Majorities of citizens lose when elites and organized interests disagree.
Evidence
When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it. — Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, Testing Theories of American Politics, 137
Categorization
- XREF: The ‘status quo bias’ built into the U.S. system connects to Gilens & Page’s broader finding and to political science work on veto points and gridlock. — connects to: Popular democracy fails when citizen preferences only align by coincidence with real power-holders. — Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, Testing Theories of American Politics:…, 107; Powerful business interest groups actively oppose average citizens’ policy preferences. — Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, Testing Theories of American Politics:…, 133; U.S. policy outcomes contradict majority preferences whenever elites or organized interests disagree