pass the House.

Senate

Malapportionment–the Senate is more malapportioned than the House.

As a result of the “Connecticut compromise” (1787), which was necessary to win support from the smaller states, the Constitution states that the U. S. Senate “shall be composed of two senators from each state, and each senator shall have one vote.”  

Wyoming, with a population of less than 600,000 people, gets the same number of votes as California, with 39.5 million residents.  A WY resident has 66 times as much influence in the Senate than a CA resident.  As of 2010, the 25 smallest states control half the Senate but represent 16% of the population.

Senate rules–the Filibuster.  

A simple majority is not enough in the Senate.  In most cases, a supermajority of 60 votes is required to cut off debate before final passage of a bill.  Thus a minority of 41 senators can prevent most legislative actions. (Exception: Budget issues, executive branch and judicial nominees.)  Unless the majority party wins the Senate by a landslide, the minority party can stop just about anything the majority party wants to do.

The filibuster is not in the Constitution; it’s just a Senate rule.  If the majority party has somewhere between 51 and 60 votes, they may be tempted to abolish the filibuster.  This can be done by a simple majority vote on the first day of a new session of Congress.  What holds them back is the possibility that the other party will do the same thing of the majority party changes.

Since the 1970s, all a Senator has to do to require a supermajority is to state his or her intent to filibuster.  One possibility for reform is to require a more inconvenient “talking filibuster” if the minority wants to block legislation.

Electoral college

Malapportionment

In the electoral college, each state has a number of electors equal to its number of Senators plus its number of Representatives—a minimum of three.  This produces a level of malapportionment that is intermediate between the more biased Senate and the (theoretically) less biased House of Representatives.

For example, a WY resident has 3.5 times as much influence in the presidential election than a CA resident.  But WY and CA are very different demographically.  WY is 84% white; CA is 38% white.

Merling & Baker (2016)–In the electoral college, for every vote a white voter gets, a black voter gets .95, a Hispanic voter gets .91 and an Asian-American gets .93.

Five of our 45 presidents, including two of the last three, have been chosen without winning the popular vote.   However, once something is put to a vote, it is hard to understand why the side getting fewer votes should win.

Geruso, et al (2019)  did a mathematical analysis of the probability of an “inversion” in a presidential election, depending on the closeness of the election.  When the popular vote margin is less than 2%, the chance that the popular vote loser will win the electoral college is about one in three.   Because malapportionment is correlated with political alignment, for the past 30 years, the Republican candidate has been about twice as likely as the Democrat candidate to win through such an inversion.

This kind of research confirms what Republicans already strongly suspected, and increases their resolve to oppose any change in the electoral college.

A possible remedy: National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

Abolishing the electoral college by amending the Constitution is extremely unlikely.  A constitutional amendment must pass both houses of Congress by a two- thirds vote, and must be ratified by three-quarters of the states. However, the method of allocating electoral votes is not specified in the Constitution.  Article II, Section 1 says that each state shall appoint electors “in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct.”

In the NPVIC, the state agrees in advance to award all its electoral votes to the candidate who wins a majority in the popular vote.  The agreement only takes effect when it’s adopted by states that control a majority (270) of the electoral votes.  The NPVIC has been adopted by 15 states and DC, totaling 196 electoral votes.  It needs an additional 74 electoral votes.  The problem:  Almost all the states that have adopted it are Democrat-majority states.

Supreme Court

Marbury v. Madison (1803):  The doctrine of judicial supremacy states that the Supreme Court has final power to interpret what the Constitution means, and therefore, to declare any law to be unconstitutional.

In recent years, the Supreme Court has become more partisan.  Examples of “unconstitutional” actions include legislation banning guns near schools, requiring states to expand Medicaid, core protections of the Voting Rights Act, limits on political campaign contributions, and recounting the Florida ballots in the 2000 election.

Summary:  Red states rule

Malapportionment favors small states over large ones, rural areas over urban, older people over younger ones, whites over minorities, Republicans over Democrats.  (This same malapportionment occurs in most US state legislatures, i.e., plenty of money for highways, but not mass transit.)

The likelihood of change is low, since the Republican party is well aware of its advantages and can be expected to strongly oppose reform.

Week 2 (7/8):  Minority rule: Voter suppression

Voter suppression involves manipulation of laws not grounded in the Constitution, which political parties can use to depress turnout for the opposition party.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965.

I will cover the following voter suppression tactics:

• Voter ID
• Voter purges
• Long waiting lines

Race is the variable that frames almost all types of voter suppression even to the present day.

Two possible remedies:

• Voting by mail
• Automatic voter registration

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Voter suppression tactics have their modern origin in attempts to suppress black voting in the South in the aftermath of the Civil War.  Tactics include poll taxes, literacy tests, and other more violent attempts at voter intimidation.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits “denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” 

One of the strengths of the VRA is that it only requires the plaintiff to prove discriminatory effect, rather than discriminatory intent.

Section 5–Preclearance provision:  Required jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination to get Justice Dept approval before changing their voting rules.

Section 4—Identified those districts required to preclear, based on minority voting rates, past history of discrimination.

Shelby County v. Holder (2013)

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 party line vote, invalidated Section 4, based on the Equal Protection clause of the 14^th Amendment, which invalidated preclearance by implication.

The majority said that preclearance required proof of continued racial discrimination, and there was no evidence that Southern states were still discriminating against African Americans.

Eliminating the preclearance provision leaves minorities defenseless against discriminatory election laws until after the election is over.

Within the next year, six of the nine states fully covered by the VRA passed voter suppression laws.

Voter ID laws

Voter ID laws typically require citizens to produce some form of ID, usually photo ID in order to vote.

Legally, these cases turn on the balance between preventing the harm of voter fraud and causing the harm of voter suppression.

Claims of voter fraud are usually based on either:

• anecdotal evidence
• inadequate or faulty data

Voter ID has been called a solution in search of a problem.  The only type of voter fraud voter ID laws prevent is voter impersonation, which is a ridiculous way to try to affect an election.

One study identified 35 cases of voter impersonation out of 800 million votes cast between 2000-2014.

Evidence that voter ID laws are racially motivated.

Wilson, et al (2012)–a subtle prime increasing the salience of black voters increases support for voter ID laws

In a survey, racial resentment had a significant effect on attitudes toward voter ID.

Mendez and Gross (2012)–state legislators who supported voter ID less likely to respond to an email from a Latino constituent..

Voter ID laws are currently approved by the Supreme Court.

Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (2008)–upheld voter ID law (6-3), stating that Indiana had a “legitimate interest in protecting the integrity . . . of the voting process.”

At present, 36 states have laws requiring voters to show ID at the polls.

Turnout

Hajnal, et al (2014)–Voter ID significantly reduces turnout among Hispanics, Blacks, Asian-Americans and those of mixed race.  Voter ID reduces turnout among Democrats more than Republicans.

Voter purges

Voting roll purges are said to be intended to promote efficiency by eliminating people who have died or moved from the district from the voter rolls.

Problem:  Based on some bureaucratic standard, they also remove so-called “low interest” voters without them knowing.  This is called vote caging.

Like voter ID, voter purges have been upheld by the Supreme Court.

Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute (2018):  Ohio “use it or lose it” law.

If someone skips a federal election, they are sent a notice, and asked to send back a post card.  If they don’t respond and don’t vote for the next four years, they are purged.

Problem:  National Voter Registration Act (1993) says you can’t be purged for failure to vote.

Nevertheless, Court (5-4) upheld the purge because failure to vote was only part of the reason people were eliminated.

Brennan Center:  17 million purged between 2014-2016, compared to 12 million between 2006-2008.

Long waiting lines

One of the simplest and most effective forms of voter suppression is to create long waiting lines so that potential voters will leave in frustration.  This has long been used to discourage voting in minority neighborhoods and around college campuses.

It can be done by not having enough polling places, or voting machine, or poll workers, or by creating procedural delays such as ID checks.

 Charles Stewart did an internet survey “of the voting experience” of 10,200 voters following the 2012 election.

The average self-reported wait time was 14 minutes.

White                 12.7 min

Black                 20.2 min

Hispanic           20.2 min

The Brennan Center (2020) survey of 60,000 voters in the 2018 election.

White                 6.5 min

Black                 9.5 min

Hispanic           9.4 min

Wait times were predicted by a county’s “electoral resources:”  polling places, voting machines, poll workers, etc.

Summary:

Between 2010 and 2018:

• 14 states passed more restrictive voter ID laws.
• 12 states made it harder to register to vote.
• 7 states cut back on early voting opportunities.
• 3 states made it harder to restore the voting rights of people with past criminal convictions.

Those who vote in elections tend to be White, older, more affluent and more highly educated than the average citizen.  Voter suppression laws tend to enhance these differences.

Since these groups are more likely to vote for Democrats, it is not surprising that voter suppression laws are usually passed in Republican-controlled states.

Voter suppression laws tend to target the same groups that we saw last time are disadvantaged by malapportionment.

Expanding the right to vote:  Some suggestions

• automatic voter registration
• making Election Day a national holiday
• extending early voting
• expanding vote by mail
• eliminating laws that disenfranchise convicted felons

Voting by mail

Two arguments against both lack empirical support:  

1. Voting by mail favors Democrats.
2. Voting by mail is subject to fraud.

Automatic voter registration

McElwee, et al (2018)–demographic consequences of Oregon’s AVR law.

AVR significantly increased the percentages of Black, Asian and Hispanic voters; voters between 18 and 29, and low income (less than $45K) voters.

Week 3 (7/15):  System responsiveness

I assume that a key characteristic of a democracy is the continued responsiveness of the government to the preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals.

Robert Dahl (1971)

Alan Monroe (1998)–analyzed the relationship between public opinion and public policy between 1980 and 1993.  Public opinion and public policy were consistent 55% of the time—just slightly above chance.  He also found a strong status quo bias.

Monroe had done a similar study covering the period from 1960-1979, and found that consistency was 63%.

Page and Shapiro (1983)–looked at public opinion change and policy change between 1935 and 1979.  In the 231 instances in which both public opinion and public policy both changed, they changed in the same direction 66% of the time.

Larry Bartels (2005)–studied the relationship between the opinions of the residents of each state and the voting records of their senators.

He divided the survey respondents into three roughly equal groups:

• low income (less than $20,000)
• middle income ($20,000 to $40,000)
• high income (above $40,000)

Senators were more in agreement with high income constituents than middle income constituents, and low income constituents had no influence at all.

Republican senators agreed more with high income constituents, but Democrats were not any more responsive to low income constituents.

Hayes (2013), using Bartels’ methodology, repeated the analysis of the Senate between 2001-2010, and found even greater upper class dominance.

Gilens (2012)–combines features of both Monroe’s and Bartels’ research.  Like Monroe, his criterion was whether a social policy was enacted by the federal government, but like Bartels, he broke the public down by income level.  He improved on Monroe’s study by analyzing the percentage of people who favored the policy.

His sample of policies was a set of 1779 survey questions asked of national samples by polling organizations between 1981 and 2002.  Using income data, he estimated the preferences of people at the 90^th, 50^th and 10^th percentiles of the income distribution.  A policy was said to have been enacted if the proposed change took place within four years of the date of the survey question.

The preference-policy link: The association all respondents’ attitudes toward the policy and its enactment is positive, but there is a status quo bias.  Of policies supported by at least 80% of respondents, only 48% were adopted.

Gilens looked at the probability of adoption of policies separately depending on the attitudes of the people at the 90^th, 50^th and 10^th percentiles.  The probability of adoption is most highly correlated with the preferences of the 90^th percentile, followed by the 50^th percentile and the 10^th percentile in that order.  A policy is most likely to be adopted when the wealthy support it, and least likely to be adopted when they oppose it.

He used multivariate statistics to measure the independent influence of people depending on their income level.  The analysis looks first for the strongest predictor of the outcome, which is the attitudes of the 90^th percentile.  It then asks whether adding in the attitudes of the second best predictor, the 50^th percentile, and the third best, the 10^th percentile, improves the prediction of the outcome, and they do not.

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 miniscule, near zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.

Gilens & Page, p. 575

If you look at the middle class by itself, the government might appear to be fairly responsive to their preferences.  But the analysis shows that this is an illusion.  Any apparent responsiveness of politicians to the middle class is explained by the fact that, in most cases, they happen to agree with the wealthy.  Gilens and Page refer to this as democracy by coincidence.

It’s because of this democracy by coincidence that the average person doesn’t realize how little power he or she actually has.  Because we happen to agree with the wealthy, we think the politicians are paying attention to us.

The most frequent criticism of Gilens is that his statistical method underestimates the influence of the middle class.  The argument is that they contribute more to the general consensus than this study gives them credit for.

Gilens’ reply: To get a clearer picture of their relative influence, let’s not look at when they agree, but at the cases in which they disagree  When average (or low income) Americans and affluent Americans differ on social policies, it is affluent Americans that usually prevail.  

When the middle class strongly favors a policy, but the affluent do not, it has only a 24% chance of adoption.  But when the affluent support it and the middle class doesn’t, the probability of adoption is 55%.

The results are even stronger for opposition.  When the affluent strongly oppose a policy, but the middle class doesn’t, it has only a 4% chance of adoption.  But when the middle class strongly opposes a policy with affluent support, the probability of adoption is 40%.

Week 4 (7/22):  System responsiveness: Interest Groups

Interest groups

Gilens selected 43 interest groups that maintain active lobbying organizations in Washington: 33 from Fortune’s “power 25,” plus 10 others based on expenditures. He classified these interest groups into two categories;

• Business groups, such as the Chamber of Commerce, defense contractors, oil companies, etc.
• Mass membership organizations, such as AFL-CIO, AARP, NRA, etc.

For each of the 1779 policy issues, he recorded whether each interest groups favored or opposed the change, or had no position.

The positions of interest groups were largely unrelated to the preferences of the general public, or of the 10^th, 50^th and 90^th percentiles.

Interest groups, on the whole, were effective in influencing public policy. Business interest groups had almost twice as much influence as mass membership interest groups. There are more of them, and they have greater financial resources.

Interest groups were more likely to oppose policy changes than to support them— 55% vs. 39%. Therefore interest groups contribute to the status quo bias.

Gilens & Page (2014)–Testing theories of American politics.

Four general theories or models of how the American political system works.

1. Majoritarian electoral democracy—US government policies are due to the collective will of average citizens, who are empowered by democratic elections.

2. Economic elite domination—US government policies are controlled chiefly by people who have substantial economic resources; that is, high income or wealth.

3. Majoritarian pluralism—government as a contest between diverse interest factions, with the interests of all Americans more or less equally represented.

4. Biased pluralism—a type of pluralism in which corporations, business interests and professional groups predominate.

	Average citizens	Economic elites	Mass interest groups	Business interest groups
Majoritarian democracy	X
Elite domination		X
Majoritarian pluralism			X	X
Biased pluralism				X
Results		X		x

The results provide strongest support for the elite domination theory, with biased pluralism also receiving support. Majoritarian democracy and majoritarian pluralism are not supported.

Plutocracy = a society that is ruled or controlled by people of great wealth or income.

Policy domains

Gilens’ compared the responsiveness of the political system in four categories:

• foreign policy and national defense
• economic policy, such as minimum wage and taxes
• social welfare policy, including education, health care, and poverty

• moral or religious issues, including abortion, gay rights, drug policy

The affluent (90^th percentile) were more conservative than the middle class and the poor on foreign policy, economic policy and social welfare policy, but more liberal on moral/religious issues.

The status quo bias was smaller with regard to moral and religious issues than the other three issues.

The affluent had more influence in all four policy domains, but their relative influence was greatest on economic policy issues.

The wealthiest Americans

Page, Bartels & Seawright (2013): They surveyed a sample of 83 wealthy citizens living in the Chicago area on economic issues.  Average wealth: slightly over $14 million.  Average income: slightly over $1 million/year.

The wealthy are unusually politically active.

• Two thirds of their respondents had contributed to the last presidential campaign, an average of $4633.

• Within the past 6 months, 53% reported having contacted an official of the federal government.

When asked what they had talked about, 44% reported conversations related to their own economic self-interest.

The majority of wealthy respondents opposed a wide variety of job and income policies that a majority of average Americans support, i.e., higher minimum wage, single payer health insurance, more spending on education.

Brookman & Skovron (2013)–2012 survey of all candidates for state legislature.

The candidates were asked to estimate what percentage of their constituents would agree with the following three statements:

• Same sex couples should be allowed to marry.
• Implement a universal healthcare program to guarantee coverage to all Americans, regardless of income.
• Abolish all federal welfare programs.

They were also asked their own attitudes toward the first two questions. Their estimates were compared to actual public opinion in their state or district.

Candidates perceived their constituents to be much more (about 10% more) conservative on these issues than they actually were.

When candidates were classified as liberal or conservative based on their own answers to the questions, conservative candidates overestimated their constituents’ conservatism to a greater extent than the liberal candidates.

When surveyed again after the election, they were no more accurate than before. Their accuracy was unrelated to any activities they reported during the campaign, i.e., time spent talking with voters.

Brookman & Skovron (2017): They repeated the study in 2014 with seven new questions, including abortion, gun control and immigration.

Results were the same: Legislators perceived their constituents as more conservative than they actually were, and this misperception was greater among Republican legislators.

Kalla & Porter (2019)–invited legislators to access detailed survey information about their constituents’ attitudes.

Results: Only 11% of legislators accessed the website; a second invitation netted an additional 2.3%.

All participants were send a followup survey with no apparent connection to the study. Their estimates were just as inaccurate as before, and did not differ from their colleagues who had not accessed the website.

Hertel-Fernandez, Mildenberger & Stokes (2018) did a similar study focusing on senior staff members of U. S. Senators and House members.  They were asked to estimate the public opinion in their state or district on five issues, i.e., regulation of carbon emissions, repeal of the ACA.

Results: They overestimated their constituents’ conservatism on 4 of the 5 issues, and the bias was greater among Republicans than Democrats.

Possible reasons:

1. The greater the staffer’s personal support for a policy, the more they misperceived constituents as agreeing with them.  False consensus effect = we overestimate the percentage of people who agree with our own attitudes.

2. Interest groups: The greater their contact with and financial support from business-oriented interest groups, the less accurate their perceptions of constituent opinion.

Contact with mass-based interest groups was associated with greater accuracy.

Two experiments:

1. List experiment—suggests that 45% admit being influenced by campaign contributions.

2. Hypothetical question: Suggests that letters from business groups are taken more seriously than those from random constituents and nonprofits.

Kalla & Brookman (2015)–contacted 191 Congressional offices requesting a meeting. The email identified the people requesting the meeting as either local constituents or local campaign donors.

Outcome measure: Success was coded in six categories, with the least successful being no meeting and the most successful meeting with the Congressperson.

Donors more likely to get the meeting than constituents. Donors were more likely to get meetings with the Congressperson or senior staff members.

Week 5 (7/29):  Political corruption

Lessig (2011)–Republic, Lost

Two types of corruption

1. Quid pro quo corruption

Quid pro quo means something in exchange for something else.

2. Dependence corruption

In social exchange theory, power is the ability to influence the rewards and costs of another person, specifically it is the range of outcomes through which one person can move another. The most useful kind of power to have is behavior control—the ability to make another person’s outcomes contingent on your behavior.

The opposite of power is dependence. When I am dependent on you, you are able to control my behavior. The most stable relationships are characterized by mutual interdependence. Each party is able to influence the other is a variety of situations. In other words, there is reciprocity.

That social exchange makes both parties satisfied with the relationship and keeps them in it.

Washington as a gift economy

A gift economy is a mode of exchange where valuable commodities are not traded or sold, but given without an explicit agreement regarding any exchange of future rewards. This is in contrast to a market economy in which commodities are sold or traded.

Gifts are usually given in the expectation of generalized reciprocity—the parties exchange goods and services without keeping track of their exact value, but expecting them to balance out over time. The primary purpose is of a gift culture is to establish a relationship between the parties: a bond of friendship.

The donor usually does not give money directly to the politician; there is one or more middle-men, usually lobbyists. The donor tries, through a series of favors, to put the politician under a feeling of personal obligation. The politician thinks of the donors and lobbyists as friends. The result is a gradual shift of loyalties from the public interest to the interests of those who have been doing him favors.

The politician will claim—and may actually believe—that there is no causal connection between the favors he receives and the decisions he makes, and that the policies advocated by donors are in the public interest.

Washington is a gift economy not because that’s what people want, but because it is regulated to be. Since quid pro quo exchange transactions are illegal, the gift economy is the only way for both the donor and the politician to reach their goals.

Lobbyists

The lobbyists are the essential middle-men between the donors and the politicians who make it easier to conceal the nature of the transaction, both from the law and from the politicians themselves.

The system benefits all parties:  Members of Congress get badly needed campaign cash, either directly from lobbyists or indirectly as facilitated by lobbyists. The donors get a chance to influence government policy. Lobbyists get an ever-growing and increasingly profitable business.

 Interest groups spend more on lobbying than on direct contributions, by a ratio of about six to one. Forbes magazine (2019) study of Fortune 100 companies found that a $325 million investment in lobbying returned $338 billion in federal grants and contracts—a return on investment of slightly over 1000%.

Being a member of Congress is often a stepping stone to a more lucrative career as a lobbyist.

Teachout (2014)—Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United

When Franklin left Paris in 1785, Louis XVI gave him a parting gift: a snuff box with a portrait of the king surrounded by 408 diamonds. Was this appropriate, or did Franklin owe something to the king as a result of this gift?

 Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution:

No person holding any office of profit or trust under them [the United States] shall, without the consent of Congress, accept any present, office or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince or foreign state.

The single most important corruption the Founders were concerned about was systemic corruption, not how to police bribery or quid pro quo deals. The Founders showed a preference for anticorruption rules that prohibited innocent activity that could lead to corruption. Unfortunately, the newly formed federal government did not pass a general bribery or extortion statute directed at government officials. They left it to the states.

If there was a golden age of anticorruption law, it was brought about by Teddy Roosevelt’s (1901-1909) crusade against corrupt practices.

Tillman Act (1907–barred corporations from contributing to political campaigns.

Federal Corrupt Practices Act (1910)–limited political party and candidate spending in Senate races.

For nearly 70 years after Roosevelt left office, the courts upheld his approach against constitutional challenges. But in the 1970s, the Supreme Court began to curb legislative power by narrowing the definition of corruption.

Two questionable doctrines

Corporate personhood: A corporation has some of the same rights enjoyed by natural persons, including the absolute right to freedom of speech. But corporations differ from persons in many ways.  Most importantly, many corporations have wealth and power that far exceeds any person, and, unlike persons, can exist in perpetuity.

Money = speech

Speech is one of the things that can be bought with money, but it’s far from the only thing. Equating money with speech ignores the context within which the speech occurs; specifically, that in the political arena, speech is expensive and some people can afford more speech than others.

Campaign Finance Reform Act (1974)

The act imposed strict limits on the political contributions of individuals:

• A $1000 limit on contributions to a candidate.

• A $1000 limit on expenditures intended to affect an election.

• A disclosure requirement.

• Created the Federal Elections Commission to enforce the law.

Former Sen. James Buckley (R-NY) argued that spending on an election was a form of free speech, so the law violated the First Amendment.

Buckley v. Valeo (1975): Supreme Court upheld most of the law, including the ban on individual campaign contributions, but not the ban on campaign expenditures, which the court said were “pure speech.”

1. Spending money in elections is an absolute right protected by the First Amendment; money is speech.

2. Only combatting corruption might justify limits on the First Amendment.

3. Campaign contribution limits are presumptively valid.

4. Campaign spending limits are forbidden.

Limits on contributions were justified because large contributions might corrupt the election process by making candidates beholden to large contributors. But limits on expenditures did not necessarily have that effect.

McCormick v. US (2006)–McCormick was convicted of extortion when he asked for and got a donation and subsequently introduced a law benefitting the lobbyist’s client.

The Supreme Court overturned the conviction, saying that private campaign contributions were unavoidable under our system of government. To constitute corruption, the contribution must be made in exchange for an explicit promise to do or not to do an official act—a quid pro quo.

McCain-Feingold Act (2002):  It eliminated the “soft money” loophole which allowed corporations and rich individuals to make unlimited contributions to political parties, and to run “issue ads” during campaign season.

Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (2010)

In 2008, during the Democratic primaries, a conservative nonprofit, Citizens United, planned to show Hillary: The Movie, a 90 min movie criticizing Hillary Clinton on cable TV. The FEC said it violated the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002 that prohibited corporate funded campaign commercials within 30 days of a presidential primary.

The majority (5-4) issued a broad ruling, abolishing all limits on corporate contributions to independent expenditures.

Importance of Citizens United

1. Justice Kennedy stated that the First Amendment protects political speech regardless of the identity of the speaker. Therefore, corporations as well as individuals are allowed to engage in unlimited political spending.

Led directly to the rise of:

“Super PACs” which solicit and bundle money from corporate donors.

“Dark money” in which a corporation gives the money to a non-profit, which gives it to a Super PAC, allowing the donor to remain anonymous.

2. No sufficiently important governmental or constitutional goal is served by limiting corporate political advertising. Kennedy classifies influence-seeking as normal and desirable political behavior.

Result: By 2015, five years after Citizens United, corporations and super PACs were spending an estimated $2 billion/year, 2.5 times the average amount spent between 1990-2008. Approximately one-third of it was dark money.

Feedback loop: Contributions → policies favoring corporations, wealthy individuals → increased economic inequality → more contributions → more policies, etc.

Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett (2011): An Arizona law attempted to level the playing field among candidates by through public funding of candidates who faced high spending opponents.

Supreme Court reversed, saying it violated the free speech rights of the high spending candidates. This ruling suggests the Court may not accept public funding of political campaigns as a remedy for too much money in politics.

McDonnell v. US (2016): VA Gov. Bob McDonnell convicted of receiving $175,000 in gifts and loans from a VA businessman. Return favors included setting up meetings, hosting events, calling other public officials on his behalf.

Supreme Court overturned saying that what McDonnell did for this businessman did not constitute “an official act.”

Summary

The Supreme Court has made a series of decisions that make it less likely that we can have a democracy and more likely that we will have an oligarchy—rule by the wealthy.

1. The narrowing of the definition of corruption to mean only quid pro quo.  Only the most unsophisticated politicians, lobbyists and donors are likely to be caught engaging in quid pro quo corruption.

2. The tendency to see political influence only through the lens of the First Amendment—freedom of speech, treated as absolute.  This makes it difficult, maybe impossible, to craft laws that might prevent political corruption.

Week 6 (8/5):  Mass media influence

The ideology of thought control

Walter Lippmann (1922)–Public Opinion

The theory of democracy assumes that people are the best judges of their own interests.  This model may have been appropriate at one time, but it is dangerously utopian in a mass society. All we know about the world are stereotypes—oversimplified and inaccurate pictures in our heads. In The Phantom Public (1925), he began referring to US citizens as “the bewildered herd.”In a well-functioning democratic society, there are two classes of people:

1. The “specialized class, public men, responsible men:”  Those who think, analyze, make decisions.

2. The rest of us, the bewildered herd. Our function in a democracy is to be the spectators of action. Every four years, we decide which faction of the responsible men will be allowed to run the country. Then we go back to being spectators again.

Lippmann thought all of this was morally justified.

It is immoral to let the bewildered herd run the country, in much the same way that you wouldn’t let a 3-yr-old run into traffic. They’ll hurt themselves.

In order to help the public make wise decisions, it was necessary to transmit expert information to them in simplified form. This was called propaganda:  Not a negative term, used as a synonym for persuasion.

 Propaganda

The first modern propaganda office was the Committee on Public Information, established by President Woodrow Wilson to build support for America’s entry into World War I.

Edward Bernays (1928)–Propaganda

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element of democratic society.

Harold Laswell—prominent political scientist between the two world wars.

He said we must recognize the ignorance and stupidity of the masses. We must not succumb to “democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests.” The masses must be controlled for their own good. This is done through new techniques of thought control, called propaganda.

Reinhold Niebuhr—the theologian of the establishment.

Rationality is given to only a small number of people; the rest of us are ruled by our emotions. Therefore, leaders must create “necessary illusions”—emotionally potent oversimplifications, i.e., “Communism is an evil system ruled by evil men.”

Trilateral Commission:  The Crisis of Democracy (1975). Primary author:  Samuel Huntingdon, Harvard political scientist.

The crisis of democracy was that there was too much democracy.  In the 1960s, many Americans were trying to participate in public life:  the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam was movement, the women’s movement, the environmental movement. Governmental authority must be restored.

There has been a revival of the argument that Americans are not smart enough to make wise political choices as a result of the Trump presidency.

Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky (1988)–Manufacturing Consent:  The Political Economy of the Mass Media

The propaganda model

As news passes through the corporate media, most of the important information is trapped by one or more of five filters, which screen out ideas that are inconsistent with the ideology of the country’s ruling class. We don’t have to believe what the media tell us, but we usually have no way of knowing what they don’t tell us.

There is considerable evidence from social psychology that the mere repetition of statements causes people to believe they are true.

The five filters that screen out dissenting information

Filter #1:  Ownership—the size, concentrated ownership and profit orientation of media corporations.

Ben Bagdikian (2004)–Media Monopoly (5^th ed.)

In 1981, 46 corporations control most (>50%) of the world’s supply of information and entertainment. In 2020, five corporations control 90% of US media revenue. This has been a result of two types of mergers:

Horizontal integration:  Within each medium, the number of producers is shrinking, i.e., one newspaper chain buys out another.

Vertical integration:  The same corporations control significant portions of the market at several stages of the production-distribution process, i.e., a newspaper purchases a local TV station.

Filter #2:  Advertising

In most mass media, advertising is the primary source of revenue, rather than sales or subscription. In general, the more a medium is supported by advertising, the less controversial its content. Sponsorship by health insurance companies, fossil fuel companies, defense contractors, etc., influences how issues that are discussed on news and public affairs programs, limits investigative reporting, etc.

Filter #3:  Sources—reliance on official sources—information provided by government, business and university “experts,” and media pundits, most of which are ultimately funded by corporations.

Reporters are dependent on sources, cannot afford to alienate them. They become “stenographers to power,” often passing along statements by public officials that they know are false.

Filter #4:  Flak—negative feedback from government and business to the media any time they don’t follow the government/corporate agenda, i.e., claims of liberal bias, fake news, etc. Flak from business and government has led to an obsession with balance.

False balancing:  When a stories about climate change include a rebuttal by climate skeptics, leading the public to mistakenly conclude that scientists are evenly split on whether climate change is real.

Filter #5:  Ideology (“anticommunism”)–private acceptance of the dominant ideology (free market capitalism) by experienced media personnel.

Effect on media personnel:  Self-censorship

1. Conformity:  If you don’t follow the corporate line, you will be disciplined; if you defy management repeatedly, you will be fired.

2. Self-persuasion:  Nobody engages in behavior that is inconsistent with their attitudes for long. Eventually you change your attitudes to make them consistent with your behavior. You perceive your compliance as voluntary.

Summary:  The mass media strongly support the interests of dominant, powerful groups such as the government and large corporations.

Evidence for or against the propaganda model

A sizable portion of the American public believes that the media are biased, but there is not much agreement on the direction of the bias. The hostile media phenomenon—Most people who believe the media are biased see them as biased against their own political position. The issue is complicated by the possibility that the media probably are more liberal on social issues, but not on economic issues.

Content analysis

In many cases, there is no agreed-upon objective standard of truth against which media coverage can be compared. In those cases where there is a generally agreed upon standard of fairness, one can measure whether the media meet that standard.

Three examples of conservative bias:

1. Randall & Broughel–The 2003 invasion of Iraq

2. Joskow (2018)–the Senate hearing re: confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

3. Patterson (2016)–the 2016 election.

Trump received more coverage throughout the campaign. Trump’s coverage got less negative toward the end of the campaign, while Clinton’s coverage got more negative.

Measures of the political attitudes of media personnel

Croteau (1998)–Surveyed the economic attitudes of 141 Washington-based journalists and found them to be significantly more conservative than the general public.

Measures of the political attitudes of media audiences

Studies comparing the political attitudes of light and heavy TV viewers, find the heavy viewers are more conservative on both economic and social issues.

Possibilities of reform

Reforms for problem discussed in this course face two obstacles.

1. They require either legislation or a constitutional amendment, both of which require bipartisan support. But bipartisan support is unlikely since one political party usually knows that they benefit from the status quo.

2. The Supreme Court has consistently come down on the side of inequality, by either refusing to intervene (voter suppression, gerrymandering) or by declaring reforms that had bipartisan support (campaign finance reform) unconstitutional.

Example: Lessig’s “democracy vouchers.”  Each citizen gets a $50 voucher to donate to the candidate of his/her choice. In order to receive a voucher, the candidate must agree to a $100 limit on other donations.

Good points:

1. Citizens not forced to support candidates they don’t like.

2. Candidates not forced to participate in the system.

3. It doesn’t try to equalize candidate spending.

But it fails to address two problems:

1. Candidates who opt out can outspend candidates who opt into the system by a substantial amount.

2. It does not address the problem of outside spending by corporations and rich individuals, which according to the Supreme Court has said can be unlimited and anonymous.

The timing of reform:  Enacting some reforms but not others can be counterproductive.  Ex: Eliminating the filibuster without campaign finance reform only increases the power of corporations and wealthy contributors.

Some theorists believe a two-party system discourages political participation, because so many voters feel that neither party represents their interests.