If you’ve ever thought your vote doesn’t matter, or if you have the sneaking suspicion that the political cards are stacked against you, researchers from Princeton University and Northwestern University probably confirmed your reservations last week with their study “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups and Average Citizens.”
In a widely discussed investigation aimed at giving a precise name to the type of government currently functioning in the U.S., researchers revealed that the American political system today most closely resembles an oligarchy, meaning we are ruled by an economic elite.
One of the most popular passages from the report — one that the media likes to latch onto, anyway — says that “when a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they (citizens) generally lose.”
Political pundits have seized on that sentence, attempting to legitimize the popular belief that the voices of individual Americans are subservient to big business, political action committees and the patricians of the 1 percent.
It’s hard to argue that American political influence seems to be growing more exclusive by the day. You’d have to be living under a rock to not notice that. But what’s absent from most of the conversations surrounding this trend is that the American people have virtually handed over the reins of political power to special interests.