By Sharon Kyle* – LA Progressive
A landmark Yale–Northwestern study shows America is ruled by elites, not the people. Here’s why our current system makes democracy impossible.
Democracy is one of those words that gets thrown around as though it were self-evident. Politicians and media pundits invoke it like a mantra as though we actually live in one. Since Trump came into office, the phrase, “threats to our democracy” is heard over and over on the airwaves and in social media. But the phrase itself rests on a shaky foundation. You can’t threaten what doesn’t truly exist.
If democracy means government of the people, by the people, and for the people where we all have equal voice, equal access, and equal influence — then the United States is not a democracy — not now nor in its past.
Before you jump to the conclusion that I’m about to launch into the well worn argument that the United States isn’t a democracy, it’s a republic! — please allow me to disabuse you of that notion. That argument is a rhetorical trap that is usually used (by someone on the right) to:
– Dismiss critiques of democratic backsliding (gerrymandering, minority rule).
– Shift the frame away from whether the people actually have power.
– Use semantics to protect oligarchy from scrutiny.
So, no, that is not my argument.
I understand that a country can be both a democracy and a republic. “Republic” describes the structure; “democracy” describes the principle. My argument is that the United States is not a democracy because, structurally, a democratic government cannot exist with the obstacles the founding fathers intentionally built into it.
What we have in the United States is a system draped in democratic language but hollow at its core. Citizens vote, yes. But votes are filtered through an Electoral College that can install a president who lost the popular vote. Votes are diluted in a Senate where small states hold vastly disproportionate power. And votes are undermined by gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the tidal wave of money in politics.
So when pundits wring their hands about “democracy under attack,” they’re really describing the erosion of a carefully maintained façade. The truth is harsher: America has long functioned as an oligarchy disguised as a democracy — a government where elites, not the people, hold the reins. And sadly, it has always been this way.
So let’s talk about this oligarchy — and the structural obstacles that block democracy — the evidence, both structural and empirical, is overwhelming but there is hope – so please continue listening or reading.
Structural Obstacles That Block Democracy
The U.S. political system is not a neutral playing field. It is tilted, by design, toward minority rule and elite capture.
– The Electoral College & the Senate: These institutions disproportionately amplify the voices of smaller, whiter, more conservative states. A Wyoming voter has roughly 70 times the representation in the Senate as a Californian. That is not “one person, one vote.” California (population ~39 million) and Wyoming (population ~580,000) both get 2 senators each which means a Wyoming resident has nearly 70 times more representation in the Senate than a Californian.
– Gerrymandering: District lines are engineered to predetermine electoral outcomes, turning millions of votes into wasted gestures. Overwhelming evidence makes it clear that map drawing alone can determine political power regardless of popular support.
– The Two-Party Chokehold: Winner-take-all elections enforce a suffocating duopoly. Voters are pushed to choose between “the lesser of two evils” rather than genuine alternatives.
Here are three books that dig deeply into the structural obstacles blocking democracy—especially focusing on the Electoral College, gerrymandering, and the two-party chokehold:
– Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It by Ari Berman
– Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America’s Democracy by David Daley
– 10 Steps to Repair American Democracy: A More Perfect Union by Steven Hill
The Power of Money in Politics
But aside from the structural obstacle and even if the electoral structures were fair, the system would still fail the democracy test because of how thoroughly money dominates politics.
– Campaign Finance: The 2010 Citizens United decision supercharged the role of billionaires and corporations in elections. Dark money super PACs allow wealthy interests to drown out ordinary voices.
– Lobbying and Influence: Washington is effectively a bazaar where policy is auctioned off to the highest bidder. Corporations spend billions annually to ensure their interests outweigh public needs.
– Media Control: Just a handful of corporations own most of the media, narrowing the national conversation to what serves corporate profit rather than public empowerment.
Rights, Access, and the Hollowing Out of the Vote
Layered on top of structural and economic obstacles are direct attacks on voting itself.
– Voter Suppression: Purges of voter rolls, restrictive ID laws, limited polling places, and felony disenfranchisement silence millions, disproportionately people of color and the poor.
– Information Asymmetry: Disinformation spreads like wildfire, while civic education collapses. Citizens can’t exercise democratic power if they are systematically misled about the issues or even their rights.
– Judicial Overreach: An unelected Supreme Court can gut voting rights, reproductive freedom, or labor protections with the stroke of a pen, regardless of public will.
These dynamics show why casting a ballot does not equal exercising power. Voting has been reduced to ritual — a performance of democracy, not the reality of it.
Under these conditions, the notion that ordinary citizens wield equal influence is fantasy. This isn’t democracy; it’s a rigged game that locks power away from the majority and consolidates it in the hands of a few — this, by the way, is the definition of oligarchy. The Yale–Northwestern study analyzed nearly 1,800 national policy decisions over two decades and found that the preferences of the average American had essentially no impact on what government enacted. In blunt terms, ordinary citizens had a snowball’s chance in hell of seeing their views translated into policy unless those views aligned with the priorities of economic elites or powerful interest groups.
That finding was not opinion. It was empirical, statistical fact. And it should have been a death knell for the comforting myth that America is a functioning democracy back in 2014 when it was published.
The Philosophical Contradiction
None of this should shock us. The U.S. system was never designed to be fully democratic. The framers explicitly feared “mob rule.” They insulated power through mechanisms like the Senate, the Electoral College, and lifetime judicial appointments because they wanted to hold onto it for themselves.
What we have is an oligarchic republic dressed up with democratic symbols — a structure that invites capture by elites and resists the will of the majority.
So, the hard question is not whether democracy is possible under our current structure (it isn’t). The real question is: What kind of structure could make democracy possible?
What Kind of Structure Could Make Democracy Possible?
This is a question I’ve wrestled with for decades. At LA Progressive, we’ve published more than 45,000 articles examining the many ways our so-called democracy fails the people it’s meant to serve. As someone who has always believed in participatory democracy and the transformative power of civic engagement, I remain convinced of this: if ordinary people truly had equal influence over the decisions that shape their lives, we would not be facing the long list of social crises that define our nation today.
We are asked to vote for individuals who will “fix” the problems. But by exclusively relying on individuals, we miss the point. The challenge is structural. Democracy can’t thrive inside institutions that were built to concentrate power at the top. Over the years, I’ve come to see this tension as a clash between orthodoxy and solidarity. Orthodoxy organizes power in pyramids — rigid, hierarchical, rule-bound systems that inevitably privilege a few while excluding the many. Solidarity, by contrast, is networked — fluid, participatory, egalitarian, and rooted in trust. If we are serious about creating a structure where ordinary people exercise genuine power, we must begin shifting from orthodoxy’s pyramids to solidarity’s networks.
That means redesigning governance from the ground up to resist capture by elites, distribute power horizontally, and keep politics at a human scale.
1. Human-Scale Governance Units
Democracy only works when people can meaningfully know, deliberate with, and hold accountable those who represent them. Structures should be built around communities small enough for trust and participation — roughly within the Dunbar number (~150 people).
2. Citizens’ Assemblies Chosen by Lottery
Instead of career politicians whose survival depends on fundraising, random selection (sortition) could bring ordinary people into decision-making bodies, just like jury duty. This dilutes the influence of money and entrenched elites.
3. Participatory Budgeting and Direct Decision-Making
Citizens should directly decide how a significant portion of public funds are spent in their communities. This creates ownership and transparency, and it makes politics tangible.
4. Networks Instead of Pyramids
Local councils could link horizontally into regional and national networks, rather than vertically into rigid hierarchies. This decentralization makes the system resilient and much harder to capture by oligarchs or corporate power.
5. Rotation and Transparency of Leadership
Leadership positions should rotate regularly, with strict term limits, open records, and community oversight. That prevents the calcification of permanent political classes.
6. Constitutional Protections for Equity
Beyond formal “rights,” a truly democratic structure would enshrine mechanisms that guarantee marginalized groups equal footing in decision-making — preventing majority rule from slipping into majority tyranny.
Building Democracy on a Foundation of Solidarity
Most of what I have written here addresses the failures of American democracy as rooted in its structural design — the Electoral College, the Senate, gerrymandering, money in politics. Those flaws are real and corrosive. But the solidarity vs. orthodoxy framework pushes us to see something deeper: democracy is not only a matter of structures. It is also a matter of relationships.
Orthodoxy creates relationships of domination — hierarchies where some rule while others are ruled. Solidarity, by contrast, creates relationships of trust and shared struggle — networks where people see themselves as bound together, even across lines of difference.
If democracy is to mean more than ritualized voting inside a broken system, then it must be grounded in solidarity. This is where the challenge becomes both urgent and difficult: we cannot build a truly functional democracy without building a multi-racial, multi-ethnic coalition committed to solidarity.
The progressive movement has long aspired to this, but aspiration is not enough. In practice, racial divides on the left have too often kept us from the kind of durable alliances that could shift the balance of power. Addressing those divides is not optional. It is an imperative.
At LA Progressive, we have often argued that race sits at the center of America’s democratic failures. From slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration and voter suppression, race has been the wedge used to fracture working people and keep elites in power. The solidarity lens is simply another way of naming this truth: we cannot repair our broken democracy unless we confront race directly, dismantle the structures that divide us, and build a movement grounded in genuine multi-racial solidarity.
Imagine what becomes possible if we do. A progressive movement that places solidarity at its foundation — across race, class, and ethnicity — would not just resist authoritarianism. It would redefine democracy itself. It would turn participation into something lived and relational, rather than abstract and procedural. It would give us the only real chance of creating a democracy that is both functional and just.
Why This Matters Now
The Yale–Northwestern study proves that democracy, as most Americans imagine it, is a myth under our current system. But cynicism is not the only option. We can either resign ourselves to oligarchy, or we can begin to imagine and build alternative structures grounded in solidarity, participation, and human-scale governance.
The future of democracy will not be found in defending broken institutions. It will be found in building new ones. Structures that resist capture. Structures that reflect solidarity, not orthodoxy. Structures where ordinary people finally exercise the power democracy promises but has never delivered.
“The preferences of average Americans have a near-zero impact on public policy.” — Gilens & Page, Yale/Northwestern Study.
Closing Thought
If we continue clinging to the illusion that America is a democracy, we will remain trapped in a system that cannot deliver justice or equality. But if we face the truth — that democracy here is structurally impossible — we can free ourselves to imagine something better.
Something that looks less like a pyramid of power and more like a living network of solidarity.
*Sharon Kyle JDis a former president of the Guild Law School and is the publisher and co-founder of the LA Progressive. For years before immersing herself in the law and social justice, Ms. Kyle was a member of several space flight teams at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory where she managed resources for projects like Magellan, Genesis, and Mars Pathfinder. Sharon is a former member of the Board of Directors of the ACLU and is on the editorial board of the BlackCommentator.com.