Interest Groups and Inequality in Democratic Responsiveness in the U.S.

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the extent to which the link between public preferences and government policy is biased toward the preferences of high-income Americans. Using an original data set of almost 2,000 survey questions on proposed policy changes between 1981 and 2002, I find a moderately strong relationship between what the public wants and what the government does, albeit with a strong bias toward the status quo. But I also find that when Americans with different income levels differ in their policy preferences, actual policy outcomes strongly reflect the preferences of the most affluent but bear little relationship to the preferences of poor or middle income Americans.

After documenting these inequalities, I examine the role of interest groups in shaping policy responsiveness to the preferences of the public. I show that neither the direction of interest group alignments nor the extent of interest group engagement significantly alters the patters of policy responsiveness to Americans at different income levels. Interest groups do influence federal policy, but they do so independently of the preferences of the public. Affluent Americans are more likely to see their preferences reflected in policy outcomes if the balance of interest groups on an issue share those preferences, but the extent to which the affluent move policy in one direction or another is independent of the influence of interest groups.

Interest groups do sometimes move policy in a direction more consistent with the preferences of the poor, but these are offset by other instances in which interest groups are more aligned with the affluent. Moreover, the instances on which interest groups align more closely with the preferences of the less well off often reflect idiosyncratic circumstances - either interest groups that share the preferences of the poor by "happy coincidence" or the unique case of the AARP which cannot serve as a general model of interest group advocacy for the needs of the less advantaged. Consequently, interest groups do not appear to hold much promise for reformers who seek to equalize the voice of less affluent Americans in shaping government policy.