A Comprehensive Assessment Of Economic Inequality And...

Martin Gilens provides a comprehensive assessment of the economic inequality and political power in America. He explores on how the affluence of politicians influences the political setting of the country. According to the author, political equality is considered as the philosophy of democracy. Due to the inequalities that exist among the citizens regarding information, social and political affairs, it would be impractical to anticipate equal influence over policy making. Nature and the degree of representative inequalities depict the extent of democracy in a particular society. The author points out that when the inequalities in the political influence intensify, democracy shifts into oligarchy, whereby the wealthy few rule the society.†¦show more content†¦The article pinpoints the fact that it is difficult to disentangle the personal preferences of the Congressional members from influences that could affect their behaviors in decision-making. There is no reliable techniqu e of measuring the personal preferences of the representatives that are unaffected by the demands presented by their constituents. Various scholars who have analyzed this scenario have made efforts to assess the roles that are played by individual preferences through identifying some individual characteristics that are related to the interests and preferences of the representative. For instance, the personal wealth of the member might be linked with their economic policy preferences, and the use of tobacco by the member may be linked to their tobacco legislation preferences. Gilens also carried research on the professional histories of the representatives before their entrance to the Congress. Unlike the previous assessment that the author had carried out about the economic status, he found out that the histories of the members are related to their Congressional voting records. Gilens also finds significant differences between the representatives and most of the conformist professions. The author attributes the differences to the types of districts or the states that the authors were elected from instead of any independent influence of their professional backgrounds. The article is further supplemented by