Is there any “oligarchy” to fight?

I respect the power of a good slogan as much as the next guy. And clearly the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour that Bernie Sanders headlined last year resonated with lots of people. Even outside the Sanders factions, we’ve seen Amy Klobuchar warn of a MAGA “broligarchy” that threatens America.

What’s more, oligarchy discourse has been a live topic for a long time. I remember that back in 2014 write-ups of a political science study by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page repeatedly went viral. Their paper purports to show that only the preferences of rich people matter for predicting policy outcomes. My then-colleagues at Vox even made a hit video out of it, with virtually every successful write-up using some version of the “oligarchy” framing.

I have a lot of doubts about this on the merits.

My Co-Host Jerusalem stands up for the point that it’s clearly true that the partially overlapping circles of large campaign donors and very wealthy people enjoy a kind of access to policymakers that is far beyond what an average individual enjoys. She argues that this is contrary to the spirit of democracy and basic political equality and poses a real problem to confront even if it is somewhat overstated by the “oligarchy” frame.

I want to insist on a few distinctions. For starters, Page and Gilens use a fairly broad definition of the wealthy — the top 10 percent of households — to generate their finding that the rich almost always get their way in politics. That’s an interesting fact about inequality, but it’s not the same as an oligarchy. Subsequent critics have also found that one major reason that rich people’s preferences tend to prevail is that in the vast majority of cases, rich people and the middle class have the same preferences. In cases where they differ, the rich win about 53 percent of the time. This, again, looks more like a modest skew than an oligarchy.

The left, I think, also significantly misstates the basic dynamics. The executives of big businesses get privileged access to policymakers not just because of campaign cash but because they are objectively very important. If there’s an automobile factory in your district, it matters a lot to you whether that factory expands or closes or stays the same, and of course you’re going to take a call from the person making that decision. Big business carries political weight even in countries with radically different political systems. And lots of donor influence operates by pulling Democrats to the left. It’s donors, much more than rank-and-file voters, who demand aggressive climate policies and cultural liberalism that alienate rank-and-file voters. In Obama’s second term and Trump’s first term, Mark Zuckerberg was a major donor to criminal justice and immigration reform causes. Self-financing politicians who spend a lot of money — whether moderates like Mike Bloomberg in the 2020 presidential race or leftists like Tom Steyer — lose all the time. Money matters, but not in the way critics of oligarchy think.

Jerusalem and I get into all of it on this week’s episode. Watch or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

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