In 2014 we published a study of political inequality in America, called “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.” Our central finding was this: Economic elites and interest groups can shape U.S. government policy — but Americans who are less well off have essentially no influence over what their government does. This was in line with a good deal of previous research by Larry Bartels, Martin Gilens, Larry Jacobs and Benjamin Page, Elizabeth Rigby and Gerald Wright, and others. But for some reason, our paper caught the media’s attention in a way that few academic journal articles do.
Since then, a number of questions and criticisms have been raised about our work — some offering sensible critiques and alternative perspectives and others simply mistaken. We have responded in print to some of these, and will list some of those responses at the end of this post. Here we will respond briefly to the most important challenges to our research. In brief, we don’t believe that any of these critiques, individually or collectively, undermine our central claims.