Democracy in America?: What Has Gone Wrong and What We Can Do About It
Benjamin I. Page, Martin Gilens
America faces daunting problems—stagnant wages, high health care costs, neglected schools, deteriorating public services. Yet the government consistently ignores the needs of its citizens, paying attention instead to donors and organized interests. Real issues are held hostage to demagoguery, partisanship beats practicality, and trust in government withers along with the social safety net.
How did we get here? Through decades of dysfunctional government. In Democracy in America? veteran political observers Benjamin I. Page and Martin Gilens marshal an unprecedented array of evidence to show that while other countries have responded to a rapidly changing economy by helping people who’ve been left behind, the United States has failed to do so. Instead, we have actually exacerbated inequality, enriching corporations and the wealthy while leaving ordinary citizens to fend for themselves.
What’s the solution? More democracy. More opportunity for citizens to shape what their government does. To repair our democracy, Page and Gilens argue, we must change the way we choose candidates and conduct our elections, reform our governing institutions, and curb the power of money in politics. By doing so, we can reduce polarization and gridlock, address pressing challenges, and enact policies that truly reflect the interests of average Americans.
This book presents a damning indictment. But the situation is far from hopeless. With increased democratic participation as their guide, Page and Gilens lay out a set of proposals that would boost citizen participation, curb the power of money, and democratize the House and Senate. The only certainty is that inaction is not an option. Now is the time to act to restore and extend American democracy.
About the author
Benjamin I. Page
Benjamin I. Page is a Gordon S. Fulcher Professor of Decision Making at Northwestern University. He is also a Faculty Associate at the Institute for Policy Research. Page holds a PhD from Stanford University and a JD from Harvard Law School.
Page works on American politics and U.S. foreign policy, specializing in public opinion, democratic policy making, the media, and economic inequality. He is best known for his work (with Robert Y. Shapiro) on the “rationality” of public opinion: the general stability, coherence, and responsiveness to new information of Americans’ collective policy preferences. He is currently studying the political attitudes and behavior of wealthy Americans – the top 1% of U.S. wealth-holders – investigating how they often disagree with average citizens but tend to get their way in policy making. Page’s past civic involvement has been limited, but he is now committed to helping Americans understand the barriers that stand in the way of democratic responsiveness.
Professor Page’s interests include public opinion and policy making, the mass media, empirical democratic theory, political economy, policy formation, the presidency, and American foreign policy. He is author of a number of articles, including “Effects of Public Opinion on Policy” and “What Moves Public Opinion,” both in the American Political Science Review, and of 11 books, including Living with the Dragon: How the American Public Views the Rise of China (with Tao Xie, Columbia University Press, 2010); Class War?: What Americans Really Think about Economic Inequality (with Lawrence R. Jacobs, University of Chicago Press, 2009); The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans’ Policy Preferences (with Robert Shapiro, University of Chicago Press, 1992), Who Deliberates: Mass Media in Modern Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 1996) and What Government Can Do: Dealing with Poverty and Inequality (with James Simmons, University of Chicago Press, 2000). His research interests include public opinion, policy making, the mass media, and U.S. foreign policy. He is currently engaged in a large collaborative project to study Economically Successful Americans and the Common Good.
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