Democracy in America

America is an imaginary place....It exists as an image in each of our minds, nurtured partly by intellectual fare but mainly by the Holywood (and now Netflix) industry. Those of us who have encountered it are therefore often brought up short by something which challenges the myths with which we have been fed – in my case when, in the late 1980s, I had to concede that the country had more democratic energy than my prejudices had given it credit for.

But that was 30 plus years ago – since when a lot of us have lost that respect for the country's claim to democracy.

• It's partly that money has replaced voice in the system - billions of dollars are sought by those running for public office in the country (with all the favours involved) with a 2010 ruling by the Supreme Court giving an additional boost

• it's partly the institutional gridlock that is a feature of a system which divides political power between 2 Houses, a Presidency and a Supreme Court in an increasingly divided and litigious society

• it's partly the turning of political discussion into a gigantic spectacle and entertainment industry

• the narrowness of views allowed expression on the airwaves

• and the sheer smugness of “a selfish ruling class bringing America to the brink of revolution” - to use the subtitle of Tucker Carlson's 2018 “Ship of Fools” book 

That, of course, is just one man's view – well-read perhaps but with values and attitudes which dispose me to be critical. I do expect a society to be open, inclusive and participative.

William Domhoff is an american academic who has made it his life's work to explore, in books and a website, the question of Who Rules America?

The last edition of his running commentary on the question was in 2014 and entitled Who Rules America – the triumph of the corporate rich. I particularly liked this part of his Intro -

The book draws on recent studies by sociologists, political scientists, and experts working for public interest groups and government agencies to update information on corporate interlocks, social clubs, private schools, and other institutions that foster elite social cohesion. It also contains new information on the tax-free charitable foundations, think tanks, and policy-discussion groups through which the corporate rich strive to shape public policy....

Although the corporate rich have always found ways in the past to circumvent attempts to limit campaign donations and make them more transparent, the 2010 and 2012 elections took these practices to astronomical levels.

In an effort to make the book more accessible to those with no background in the theoretical debates that animate the social science literature, all discussion of alternative theories are confined to a new last chapter. This approach allows readers to see how the empirically based argument unfolds without any brief critical asides that may be confusing or distracting. Th is change also may make it possible for readers to better form their own judgments about theoretical controversies because they will have seen the full empirical picture. It also allows readers to skip the final chapter without missing any part of the argument and evidence presented in the first eight chapters.

I would also point to a doyen of the american political science discipline – Seymour Wolin – whose history of political philosophy, "Politics and Vision", has been required reading on courses for some 50 years - and who produced in his nineties Democracy Inc – managed democracy and the spectre of inverted totalitarianism (2008), one of several books to raise the question since then of the extent to which capitalism is actually compatible with democracy.