Conclusion

excerpted from the book

The Paradox of American Democracy

by John B. Judis

Routledge Press, 2001, paper

p253
COUNTERVAILING POWER
American democracy has functioned best when workers, consumers, and citizens have acquired countervailing power against the might of business and business leaders, who enjoy an inherent advantage because of their hold over the economy, the wealth at their disposal, and the relative ease with which they can organize themselves. During the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the I950s, labor unions provided the principal countervailing power to business. They wielded power within the workplace and industry, but also exerted political power by rallying citizens to pass laws that significantly improved Americans' living conditions. The minimum wage, unemployment insurance, and Medicare all owe their existence to the political power marshaled by labor unions.

During the I9605, the scope of politics expanded to include consumer protection, environmental regulation, and the guarantee of sexual and racial equality. Labor unions were joined by civil rights organizations, feminists, consumer activists, and environmentalists, as well as a host of single-issue groups. These movements and organizations had an indelible effect on the Johnson years and the first Nixon administration, laying the basis for the civil rights laws of I964 and 1965 and the environmental and consumer legislation passed from T967 to I974. But labor and the movements of the I9605 never fully recovered from the business counteroffensive that began in the early I9705 and that coincided with and also contributed to the rise of K Street. Over the last two decades, many of these movements have learned to play the new game of K Street politics by running focus groups, hiring public relations and media experts, testifying before Congress, and setting up political action committees. They have even learned to write web pages, and to get information out over the Internet. But they cannot hope to create countervailing power without a mobilized base outside of Washington. Just as business's power depends ultimately upon its ability to move elsewhere or close down if it doesn't get its way, the power of labor and citizen movements depends upon their ability to disrupt the normal pattern of life-whether through strikes, demonstrations, marches, or boycotts. To fulfill the promise of democracy-to create genuine countervailing power-America needs a rebirth of popular movements...

POLITICAL REFORM
Political parties and even elections sometimes precipitate and ratify the need for significant structural changes (as in the elections of I9I2, I932 and I936, I964, and I980). But more often they have taken second place to the struggle among interest groups and the influence exercised by elites and elite organizations. In the last decades, the electoral process has increasingly come under the control of business lobbyists and political action committees that have used their superior financial resources to influence candidates and manipulate public opinion. Instead of serving as a counterweight to the inequality of the economic system, the political system has reinforced it. It has also created a vicious circle. Voters, believing that elections are being controlled by "special interests," have stopped participating, reinforcing the domination of the same interests.

To restore the original function of the electoral system, it is important to limit severely the role that wealth and concentrated economic power play. This means either overturning the Supreme Court's decision in Buckley v. Valeo prohibiting limits on campaign spending or enacting a voluntary public finance provision for Congressional as well as presidential races. The public has balked at taxpayer financing, but it could become more receptive if reformers made clear how much the lack of public financing costs in favors that large contributors extract from politicians and parties. The cost of public finance pales before the cost to the taxpayer of unwarranted subsidies to ethanol producers or to overseas banks and corporations. (In I995, DLC economist Robert Shapiro estimated that eliminating unnecessary subsidies could save taxpayers $265 billion in five years.)

ELITES AND ELITE ORGANIZATIONS

In 1956, C. Wright Mills touted the existence of a power elite or political establishment as a contradiction to the American ideal of democracy. It certainly was a contradiction to the ideal of one-man, one-vote electoral democracy then taught in high school civics classes, but not to the actual functioning of American democracy in the twentieth century. Those periods when democracy has most clearly flourished-the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the I9505 and I9605-were also the times when a political establishment was most active and influential. Elites and elite organizations have served as the repository for a set of values that have been essential to American democracy: the determination to stand above class, party, region, race, and religion; the respect for social science; and the commitment to the unique American ideal of social equality. At their best, elites and elite organizations have promoted an idea of the national interest that could bind together citizens and unite conflicting interest groups. They have allowed citizens-who don't have the time or inclination to read every clause of an arms control treaty or every provision of a bill-to put their trust in a dispassionate group of experts. Trust in their wisdom and expertise has been essential to trust in government itself. As the would-be members of the nation's establishment have opted to become advocates for special interests, the public has become justifiably cynical about government and about public service.

p258
Americans' sense of mission has been threatened by narcissism and selfish individualism and by the narrow moralism of the religious right. Contemporary Americans seek either wealth or moral perfection. This new schizophrenia of spirit has been well represented by Representative Tom DeLay and the "young Turks" of the Republican House, who walk along the corridors of the Capitol with a check from a corporate political action committee in one hand and a Bible in the other and who find it unthinkable that the country should expend its considerable resources on ending poverty at home or combating tyranny abroad.

p261
The reforms of the Progressive Era and the New Deal and the rise of the labor movement didn't destroy capitalism, they preserved, humanized, and democratized it. These periods in our history demonstrated that it was possible to reconcile democratic pluralism with the new corporate industrial economy. It will be the task of Americans of the twenty-first century to demonstrate that the nation need not forsake its democratic ideals, including its commitment to social equality, in order to enjoy the fruits of the new world economy.

Paradox of American Democracy

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