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Martin Gilens – “Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America”

Martin Gilens, professor of politics at Princeton University and a member of the executive committee of the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics, discussed his new book as part of the Wilson School’s “Talk of 2012: The Upcoming Presidential Election” thematic lecture series. The discussion was co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics and the Department of Politics.

 

so in the mid-1960s in my

quantitative analysis

was a period of very low association

between public preferences and policy

outcomes the opposite set of political

conditions and the strongest period of

association between public preferences

and policy outcomes was much to my great

surprise during the early years of the

george w bush first term and when i did

that analysis and saw that not only

where the policy is adopted in 2001 and

2002 consistent with what affluent

Americans wanted but we’re also the most

consistent with what the middle class

and the poor wanted from any period of

in my data set it was fairly certain

there must be some sort of error there

in coding or something must have gone

wrong so like you know a good social

scientist that Ike scoured the data to

see like where this error had emerged

but the fact of the matter is that there

was no error there and the policies that

were adopted during those early Bush

years were in fact quite popular across

the income spectrum so so let me remind

you that you know Bush ran in 2000 as a

compassionate conservative right he

talked about his bipartisan work with

Texas Legislature and and so on and you

know I think a lot of people on the Left

kind of dismissed that as kind of a

cynical posturing but the truth is that

when Bush came into office you know

after a very close election and after

having lost the popular vote the the

most prominent policies that were

adopted were broadly supported centrist

policies in some cases bipartisan

policies adopted that he worked with

Democratic legislators so I’m thinking

of things like the Medicare drug benefit

a long-standing Democratic Party

priority No Child Left Behind education

reforms which whatever you may think of

them now was a bipartisan

policy that you know senator Kennedy

worked with the administration on Bush’s

faith-based initiative very popular

across income levels his compromise on

stem-cell funding which contrary to

widespread views actually increased the

like the range of stem cells that were

eligible for federal funding and even

his tax cuts which clearly provided most

of the benefits in terms of dollars to

the most well-off Americans were

strongly supported across the income

spectrum so so a lot of what happened

then was very consistent with what the

public wanted including what the middle

class and the poor wanted but it’s not

because of any sort of particular

commitment on the part of Bush or his

administration to you know serving as

advocates for the poor but it was

political circumstances so Congress in

2001 was more closely divided than it

had been at any time in half a century

right you may remember when Bush came

into office the Senate was split 50-50

with the vice president serving as a

deciding vote the Republicans had a very

slim majority in the house they lost

even that sort of you know deciding vote

majority in the Senate after Jim

Jeffords abandoned at the Republican

Party a couple months into the Bush’s

first term so it was a very closely

divided Congress with control being up

for grabs at the next election right and

this is the opposite of what we saw in

the mid-1960s and this these two periods

represent a consistent pattern within my

data that when control of government is

divided and uncertain you get policy

outcomes that more strongly reflect the

Preferences of the public and more

equally reflect the Preferences of low

and high-income Americans and when one

party has dominant control then you see

responsiveness to any group

the public decline and in fact that’s

exactly what happened when the

Republicans increased their control of

Congress so if you compare the

preference policy Association in the

first two years of Bush’s first term

with the first two years of Bush’s

second term right when Republicans for

the first time in half a century had

unified control of the national

government and strong majorities fairly

strong majorities in Congress not like

the 1960s but but relative to recent

years then what you saw is that the

responsiveness to the public plummeted

now I should mention if you are

concerned that 9/11 and the war on

terror and the wars in Afghanistan and

Iraq are responsible for these

relationships I was concerned about that

too I redid these analyses after

excluding all the policy questions

having to do with defense and terrorism

and in the wars and so on and when you

see the same pattern so that is some of

what was popular about the early years

of Bush’s first term was things like the

war on terror and some of what was less

popular in Bush’s later years but the

patterns remain the same even if we’re

only looking at domestic policy and

excluding things like on terror okay so

so the point here is that political

conditions right make a difference and

that’s one of the perhaps few sort of

hopeful findings from what for people

concerned about sort of normative

democratic concerns is in general and

not particularly hopeful or optimistic a

research project but but control of

government does matter and that means

parties can be constrained to pursue

policies that are more consistent with

what the public wants under the right

circumstances so there’s there’s a ray

of hope there you might expect if there

if that political circumstances to say

the tenuous nature of government control

makes a difference well so might some

other ..