The related but still distinguishable argument about political inequality has meant the same search for clinching proof that policy follows money and makes for a “rigged” system. This week, the Center for Competitive Politics took after a widely reported paper about the correlation between the aspirations of the wealthy and the manufacture of public policy. Noting that Rick Hasen and Larry Lessig had made use of the paper in arguing for a political equality theory of regulation, the CCP cited to critics of the scholarship and its conclusions. In this critical view, which CCP evidently favors, there is substantial agreement across income groups about policy. So the study that purportedly shows that we have a democracy of the rich cannot survive close scrutiny. CCP suggests that this should bring sharply into question the “lofty solutions” of reformers.
This fight holds unfortunate temptations for both sides. The advocates for more regulation want considerably more, and more aggressive, rules, and with the Congress in hostile hands and, until recently, a majority the Court unsympathetic, they can be drawn to improve their prospects with dramatic evidence. Studies of interest but not fully conclusive or persuasive come to be promoted with a surplus of zeal: the marketing can go a little far, outpacing the strength of the product. Along with this appetite for “smoking gun” evidence is a taste for the anecdotal, usually the contemporary “scandal” that is supposed to prove their point.
But the adversaries of regulation have their own irresistible impulses: to get carried away in their rebuttals. That a particular evidentiary claim is overstated is a point fairly made against overstatement. It does not justify overlooking or dismissing what is left of substance in the claim. Often this rejection of the evidence is rooted in ideology, which requires flat-out resistance to the reform project and a refusal to acknowledge any value in the data.