Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy (2014)
bbc.com
bbc.com
The actual conclusion of the study is rather different than the headline. To understand why you really need to break down the methodology and conclusions.
First, the surveys of "public preference" are based not on voters, but general surveys. The authors studied:
> 1,779 instances between 1981 and 2002 in which a national survey of the general public asked a favor/ oppose question about a proposed policy change.
Because voters are wealthier, older, and more conservative than non-voters, public opinion is not the same thing as voter opinion.
Second, they defined "economic elite" as people at the 90th percentile:
> We believe that the preferences of “affluent” Americans at the ninetieth income percentile can usefully be taken as proxies for the opinions of wealthy or very-high-income Americans, and can be used to test the central predictions of Economic-Elite theories
So the "economic elite" here are people with household incomes above $150,000. If you account for the fact that the median voter is about 45, that's a top 15% income or so.
Third, there is a high correlation between the preferences of the public and those of the economic elite:
> It turns out, in fact, that the preferences of average citizens are positively and fairly highly correlated, across issues, with the preferences of economic elites (refer to table 2).
Fourth, interest groups also have significant independent power:
> By contrast, economic elites are estimated to have a quite substantial, highly significant, independent impact on policy. This does not mean that theories of Economic-Elite Domination are wholly upheld, since our results indicate that individual elites must share their policy influence with organized interest groups.
Thus, the real takeaway is something like: adopted policies generally reflect public opinion, except policies that have low support among the top ~15% of voters and/or interest groups are unlikely to get adopted:
> When both interest groups and affluent Americans oppose a policy it has an even lower likelihood of being adopted (these proposed policies consist primarily of tax increases).
That is a predictable outcome of representative democracy and does not imply that the U.S. is an oligarchy, or at least not the way one traditionally thinks of the term. When you define "economic elite" as the top 15%, you're roping in a big chunk of small business owners, professionals, property owners, etc. These are the people who employ other people, pay property taxes, serve on the PTA, and vote, especially in local elections. So 55% of the public may support say a hike on business taxes in a city, but if representatives worry that such an increase will make the city uncompetitive for jobs vis-a-vis other cities, the policy may not pass.
The real questions are:
How do we educate those who don't understand this yet?
Do enough of us, who do understand, care enough to act in a meaningful way?
If we can arrive at a place where a sufficient number of us want to impact this, we could get an amendment done.
But, that takes a sustained civic effort, and there is the rub. Do we care enough to actually do that?
I think I do. When I ask others, I get a wide range of commit potentials. I don't think enough of us care.
It has nothing to do with causes I do, or do not agree with, and everything to do with a healthy democracy.
Let's just say ones bank account is no measure of character, nor qualification to speak above others in the democracy.
A similar dynamic can be seen with land owners, who also consistently seek some advantage over their peers.
Acres do not vote, nor do dollars.
Additionally, it has nothing to do with stopping advocacy of any kind. Those of significant means have plenty of ways to get the word out. Non issue.
Bribery is another matter altogether. That is precisely what an amendment would be about.
Thomas Paine derived the justification for self governance, and the basis for its authority in his books. In particular, "Rights of Man", and "Age of Reason" contain most of this in easy to understand form.
A core idea is we agree to governance so we may better exercise our liberty. A lack of governance actually diminishes that for large numbers of people.
The government must then serve us if it's authority is just and true.
Allowing for money as speech in politics renders the authority of the government corrupt, unjust and untrue. In a real sense, it only serves some of us, when the intent is for it to serve all of us.
That we allow anonymous dollars is also troubling. The First Amendment does not include a shield. At the very least we should require complete and full disclosure of all funds.
Some of us want to advocate for causes an awful lot of the rest of us think very poorly of. And that is fine, but allowing powerful people to speak with impunity is as corrupt as the bribery associated with said speech.
What the two do is break the basic intent and trust necessary for the people to abide by and respect the government. And government is necessary, despite some who claim otherwise.
Further, it is not possible to conduct a meaningful debate, which can form the basis for cause agreement or disagreement in an environment where money so obviously trumps votes as consistently as it does in the US at present.
Finally, the idea that some of us deserve to call the shots, because money, for the rest of us is old world governance. You can lump that in with ideas like divine right, or nobility, etc...
A claim that God says one should be king, or that winning the birth lottery means the same is as silly as the idea of a wealthy person being somehow entitled in like kind.
The telling bit in all this is the strong and consistent pushback on disclosure.
Any cause really worth persist does not require anonymonity. Sure, there will be naysayers, but the overall open discourse will bring merits to light, as intended.
Many who do not want disclosure have also been linked to some pretty damn ugly policy advocacy too. That's a generalization, of course, but it's also indicative of why disclosure at a minimum is required to make any real sense out of the mess we have in money and politics today.
Honestly, I do not believe you understand how and why the First Amendment works, nor why it exists.
Full disclosure may actually prove good enough too. If we are to continue with the idea of money as speech and corporations as people, then we also need to insure the basic dynamics of those are true to the intent of the First Amendment.
Vile people can hide behind their corporate proxy and act with anonymous dollars to ends that are not easily demonstrated to be worthy. At present they can avoid judgement from their fellow citizens as well as many liabilities. That is a step too far.
Disclosure would bring that out, and it may be enough to be workable. I'm completely open to that.
I am absolutely not open to the idea of such powerful actors able to do so with relative impunity. Meaningful checks and balances are a core idea we all live by, and that is by design and intent to form a more just governance than our founders saw in the past.
Citizens United is nothing more than a call to return to the times of fiefdoms, kings, lords, nobility... and many other unAmerica ideas of just and true governance.
Look at what happened to Brendan Eich. The cause that he donated to was popular enough to win the election and even then, a $1000 donation was enough to undo him and force him out of his job. I don't agree with his opinions on that issue, but the precedent will clearly create a chilling effect on advocacy. Do you really think that's desirable?
The freedom of advocacy is inseparable from the freedom of speech. It costs money to print pamphlets, buy air time, pay people to stand on the corner, conduct opinion polls, etc. The Citizens United case was about a non-profit organization that made a film critical of Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primary campaign. Their alleged violation was spending money against a politician within 30 days of a primary. Anyone who believes in free speech should have been appalled. Politicians want only politicians to be allowed to get their word out during an election. That wouldn't be a free society. The Supreme Court ruling was the only reasonable one.
Say that you or I have a novel political idea that we want to advocate for. How do you propose that we do so? We'd probably form a non-profit, spend money contacting potential allies, convince them on the merits of our case and to donate to us, then spend that money on pamphlets, TV and radio ads, etc. That's freedom at work.
If those opinions have merit, it will be found.
All of us are subject to the law that a mere opinion could impose.
Not only should that be challenged, we are required to do so.
Like I said, disclosure may be enough.
There is no, just try it here. Real people are impacted while living real lives.
Disclosure is a reasonable check on what is significant advocacy power and access to legislators.
As for your comments about the left... yes! The left cates about the little guy. No one else does.
Brendan lost his job due to losing the respect of those he was supposed to lead. It would not work a day for him.
I'll be frank, racism, bigotry and theocracy are completely unacceptable.
Politics is a contact sport. Anyone advocating we treat others like lesser people can totally expect to be judged on it. At a minimum, those other prople are going to speak out, as they should.
Hiding behind money and corporations means speech without accountability for said speech, and that is also unacceptable.
There is no shield in the First Amendment, by design.
The lesson here for Brendan is leading people requires you have the respect of those people. Maybe it's just not wise to classify some of those people as lesser, or wrong, or bad, undeserving people, if one wants their respect.
I find avoidance of these basic dynamics very deeply offensive.
Truth is, if the contact is a problem, maybe the speech is too.
Go ask the people who have suffered a lot worse when speaking truth to power.
Free Speech is not a license to say whatever one wants with no consequences, nor is it a license to be heard, or respected.
You will see things like, "everyone has a right to their opinion", which is true. But everyone else also has a right to say what they think of that opinion too.
All of that plays out as democracy and it provides checks and balances as well as the ability to challenge norms and advance the society.
Out gay brothers and sisters all decided to speak up and out over how they were treated in society, and that treatment has been shown to be unjust and often for untrue reasons too.
Good. Their supporters heard their story, found it compelling and acted on that.
I personally won't have basic discrimination of this kind. I've walked from jobs where it was te norm, and did so long before we had the state of awareness we have today too.
Everything costs something. I'm fine with disclosure as its a great check on bad idea advocacy just as its an enabler of good idea advocacy.
I'm not OK at all with attempt to advance speech with impunity.
This is a good topic, and your question warrants dome discussion.
(Awaiting your reply!)
I am, at this time, unsure if votes actually are more important than money. They are supposed to be, and in theory they are. The law says they are.
But, the reality of how things play out is very seriously questionable at best.
The secret vote assures every voter is free to vote their conscience, free of coercion, discrimination, etc...
Right now, we've got Gerrymandering, attacks on the Voting Rights Act, and lots of other efforts to basically cut down on the number of voters voting! It's a simple, "we don't like those other people" kind of dynamic doing us no real good.
Public votes, say against large corporations, would lead to people failing job searches quite often, would it not?
Public votes might result in things like, North Korea having an election that went 100 percent for the supreme leader. Who would dissent?
On a basic level, making the vote public would discourage voting and increase discrimination.
I can't see a reason to hold someone accountable for voting their best interests, can you?
I can totally see people wanting to punish and or reward people for votes they don't like, or do like.
But that isn't what voting is for! Voting is where the "free" comes from in "free" society. If we are controlled or very significantly pressured to vote in ways the power likes, does that not only serve the power?
Of course it does, which is why we don't do it.
Speech is different. It's the debate, and it's about settling lots of issues that law really does not cover well.
We can't, for example, make a reasonable, "don't be an asshole" type of law. But we can hold assholes accountable through speech in the hopes that they will reconsider being assholes, though they don't really have to do that.
That's also where the "free" in free society comes from.
So, then what about the freedom of those with lots of money?
The "money is speech" and "corporations are people" proponents are basically erecting shields and proxies through which they can do things that impact a lot of people without those people knowing who did it to them.
That's not OK.
Worse, we can't really vote out people with money. They tend to own things and when they own them, they tend to exert control over them, and that impacts us.
If we elect a bad leader, we can debate that, vote and try again.
The key here is we know who holds the power.
When it's anonymous money and proxies, we don't know anything really. Our elections, law, lives could be impacted by some hater from the other side of the world, who just happens to prefer nordic women to black women, for example. A silly one, but I don't want to offend anyone here.
With power comes some responsibility and accountability, otherwise, it's just raw power and greed.
That's not OK either.
Disclosure would at least bring some personal responsibility to everyone in politics, not just those who lack the means to hide it from everyone.
I would much prefer we fund elections with public money, require disclosure on political spending, and vote our best interests however we see them after processing all of that.
But, it may just be enough to require disclosure. If somebody spends a few hundred million large on gay or minority or woman hostile advocacy, all of those people impacted can and should respond in like kind. This is going to limit the kinds of things people spend on, and those limits are appropriate checks on what is otherwise a lot of raw power.
In the same vein, someone dropping a few hundred million large on STEM policy advocacy to make the nation compete better, all of those people impacted need to respond in like kind too. It may be a good response, or maybe the STEM advocacy is harmful somehow. Whatever the case.
The major difference is money being used to lead people, set policy, do advocacy, etc...
Proponents of Citizens United made a basic market of ideas and freedom argument. Great! That's what they got too, and we've seen it play out for a while now.
Many of us are not impressed with the outcome. How do we hold these anonymous forces acting through multiple corporate proxies to account for their negative influence on how we live, work, play, love?
Vote to require disclosure.
That's a great first step, and a step of that nature is precisely why we can't have a public vote.
Say we vote it, and it fails by just a little tiny bit. What would be the response of those who want to continue acting anonymously through proxies?
Target the shit out of those anti voters. Why not? They have the bucks, they have the shield, and they get to speak without ever being spoken to, just like kings, lords and nobility of the old world we left to form this nation!
Spending money on advocacy doesn't do anything except try to convince people. People don't need to be protected from bad opinions. They're perfectly capable of sorting it out for themselves. There are people spending billions of dollars to advance all sorts of political ideas. Most of them will fail. At the end of the day, the ballot box is where the final power lies.
There are many donors on the left that are engaging in the same kind of advocacy as the Koch brothers and other donors are on the right. If you think that your views are underrepresented, get involved. You don't even need to donate a single cent to make an impact. All of these organizations are hungry for volunteers.
>We can't, for example, make a reasonable, "don't be an asshole" type of law. But we can hold assholes accountable through speech in the hopes that they will reconsider being assholes, though they don't really have to do that.
Anonymity is not just the for the rich and powerful, you can see it in force on the internet everyday. Have you seen the politics section of Reddit? A lot of vitriolic and inaccurate things about conservatives and the right (and the left too, in many cases) are said behind the veil of anonymity. Things that people would not dare say on-the-record. There's equally hateful things coming out of some conservative web forums. Should we ban anonymous comments online?
>Many of us are not impressed with the outcome. How do we hold these anonymous forces acting through multiple corporate proxies to account for their negative influence on how we live, work, play, love?
This is the crux of it. Some people don't like the outcomes of American politics, and so they want to get the upper hand by neutering the freedom of those that they disagree with.
You should change your focus to winning in the realm of ideas, not censorship or intimidation. If your ideas can't win on their merits alone, then maybe they don't deserve to.
That's not the argument I've made, nor will I make it.
The argument is one of trust.
Massive amounts of dollars in the process simply isn't trustworthy. There is no way it can be trustworthy.
Secondly, if we are to keep the dollars involved, and we need to trust the process, and I submit we do need to trust the process, then disclosure is the minimum needed for that trust to be meaningful.
Your comparison of anon dollars to comments made by people online is quite frankly, laughable. I won't address it further.
"Winning in the realm of ideas" and "If your ideas can't win on their merits alone, then maybe they don't deserve to."
Some how you have attempted to make this about me. Please reconsider that as well. It's not good form.
Censorship and intimidation?
LOL
Really, these are the framing used by people who want to speak loudly and frequently, while not being spoken to themselves.
Linking that to a "merit" and "market of ideas" argument is also, frankly, laughable! A debate goes both ways, and it's a contact sport for a reason.
If I were to say, like Trump has, "All the fat girls just gotta go." that's deplorable! Right? Or, it's laughable too, depending on how it's all taken and presented.
But it's not an idea with any real merit.
If I can say that, loud, over a sustained amount of time, with complete impunity, what else can I say and get away with? Anything?
What that is is a shouting match, not politics. And it's not healthy, nor meaningful discourse.
On the other hand, if "ddingus" says we need to get rid of all the fat girls now, and that's linked to me, and I spend a lot of money on it?
Now, I'm the asshole, bat shit crazy nut. People can see that for what it is, ignore it, and they can take my reputation and rub my face in how shitty my advocacy really is.
Good, that's how it should work, and that's one of the primary reasons the First Amendment does not have a shield in it too.
Prevents really bad ideas from even taking root, as it should.
Linking anon comments to the need to "balance" that with large amounts of money because someone got butt hurt over some stuff they found on Reddit makes no sense at all.
And I'll leave it there.
Whether or not there's a name behind that stupid idea, it will still be dismissed as stupid. The source of an idea doesn't determine whether it's a good idea or not. And I don't think we need laws determining what is or is not "meaningful" or "healthy" discourse. Democracy is not supposed to be orderly.
>On the other hand, if "ddingus" says we need to get rid of all the fat girls now, and that's linked to me, and I spend a lot of money on it?Now, I'm the asshole, bat shit crazy nut. People can see that for what it is, ignore it, and they can take my reputation and rub my face in how shitty my advocacy really is.
I'd like to point out that right here you're advocating for going after people's personal reputations over their donations. This is why people are so opposed to disclosure.
>First, please discontinue implications that I'm seeking to remedy outcomes I don't like by censoring or somehow attempting to seek advantages over those who are responsible for those outcomes.
Isn't that exactly what you're arguing for? You want to require disclosure of donations because you want to be able to go after people's personal reputations. That's intimidation in my book.
Nobody should speak with impunity. Act like an ass, get called out an an ass. This keeps the number of asses and how much of an ass they are in check.
Like I said, there is no shield in the First Amendment, not should there be.
People who are considering advocacy that will impact a lot of people really do need to think about that and the implications they may experience in the future. Real lives, families and people are at stake. It is not a game.
And it's a mutual skin in the game dynamic too.
Our personal reputation includes the stuff we say, and the things we do. If we do and say vile things, then it is going to impact us.
It makes no sense to allow some of is to speak with impunity nor accountability.
I could just as easily say people with money want to impose their ideas on others without any consequences. That's nuts!
Might as well just return to old world ideas of rulers and kings. That's not what the US is about.
Our leaders need to fear us. If people with a lot of money want to get political, they too need to fear the people.
They need that fear in place so they have good reason to treat the people well. If it all goes bad, those people are going to want a remedy.
That's only fair.
Without that, ordinary people are just lab rats, subject to all sorts of things, and experiencing costs and risks too, while the bright idea guy, just doing advocacy says, oops?
No thanks. That is corrupt as fuck, and not OK.
Again, I am making an equality and a process argument.
All of us need to be subject to meaningful checks and balances in our politics as well as how we conduct ourselves.
This is for all of our mutual good.
There is absolutely nothing about a person of means that qualifies them for immunity to their basic obligations as fellow citizens in this nation. The sum of your argument here is might makes right.
That is not the intent of, nor a desirable body politic.
In all your points here, you have not yet addressed how to check abuses. There are abuses going on right now, and there will be more abuses going forward too.
Where is the check on that? What remedy do people really have? Why should they tolerate it?
And how exactly do we weigh the merits of ideas, or even qualify them, when those who want to see then actualized will not be living with the outcomes related to them?
I did find your freedom argument compelling. I find your complete rejection of the notion of having personal responsibility deeply offensive and more than a little disturbing.
Otherwise, great discussion! You have given me both some food for thought on where the real conflict lies, as well as a more keen understanding on the dynamics inherent in all of this.
That will go to great use and improved advocacy, potentially activism elsewhere.
Appreciated.
Enjoy your new year. I know I will.
If I trust the process, and the process renders a bad outcome, then I can live with that, do the work to compensate, and understand that maybe I'm in the wrong, or a minority, or have options I just don't want to take.
Whatever.
On the other hand, if I'm experiencing bad outcomes due to corruption, and make no mistake, the US politics are ripe with corruption that disclosure would do a lot of good on, then it's just not the same. Maybe I'm having to make choices and suffer costs and risks I don't need to just so somebody somewhere can have "just a little more", or "hates those other people" or some other lame thing.
That's cause for rebellion, as it should be, and historically has been since the dawn of time.
Do we want rebellion? That is the most likely outcome of a process we don't trust.
Disclosure might be the cheaper, more just and true alternative.
No joke.
Disclosure is not something I want to see ignored. With it in place, we may well find the rest of the idea behind Citizens United play out in workable ways. I'm not extreme in these things, just civic minded and the current dynamics do not have enough checks and balances to make longer term sense.
The same goes for corporations as people. So far, those who support that like the good parts, like speech. But, what about the other parts of being a person, like liability, accountability.
We have a lot of work to do yet on that one.
There are no rational justifications for denying gay people the ability to marry who they love. And we are at that point of awareness now, no going back.
Many of the people who got us here paid a price comparable to Brendan's, and many more paid worse, or with their lives.
He can get another job, and maybe he can reconsider how he sees the people he might ask to work for him too.
It may be nowhere close to the popular ideal of democracy, but the reduced violence and destruction would probably make it a worthwhile innovation anyway.
I think there's a lot to be said for the idea of elections as a pressure valve, as well as a way to displace leadership once they cross certain lines.
EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9BVEnEsn6Y&t=37m56s
Admittedly, he talks up the bullet as an inevitable fallback if the ballot didn't work, so maybe this isn't the perfect example...
Our political system is not democracy. Our political system is capitalism. It is occasionally tempered by the possibility of a popular uprising, so you can find democratic aspects if you look hard enough.
How, then, do we prevent capital from ruling over labor? We must understand how exactly money works in making capital our kings. Money gives you the ability to compel almost anyone to produce for you. Producers agree because the money you pay them can be used to compel almost anyone to produce for them.
In these terms, our goal is to eliminate the ability for capital to use money to compel individual producers to act against the interests of producers as a class. When capital attempts this, we want producers to refuse not out of principle, but because the incentive has been eliminated. If producers can't compel anyone to produce for them if their money has come from capital's attempt to rule as tyrants, then capital loses its ability to rule as tyrants.
If this is the solution, then the problem is that money is anonymous. When someone compels me to produce for them, I have no idea where the money came from. If I did, I could refuse the tyrannical money while accepting any other money they attempt to pay with. Our money needs an auditable record of how it has flowed through the economy to allow people to exercise their inalienable right to reject the tyranny of capital. This requires sacrificing financial privacy, which sounds bad, but it's worth considering whether this 700 year-old concept should be as sacred as it seems.
How do you build an auditable record of how money has flowed through an economy? Blockchains give us such records without needing to bestow power to any central authority to maintain the record. Blockchains will let us build a political system where capital still directs production, but the producing class has veto power. Capital alone isn't enough to rule; merit is also required. This is merit capitalism, and I think it could work better than not just the charade of democracy we have today, but also the ideal democracy that we thought we wanted.
Consider this bit:
A proposed policy change with low support among economically elite Americans…is adopted only about 18% of the time," they write, "while a proposed change with high support (four-out-of-five in favour) is adopted about 45% of the time… On the other hand[,] When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it.
a) How much difference is there between "adopted about 45% of the time" and "generally do not get it?" That seems kind of important to the argument.
b) I'm somewhat relieved to hear most groups never actually get their way. From what I remember of the Federalist Papers, gridlock was always the general idea.
c) What policies are we talking about here? I feel one way when representatives overrule majorities that are trying to add accountability, but another way when majorities demand unconstitutional or unworkable policy changes. I'm really curious how many of the 1,779 policy issues inspire me towards majoritarianism.
d) When are majorities and economic elites actually at odds? I'm not sure why, but it seems like some of the poorest people I know are the most supportive of tax relief for the rich. But really, at several income levels, I know both conservatives and liberals on various policy issues. The set of disagreements could tell us a lot about why one group's positions pass more often than the other.
e) How often to policy implementations flip back and forth? Some tax cuts and educational policies just expired after a decade. Is that a win for people who fought to see them implemented? Or a win for people who opposed them? It's really a messy combination. There are landmark laws that stick around, but with most laws, there aren't clean victories on either side once you back up and see how they were amended or repealed over time.
I'm sure the authors are very intelligent, so maybe they addressed all of these concerns in their paper. It's hard to know though when the default is gated, for-profit research.
The authors of the overly cited study don't represent a mainstream view in political science research. The more developed literature about Public Choice Theory[1] provides a lot more insight about how politics works--in every country in the world.
Reading the BBC brief commentary kindly submitted here, which summarizes the "study" details that have been posted here many times before, I still have to ask, where is the comparison with other countries of the world? The United States continues to enjoy a high rate of net immigration with regard to essentially all other countries on the planet, and I know happy immigrants to the United States from China, India, Russia, Canada, Mexico, the U.K., the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, France, Singapore, Somalia, Argentina, Ecuador, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Ghana, South Africa, Haiti, and plenty of other countries that aren't immediately coming to mind. Are there problems in the United States, including problems caused by poor governance? Sure there are. But, on the other hand, where is there somewhere that is a better democracy than the United States to the degree that local people there have to institute restrictive immigration measures to keep the United States citizens from migrating in?
AFTER EDIT: I can see the silent downvotes for disagreement as well as anybody can, but meanwhile can you respond to what I have brought up substantively? Most of the other comments here also think that the authors overstated the problem they identified in their "study," and anyway how is one country any different from another country in this regard?
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=Public+Choice+Theory&oq=Publ...
The United States has enjoyed its position of supremecy after Europe imploded from two world wars, and it is being taken for granted now.
One of the bigger problems is that there isn't an entrepreneur visa in the US, which basically means that you can't be on a visa and start a company in the USA. At least in theory. With something like 50% or more of companies being started by people who weren't born in the USA, it seems a bit problematic.
It's not impossible to immigrate here, it's just very difficult compared to other developed nations such as Canada, the UK and the EU.
I feel like a big problem with tackling immigration in the US is it's so tightly coupled with the partisan issue of illegal immigration from latin america that it's basically impossible to have any sort of reform for legal immigration.
A pure democracy would actually be a nightmarish form of totalitarianism in which the majority was able to enforce its norms upon any minority without any checks or balance.
The US is a constitutional republic in which democratic institutions act as one check upon power.
Quite true. However, considering how the financier of these advertisements can be obfuscated or just not reported period, you're basically asking people to ignore all political advertising and be suspect about just about everything they read, hear or see.
Democracy is sort of a plutocratic oligarchy system where ordinary people are recruited to be intermediaries and are therefore given the illusion of power.
The only groups who have a problem with CISA are the technical community and some civil liberties advocates.
CISA is not an example of a law passed in the face of popular opposition.
Now, I'm in favour of city-states, but I do know that it's only a daydream.
Postscript: I think that the US is sort of like the continuation of the Empire. D.C. is the new Rome. And it is indeed sort of a Senatus populusque americanus, in that people rule the state. But as Aulus Gellius says, here, people means patricians.
The goal is not to pit people against corporations. Those corporations are just the economic vehicles through which people act. Fishing companies are clearly going to have a lot to say about fishing policy, and are going to provide better input to Congress than I ever could, since I know nothing about fishing other than a few sound bites like "we're overfishing the seas". I don't know what that means for particularly fisheries or whatever other considerations there are.
Take a more controversial example, banking. Most people don't know a thing about banking. They've heard sound bites about "greedy bankers" and "inefficient regulators", but they probably don't even know what fractional reserve banking is, let alone what the effects of regulation on it would be. How is it a bad thing that bankers have a large amount of input into these policies? And it hasn't stopped the government from passing policies that they oppose. Look at the animosity toward Dodd-Frank on Wall Street.
Social scientific research can be twisted to support any conclusion. It's typically dressed up in the legitimacy of statistical analysis, but the underlying data is usually weak and their conclusions involve a lot of narrative-writing on the part of the authors.
Also, you have to consider what the goal of democratic institutions is. Is it accountability or representation? Representation means that Congressmen would mirror the opinions of the public. Accountability means that the peoples role is to vote out bad leadership. Both are important, but I think accountability is typically the better goal.