Affluence and influence
by Martin Gilens · first published 2012
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Can a country be a democracy if its government only responds to the preferences of the rich? In an ideal democracy, all citizens should have equal influence on government policy, but as this book demonstrates, America's policymakers respond almost exclusively to the preferences of the economically advantaged. Affluence and Influence definitively explores how political inequality in the United States has evolved over the last several decades and how this growing disparity has been shaped by interest groups, parties, and elections. With sharp analysis and a wide range of data, the author looks a
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These were all presumably publicly available national polls, conducted by a variety of organizations using a variety of methods. Unfortunately, the origins of this data set are with Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America by Martin Gilens (one of the authors of this paper), and thus it's difficult to learn more about them without having the book on hand. I'd be interested…
on “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, Citizens [pdf]” ↗http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag... Abstract Each of four theoretical traditions in the study of American politics—which can be characterized as theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, Economic-Elite Domination, and two types of interest-group pluralism, Majoritarian Pluralism and Biased Pluralism—offers different predictions about which sets of actors have how
on “Silicon Valley is broken and heading for social unrest” ↗"However, I'm not sure I see any actual evidence to support the power theory." I am a little unclear on what you specifically mean by "the power theory". Do you mean to question the proposed relationship between greater monetary resources and greater (political and social) power? This is something that seems pretty obvious but there are some interesting graphs presented in: "Economic Inequality
on “Income inequality today may be higher today than in any other era” ↗As Marty Gillens argues in his book Affluence and Influence (http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9836.html), on almost every issue there is a sub group within those who feel a particular way on an issue that is highly informed about that issue and a subgroup that…
on “Quadratic Voting (2014)” ↗