The US is not a democracy but an oligarchy, study concludes (2014) | Hacker News Reader

The US is not a democracy but an oligarchy, study concludes (2014)

upi.com

114 points_bsds81 comments

It doesn't look like it got any better since 2014.

How can a country be democratic with only two parties?

I remember reading an economics paper that showed you need at least four suppliers in any market to get real competition. I can't see why politics is any different.

This is a direct outcrop of the winner-takes-all electoral district system which forces parties to merge to have a chance at winning. I personally find it an undemocratic, archaic and meritless system.

electoral district system? this seems to be very specific and a subset of the topic/problem

It relates to the two-party system, not whether the U.S. is an oligarchy.

The article implies that the U.S. is not a democracy, but oligarchy and democracy aren't mutually exclusive. I'd say the U.S. (and most Western countries) is both and always has been. Voters certainly have influence in the U.S. but it's limited, just like everywhere else.

It was revolutionary and progressive, in the 13th century... Now, not so much.

> This is a direct outcrop of the winner-takes-all electoral district system which forces parties to merge to have a chance at winning.

I'm not sure this is true. When the highest vote-getter wins, despite the lack of an absolute majority, that gives a better chance to third-party candidates in a multi-candidate election.

The reason third parties fare so poorly in the US is that the two major parties have a duopoly on campaign fundraising and free news coverage, which is a vicious circle. The media covers only candidates who are "electable", and they judge who's electable based on their ability to raise money, but you can't raise any money if nobody knows about you, and nobody will know about you if you don't get media coverage or don't have the money to spread your message.

This is why self-funded billionaire Ross Perot was the most successful third-party Presidential candidate in recent times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law

It absolutely is true.

> In political science, Duverger's law holds that in political systems with single-member districts and the first-past-the-post voting system, as in, for example, the United States and United Kingdom, only two powerful political parties tend to control power every election cycle. Citizens do not vote for small parties because they fear splitting votes away from the major party and allowing their opponents to win an election.

There are two parts here. Nobody disputes the first, empirical part, the dominance of the existing duopoly. The second part, however, is a questionable causal claim. It's astonishing to me that this entire article can fail to mention even once campaign fundraising or news media coverage.

Voter awareness of third parties and third party candidates is minimal, because nearly all of the paid political advertising and free news media coverage is about the duopolist parties. This fundamental plight, not the voting system, consigns third parties to the "spoiler" role. A third party candidate is not a spoiler if they have a legitimate chance to win, which in a first-past-the-post system doesn't even require 50% of the vote. They're only a spoiler if they have no legitimate chance to win. In a 3 candidate race, 34% wins over 33% and 33%. The more the vote is split between multiple candidates, the less it takes to win.

The article mentions Ross Perot, which supports my point. To me, the most interesting question is not the % of the popular vote or electoral college he received. Rather, the question is how did Perot break through and become the most successful third-party Presidential candidate in recent times? And the answer is his money, which he used to finance TV informercials and get his message out to the public. As a reward for spending money, Perot was invited to the news media debates along with the duopoly candidates.

Sadly, Perot kind of self-destructed, wilted under the scrutiny. At one point in 1992, Perot was actually leading the polls over both Bush and Clinton! That's not a spoiler. But Perot dropped out of the race and only later returned, which dampened enthusiasm for him.

The spoiler effect presumes that third party candidates can't win. I think it's crucial to ask why they can't win, how is the system prevents them from having a reasonable chance at winning.

> (i) small parties are disincentivized to form because they have great difficulty winning seats or representation

I would say that parties are disincentivized to form because they have great difficulty raising money and getting attention. This is why they're doomed to smallness and obscurity.

I feel that campaign fundraising and news media coverage, while significant, aren't the primary reason why there are two parties. When the Democratic and Republican parties first formed in America, they weren't nearly as well funded and connected are they are now. However, even in that time those two parties dominated the field. One single exception in Ross Perot does not disprove the rule of Duverger's law, and neither does the few victories of other fledgling third parties in America's history.

Do you think that if campaign advertising and new coverage was banned, there would suddenly be a third party that springs up? If so, I disagree. I believe there is both a strong incentive for candidates who would start a third party to join one of the two parties, and for voters to vote for one of the two major parties to avoid "throwing away their vote". Any argument that proposes that attention and funding are more significant factors than the psychological factors of FPTP needs to first take the psychological factors into account. On top of that, we have evidence that countries which do not use FPTP voting have more political parties on average.

> I would say that parties are disincentivized to form because they have great difficulty raising money and getting attention.

Raising money and getting attention is winning elections. You can't have one without the other. The question is why they can't. The reason is FPTP voting incentivizes a two party system. It's a bit of a circular effect. The two parties dominate because they dominate. Sure, adding a third candidate makes winning take fewer votes, but you know what else makes winning easier? Joining an established party.

I'd like to think that it's twice as good as a one-party system.

Not sure whether you're serious or joking, but in the realm of economics, I think that duopolies are actually worse than monopolies, because everyone recognizes that a monopoly needs to be strictly regulated and/or broken up, whereas when there's a duopoly, that's supposedly "competition" and thus the duopolies largely escape regulation or breakup, even if they implicitly or explicitly cooperate and coordinate to crush any other competition.

In the same way, the obvious solution to a one-party system is to overthrow the government, whereas with a two-party system, you're supposed to fight within the system... and mostly accomplish nothing, because those in power have overlapping interests.

>because everyone recognizes that a monopoly needs to be strictly regulated and/or broken up

And who's gonna do that when the government has a monopoly?

> the government has a monopoly

What do you mean exactly? This seems a little too vague.

Breaking up a monopoly requires some external entity that has power over the monopoly. There is no such entity for government.

So as bad as a two party government is one party would likely be way worse.

I said, comparing a political monopoly to an economic monopoly, "In the same way, the obvious solution to a one-party system is to overthrow the government"

The "external entity" is the people in revolution against the government. This was how the US itself was founded, in revolution against the existing monarchy.

It’s double plus good!

You should think of it this ways.

In the us, political groups for coalitions before the election happens. This is in contrast to most European countries where they set up the coalitions afterwards. Groups occasionally migrate between the parties and the us is in one such realignment now.

While i agree in theory, in practice multi party systems still end up with only two sides where the biggest/most influential party on either side exerts its power over the others regardless.

Going away from parties to actual individual person voting on each topic/decision would be actual democracy but not like that has no drawbacks.

Interesting take: arguing whether the U.S. democratic system is a democracy when, as the paper points out, economic elites and organized groups representing business interests are the elephant (no pun intended) in the room.

Not just two parties, but winner-takes-all elections manipulated by gerrymandering on top.

It's more like two collisions rather than two parties.

And starting to smell like a kleptocracy given the rampant insider trading and leveraging military to influence market outcomes

Klepo-pluto-ano-neo-krato-kakistocracy with a side of extra oligarchy.

All mixed up in a bucket for monsieur.

Kakistos = worst. I am Greek and I have never heard such an accurate word for the modern political system.

Well private financing of political parties has the unwanted side effect of making politics cater to the interests of those with money.

Representative democracy is by nature oligachic. Practically, there was no other way to organize a large state until modern communications technology, so that's very understandable, the critical issue is that the US is becoming less and less democratic and more oligarchic over time while we are more and more capable of democracy (instantaneous communication across the world, very fast travel, universal education, etc). The end of proportional representation in favor of a fixed-size Congress was the beginning of the end, IMO.

"All politics is local", which used to be true until perhaps 50 years ago, was the only thing that kept the oligarchs in check. Now the oligarchs can use modern communications technology to organize and consolidate power at the national and even international level. Consider how Rupert Murdoch for example was able to spread his political propaganda from Australia all the way to the US and the UK. Consider also how Jeffrey Epstein organized a global social network of oligarchs.

I agree with this, when Reagan pushed through his tax cuts for the rich and Union Busting, the US started moving away from a republic.

Since then, more policies were put in place to give the very rich more power and Citizens United was when the US became 100% a oligarchy.

At this point, I think Nov 2026 and its aftermath will prove your vote does not matter at all. To me, this red vs blue are just 2 groups of very rich people fighting for control of the US. No matter who wins that fight, people of the US will still continue moving towards serfdom.

But there is a big equalizer coming down the road, Climate Change. In 50 to 100 years, even if the rich creates walled gardens, the life style of their descendants will eventually become the same as everyone else. That is if they are lucky.

Hm, so study discovered hot water, what is new ?

Democracy isn't absolute. I'd rate US style democracy 6 out of 10, while Russia is 2.

Why not 4 and 1 respectively?

Hah!

Reading about the way democracy was done in Athens, both are at 0.

In Athens, they had some 5000 people gathering together to vote every week on various matters out of the total population of around 20000 (the others were women, slaves and immigrants).

The judicial system was organized into 10 courts of 500 randomly assigned people from the above 5000.

They regularly forced the most prominent politicians to emigrate so that they do not become excessively influential.

Once Sparta took over Athens, the decision-making was restricted to 500 people first, then to the 30 tyrants.

P.S. IIRC, they had both secret and public voting.

P.P.S. Most public jobs were assigned randomly, except those that required specialized skills.

> In Athens, they had some 5000 people gathering together to vote every week on various matters out of the total population of around 20000 (the others were women, slaves and immigrants).

At its founding, the United States allowed widespread slavery and granted the vote only to white males, disenfranching women and black men.

> They regularly forced the most prominent politicians to emigrate so that they do not become excessively influential.

This sounds like a good idea to me.

On the latter point, the GP is not entirely accurate. Any citizen could be expelled, so long as they had the greatest number of people vote to expel them. The practice was known as Ostracism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism).

> (the others were women, slaves and immigrants)

Sounds like Athens was also a 0.

Depends on the POV, but show me a country that gives full voting rights to immigrants. At best, they can vote in local elections in a few EU countries.

P.S. Ok, Ok. Belgium is unique in that it gives immigrants more rights than citizens in at least one case. Non-citizens can apply for family reunion with ascendants while citizens can't.

We hear a lot about what is or isn't a democracy but the reality is that very few countries today would ever be above the bar set. Even Athenian democracy wouldn't, as it was a demos of the male citizens only, supported by a large slave class.

What is more important is: is it working? And if not, why not?

agree, but do you think are there any working examples? is it working somewhere someway? could we learn and take example from it? or is all chaos and corruption?

I still think about the Bonobos a lot.

To complete the circle: The definition of working is vastly different among humans, and that's why we have (or trying to have) democracy.

Which is why, instead of "democracy", it's more useful to quantify democratic. One traditional measure of such is the degree to which political power can be gained through free elections. But the research in TFA instead uses a novel measure: the weight a population has in its country's policymaking. Which yields fascinating results.

Because, per the linked research, in present-time USA that weight is ~zero.

Which is especially interesting considering the USA's narratives about itself. And how, it seems to me, its population is so invested in said narratives that it will defend those even in the face of contrary research. You'd think a culture so invested in its self-determination would be angry about this result and endeavor to do something about it.

The linked research was 12 years ago during the Obama regime. Have things changed since Obama?

The research covered policies from 1981 to 2002.

Even better. Have things changed since the Bush regime? Any new wars, any new technology?

Isn't this partly a question of sheer size of countries like the US and India?

In Slovenia or Denmark, there may be two degrees of separation fewer between the regular voter and, say, an ordinary MP, because the parliaments and government are about the same size, but the population is in single millions. Even here in Czechia quite a lot of people actually know personally some high-ranking politician.

How many Americans are on friendly terms with their Rep or Senator?

> How many Americans are on friendly terms with their Rep or Senator?

I would imagine if you limited this to folks with $100MM+ net worth, the percentage wouldn't be so low.

This works in smaller countries as well, though. I would expect that our local tycoons know half of the Parliament and most of the ministers. And given that there is fewer very rich people here, they may individually have bigger impact on the legislation.

I don't think it is obvious that measure is meaningful though. The US has always been explicit that it doesn't trust the majority of the population to make decisions and has built intentional systems to keep them out. That is still democratic, the people could change those systems if they really put their mind to it, because the power does technically flow from the people if they really put their foot down.

It is pretty safe to say that the US could be more democratic. It is probably reasonable to compare it to other countries in terms of how democratic it is. But saying it is "not a democracy" is a fairly trivial observation. Republics aren't technically democracies if democracy means that the people make the decisions and win on all the disagreements. Republics are modelled on places like Rome that had a very visible and powerful oligarchy.

> That is still democratic, the people could change those systems if they really put their mind to it, because the power does technically flow from the people if they really put their foot down.

This statement applies to absolute monarchies as well; we have many examples from history where the people have "really put their foot down" and won concessions from that form of government. I don't see how this is enough to call the system democratic.

The key thing is whether it is legal though. If we allow that people abandon the rules and do what is possible then any system can be anything. But in an undemocratic system the people forcing a change requires arm twisting beyond the formal channels.

In the US the people can, formally and legally, do pretty much whatever they like if they vote for it consistently over the course of about a decade.

When asking if it's "working", you need to ask "for whom?".

This sounds like a more elaborate version of Whataboutism.

> What is more important is: is it working? And if not, why not?

It's always “working”, the question is for whom.

Their average vs elite:

> "[...] the fiftieth income percentile—that is, [...] the preferences of the average citizen"

> "[...] “affluent” Americans at the ninetieth income percentile can usefully be taken as proxies for the opinions of wealthy or very-high-income Americans [...] about $146,000 in annual household income"

Their conclusion:

> "This evidence indicates [...] policy is consistent with majority preferences roughly two-thirds of the time; that public policy changes in the same direction as collective preferences a similar two-thirds of the time [...]"

> "Furthermore, the preferences of economic elites [...] have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do."

They forgot to mention that income is a strong indicator of voter turn out[0]; "economic elites" vote in higher numbers with a gap of around 20-30% depending on source and year. Also, voter turnout is pretty low to start with at around 50-60%.

So, now we have a better understanding of who actually votes instead of surveying the "average" citizen if they agree with policies as this study does compared to the policies favored by the "elite".

The conclusion read with the added voter facts is: The higher the income the more likely to actually vote; Elected government officials work to create policies that favors the people who voted for them; People who turn out to vote in greater numbers have all the actual policy influence (they also currently have increasingly higher incomes than those who don't vote). Well no shit, they said it themselves "Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections [...]" sound like democracy is working. Therefore, if the "average" citizen surveyed here doesn't like the policy they are well within their rights to hold their representative responsible by getting themselves and 3 vote-eligible friends/family members to go vote. This especially includes the primaries. The "elite" do.

[0] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23780231251338441

> getting themselves and 3 vote-eligible friends/family members to go vote

Vote for whom?

Political campaigns are self-funded. Financially, it's difficult for nonwealthy persons to run for office and to raise campaign contributions from other nonwealthy persons.

And if a candidate happens to gain prominence who runs against the interests of the wealthy, the wealthy are especially eager to throw tons of money at an opponent of the candidate in order to crush them.

So of course the wealthy are more enthusiastic about voting for candidates who represent their interests.

> Vote for whom?

You left off the "This especially includes the primaries." That is where it is decided to vote in/out the "establishment elite" and vote in/out a candidate with a policy message that resonates.

See the 2008 democrat presidential primaries for an example.

> if a candidate happens to gain prominence who runs against the interests of the wealthy, the wealthy are especially eager to throw tons of money at an opponent of the candidate in order to crush them.

again, see the above for how voting and being engaged at the primary level is where policy is selected, staying engaged through the national election is how policy changes win. The people voting there are the ones who have a "far more independent impact upon policy change". If it's mostly high income voters voting, the final outcome is obvious

Our system is an direct descendant of the Norman conquest system over England, with a conquering class sitting at the top, feeling no connection to those lower than them, extracting any and all value they can from them.

https://www.v-dem.net/documents/75/V-Dem_Institute_Democracy...

The US has slid below Hungary in democracy, Hungary was also straight sliding towards dictatorship. Hungary did a 180 though by electing Peter Maygar. Hopefully the US can do a 180 in the midterms.

Otherwise it will probably slide in to being a full Oligarchy like Russia.

To me this crazy thing is the complete lack of alarm or sense of urgency from Americans on this. They seem very subdued and very complacent regarding this change.

> The US has slid below Hungary in democracy, Hungary was also straight sliding towards dictatorship. Hungary did a 180 though by electing Peter Maygar. Hopefully the US can do a 180 in the midterms.

Considering TFA is from 2014 and knowing the Democratic Party, I think instead of a 180 you could at best expect a 20

> Hungary did a 180 [...] Hopefully the US can do a 180 in the midterms.

One recent US poll (July 2026) reported that the Democratic Party has close to an 8 point lead over the Repuglican Party.

8 points — that's all!

After all the crime, violence, war, corruption and offence to US democracy...

No one observing this thinks that the US will do a 1.8, nevermind a 180.

Hasn't this been obvious for a while ? The US is about 1/5 of the way down an ever-more-slippery slope towards a fascist state. Its much-vaunted "checks and balances" have been shown to be paper tigers, and the constitution it heralds far and wide doesn't seem to be worth the paper its written on.

The US already has one of the weakest social safety nets in the Western world, it has military-spec weaponised police with little to no oversight, it has a political system ripe for abuse with the electoral college and gerrymandering running rife, and it has a political legacy of "it doesn't matter what you do to win, as long as you win", which allows racism to dictate voting rights. It's an attitude (along with a lot of the other political institutions) that hasn't been updated since Victorian times.

There's a lot of things I would not agree with, with any of the political leadership of the UK, but I wouldn't expect any of them - even the worst in my eyes - to separate children from families, prevent them from taking their medicine, lock them up in desert camps where rape and abuse are rife, and then remove them to remote locations with no record of where they went. Human trafficking, organised by the US government, for the profit of the rich. Not content with legal slavery for the imprisoned, they implemented it for migrants too. Migrant children.

I'm genuinely not sure if the US is capable of reversing its current course. I'm not even sure it's worth trying without a huge shift in opinion for the public who vote these rat-bastards in. Again. After the human-trafficking came to light...

yes kinda obvious now for many, but I've never seen it so nicely summarised and also from 2014!

I always try to consider a possible biased view, but again seen it summarized it like this makes it extremely simple and clear.

It's been obvious to anyone who pays attention to all the details and thinks hard about their meaning, but that is a small fraction of people.

I think that deep down many people often believe that they could have a say in policy if only they tried hard enough, so their lack of influence is a kind of personal failing.

In reality these systems are designed to absorb your effort and direct it into time sinks that either serve those in power

    Want to change things? First "we" need to take back the house by phone-banking for this blue dog
    Chip in $5 today to help Chuck Schumer win back the Senate

or avoid putting pressure on anyone

    We're going to "show Trump" with a big attendance at the next No Kings rally

It's similar to how people are led to believe anyone could have a billion dollars if only they were smarter and/or worked harder.

These things do help but only very slightly, not sufficiently. The main function of a protest is not to effect change, but to help people who support a cause meet each other. Voting for one party can be better than voting for the other party even if both parties are bad in different ways.

> The main function of a protest is not to effect change, but to help people who support a cause meet each other.

This is certainly the case with many protests in many contexts, but there are ways to protest that make the powerful worried and ways that reassure them they really have nothing to worry about. There have been many protest movements that were organized to effect change and succeeded in doing so.

What's more, people aren't showing up to these events thinking "this will certainly not effect change but may help me meet people". Once they get a clue that there's no potential for change they'll stop showing up.

"I think that deep down many people often believe that they could have a say in policy if only they tried hard enough…"

Really? I don't know anyone that thinks that. Everyone I know think, "I'm not a billionaire, so of course there is nothing I can do."

"It's similar to how people are led to believe anyone could have a billion dollars if only they were smarter and/or worked harder."

Ha ha, well there you are. I also know no one that believes that either. But of course if someone believes the latter, the former follows. ;-)

A reverse would violate three red lines that the current oligarchy will not budge on:

* More sharing of political power with ethnic, class or cultural outgroups

* Less revenues for the oligarchy from land ownership, investment in healthcare and investment in finance (other investment sectors would do better, however)

* Greater civil and criminal penalties for civil or criminal wrongdoing by oligarchs, their loved ones and their class allies (e.g. the affluenza case)

Even installing something like Juche and losing internationally to China in every way is preferable to having any one of these go forward, at least to their perspective.

> Its much-vaunted "checks and balances" have been shown to be paper tigers, and the constitution it heralds far and wide doesn't seem to be worth the paper its written on.

The Constitution was oligarchic by design of the founding oligarchs, who stated explicitly that the point of the "checks and balances" was actually to stop majoritarianism.

Any political system regresses to oligarchy. Both a single or all people cannot practically govern, so a few take over soon anyway. The question is, how are these few chosen?

One measure of democracy is how much say you have in issues which affect you, the running of your neighborhood, your government etc.

If you look at decision making at high levels, the general population usually gets ignored. Instead, powerful special interests dominate the government.

Particularly with regard to foreign affairs of the USA, the oil lobby and weapons manufacturers. And look who's benefiting from the current state of affairs in Ukraine, Iran and Venezuela: US arms manufacturers and oil companies.

On the other hand in many ways people in the USA are extroardinarly free, there's pretty good protection of freedom of speech.

If high levels are ignoring the general population and dominated by special interests, that's an oligarchy. You agree with the article.

>One measure of democracy is how much say you have in issues which affect you, the running of your neighborhood, your government etc.

We've intentionally reduced everyone's say in everything around them with state/fed regulation and the whole "make it cost too much to be viable on its face but then give them a grant/tax break/other favorable treatment to make it work if they jump through the right hoops" paradigm that's permeated damn near everything.

> people in the USA are extroardinarly free, there's pretty good protection of freedom of speech.

Unless you try criticising the president......

That is to say, anybody _in power_ or any in any position of authority is significantly curtailing their criticism of Trump. If you haven't noticed this by now, then I despair. Frankly it's unimportant what the little guy says about Trump. The little guys speech is 'free', but the moment the little guy is in a position of power, watch the US administration silence him.

BTW: Being 'silenced' doesn't mean being carted off to prison. It means the Trump taking away your authority, reputation, career and/or livelihood. That is all that is required.

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