Matt McManus, the author behind The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism and just a generally fun and friendly guy whom I’ve had a few exchanges over the years, posted this the other day on X:
This is indeed an interesting paper, thanks. I will say, though, that it’s a shame Enns doesn’t investigate further *why* policies with relatively greater support from the affluent have a higher baseline rate of passing, since that seems like a rather important question. In the most basic theory of liberal democracy, politicians are supposed to position themselves around the median voter. So this intercept difference—the fact that policies relatively favored by the affluent have a higher baseline pass rate than policies relatively favored by ordinary citizens—is not something that should simply exist in the first place.
Bowman also spends large chunks of his paper discussing the role of status quo bias and how it distorts win rates, and as far as I can tell, Enns does not really dispute that part. Enns references Erikson a couple of times, saying near the end that “Future research should also further consider what accounts for the group intercept. As Erikson (2015) suggests, this could reflect the broader political environment, which might include factors such as organized interest groups, the superrich, status quo bias, and policymakers’ own preferences”. But Bowman’s method is designed specifically to get around the basic status-quo-bias problem, even if Enns is right that it cannot be interpreted straightforwardly as the affluent personally controlling policy change.
In any case, if Erikson’s explanation is correct, then the basic premise of unequal responsiveness as a result of economic power still seems to survive. If policies favored by the affluent are more likely to pass because of organized interests, the superrich, or policymakers’ own preferences (why aren’t elected officials closer to the preferences of the median voters? I don’t know, and Enns doesn’t really provide an answer either), that is not exactly a vindication of median-voter democracy. It just relocates the mechanism.
I wouldn't call it Erikson's "explanation" or a status-quo bias. It the possibility that these policies may be harder to enact given the political environment, like poor-favored policies being more costly, for example. And Enns goes further to explain why this might not even be an advantage. So I'm not clear on how this overcomes the Simpsons paradox problem he talks about (unless you're not claiming that).
> Why social Europe appears to experience more unequal representation than liberal America is puzzling and warrants further scrutiny.
My Italian partner would explain this by arguing that the educated elite of Europe have more of a stranglehold on politics and policy in Europe than in America.
It’s certainly an explanation in line with my own suspiscions, but it also seems to demand the question of why European intelligentsia should exercise greater influence in the first place.
I’ve read some procedural explanations for why cross-party ideological capture on certain subjects occurs quite often in the European Parliament which could empower intellectuals, but none of those proposed mechanisms really make sense with respect to national legislation.
Maybe due to less social mobility in Europe vs US? A rich American is more likely to have a poor or middle class parent or grandparent than a rich European.
It’s possible, but due to an absolutely wider gap between the poor and the rich in the US, several European countries actually have relatively higher relative social (or at least economic) mobility between generations.
The US still tends to win out on absolute measures of economic mobility, but it’s a more mixed picture when we use relative measures.
Could it also be that the policy preferences of high income, educated individuals differ from those of low income, uneducated individuals in Europe relatively more than they do in the US?
Perhaps linguistic fragmentation plays a role as well. Low income, uneducated Europeans tend to be monolingual in their national tongue, while elite Europeans all read and debate in English; this alone might cause more elite/non-elite differentiation in Europe than in the US, where elites and non-elites at least share the same language of political discourse.
I appreciate this response to my tweet, but am irritated it doesn’t really engage with what I said or cited carefully. Which is strange given we’re talking about two tweets and three pictures. When applied to my more general views its even more off the mark.
Firstly even in the initial sequence of tweets I referenced three large books: Gilens, Eatwell/Goodwin, and Piketty (2020). Tibor is welcome to disagree with all of them, but the essay only discusses the first. The second book by Eatwell and Goodwin was the primary source I referenced on ordinary people’s perception that elites run the country in their interest and have little concern for the mass of citizens. Its notable these findings came from right of center scholars who can hardly be accused of squishy leftism (albeit at least one of whom later became sympathetic to right wing populism). I also cited Piketty’s Capital and Ideology (2020), the concluding section of which examines many of these issues on a much broader scale and reaches similar empirical conclusions. These build on his earlier empirical work in the better known Capital in the Twenty First Century (2013)
Secondly, I never claimed that Western “liberal democracies, such as the US and other advanced societies, are virtually plutocratic, hollowed-out non-democracies where ordinary people have close to no say compared to rich folks, are locked out of the system and just generally not represented.” My exact words were “ordinary people perceive their governments as being unresponsive to their wishes. And worse that this perception is grounded in reality because governments are in fact responsive to the wealthy...”. I summarized this, based on the aforementioned studies and others-we haven’t even gotten into the vast legal socio-legal literature on the American judicial system’s tendencies to favor and be manipulatedthe wealthy. See Cohen, Chemerinsky, Haltom and McCann- as constituting “strong oligarchic tendencies.” Tendencies even Tibor’s studies by and large acknowledge exist, even if they deny they’re as severe.
This makes it somewhat ironic Tibor would imply I’m “biased” in reading the literature. This feels to me like a topic he wanted to write on and decided to use my Tweets as a convenient prompt. Even though they don’t make a claim as strong as what he imputes to me in the Tweets, let alone my academic work which he could have engaged with.
If I thought there was nothing worthwhile in liberal democracy, or that they had entirely regressed into oligarchy, I wouldn’t have written the two books on “liberal socialism” he references at the beginning. That said I agree with the two most important liberal philosophers (Mill and Rawls) that while markets have their place in the long run capitalism (private ownership of the means of production or commanding heights of the economy) is morally incopatible with the aims of a principled liberalism. As Rawls points out capitalism-even welfare state capitalism-is incompatible with the principle that citizens getting fair value from their political rights. And I stand by the claim that evidence suggests that’s increasingly true in fact as well.
There is even less evidence that socialist regimes result in “ citizens getting fair value from their political rights,” particularly if you reject welfare state capitalism as a form of socialism.
Not all. What Sejersted calls the "Scandinavian variant of socialism" and Dragsted "Nordic socialism" (the left end of social democracy and at least in the 1970s under Palme beyond) are commonly cited as the most democratic societies in the world. Moreover this has been the case for decades now. Palme once described Sweden as "more socialist than those countries that call themselves socialist" and in that respect socialism has been a great boon for presenting what is possible in developed states.
They are also by and large high trust societies with notably dense levels of economic democracy. Whats admirable about them is how "fair value from the political rights" doesn't just apply to the state but the "basic structure" more comprehensively. This more closely approximates what Rawls recommended when he described liberal socialism as a more just liberal regime which would be characternized by a far more equal distribution of property and ideally worker run firms in the Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy.
But isn’t that just a “welfare-state capitalism” that you already claimed is “incompatible with the principle that citizens getting fair value from their political rights?”
No, since Scandinavian or Nordic socialism isn't defined primarily by the simple redistribution of goods to provision a social minimum-even a generous one. Its primary achievement, stressed by Misgeld, Moline and Amark (1992) and Sejersted was challenging the wage labor and capital relationship by intensely empowering the former from the 1920s up to the 1980s. This reflects the serious class conflict the countries experienced in the early 20th century that ended with adoption of the model. But even before then there were already natal experiments; Dragsted points out even before social democracy Denmark was famous for its high levels of worker coops.
They aren't perfect, but this comparative mass empowerment and institutionalization of labor is what distinguishes the Scandinavian variant of socialism from welfarism. As Sehon pointed out socialism comes in many forms, and by all metrics these countries are far more socialist than most comparators. And-not coincidentally-more successful and democratic.
Also Rawls' point was "even" welfare state capitalism is deficient this way. Rawls was clear, and I agree, it is still better than pure capitalism. I'd include in that the unjust neoliberal and now right wing populist system we have now. But we ought not to settle for simply "better" when that turned out to be insufficient to innoculate us against the current slide into banality...
I think that you are greatly exaggerating the difference between the economic and social welfare policies of Scandinavia and the rest of the Western world. You are relying on stereotypes that are decades out of date.
Both have changed considerably since 1980, so they now share far more in common than differences. To claim this huge difference of Scandinavia compared to “ unjust neoliberal and now right wing populist system we have now” is simply not factual.
The Western nations are all clearly capitalist economies, and they all have extensive welfare states. And they all have very similar political rights.
And you are conveniently ignoring dozens of socialist regimes with few political rights that are clearly socialist.
That is why the concept of “Liberal Socialism” is an oxymoron. No Scandinavian citizen or party would accept that label. Scandinavia is neither Liberal, nor Socialist, and it is increasingly electing governments of the Right. Apparently, Scandinavians prefer the "slide into banality".
I gave you several citations to my point actually. The first was Sejersted's seminal 2011 book "The Age of Social Democracy" which details how what he terms the "Scandinavian variant of socialism" emerged and drew from socialist and liberal traditions. Not to mention Dragsted's "Nordic Socialism" and Ostberg's "The Rise and Fall of Swedish Social Democracy" from the antiquarian years 2025 and 2024 respectively. Sehon's book "Socialism: A Logical Introduction" is from 2024 and links many of the same empirical points to principled arguments. The fact that what I'm talking about was also stressed in 1992's "Creating Social Democracy" shows you how longstanding these historical facts have been acknowledged.
Notably as Bergstrom points out when developing Nordic socialism the movement's main thinkers and wonks emphasized "what is shared by liberalism and socialism. In their ultimate aims, liberalism and socialism are to a large extend in agreement, wrote Sandler in the Nationalization Committee. These arems are freedom, welfare, and the levelling of difference to the degree this is compatible with continued probgress. Karleby agreed but also said that liberalism gave ownership rights their petit bourgeois artisan form, one that is not develpoped for that degree of large-scale activity demonstrated by modern production. Socialism has gone further to develop these ultimate aims under modern economic conditions." So apparently many would accept the characterization.
I'm afraid your evaluation that is deeply of date and simply wrong according to actual experts in the model. Older and contemporary.
As I mentioned that does not make these countries utopias, and I agree with Ostberg that some of them are moving in the wrong direction by abandoning what made them distinctive and succesful. But that doesn't mean there aren't core lessons to be drawn from their creative peaks; lessons they ought to remember themselves. When Olof Palme described Sweden as more socialist than the allegedly socialist countries the country was described as probably the best in the world aside from the weather.
On the more general point about "liberal socialism" you are also simply wrong. You may not like liberal socialism, and thats fine. By since J.S Mill described himself as falling under the "general designation of socialists" in his Autobiography through Rawls' defending "liberal socialism" or 'property owning democracy" as the only two just liberal regimes it is a longstanding theoretical tradition with many impressive luminaries (Keynes, Hobhouse, Macpherson Mouffe, Bobbio, Rossellli etc). The two most impressive liberal philosophers in two centuries defended it. If you disagree with them you ought to explain why. But handwaving away a theoretical tradition that exists simply as a matter of empirical fact is strange.
Great analysis as usual. I read this one soon after your review of the Mattei book and couldn't help putting them into context with each other. Especially regarding your earlier speculation about whether laypeople subscribe to orthodox or heterodox economic theories: Don't these data point to a convergence of (economic) preferences on orthodox ideas?
Some of the other comments go in the following direction as well: The effective and legitimate way to exert political power in a liberal democracy is upstream from policy preferences. If you can convince people that "there is no alternative" and "government is not the solution, government is the problem" - underscoring that with the evidence that "the Eastern bloc collapsed under its self-contradictions" - then that would indeed explain why reported preferences largely align across social classes.
Note that "exerting power by shaping preferences" is infinitely preferable to many alternatives to exerting power. I just think it's fine to push back against the "there is no alternative" story; it becomes true when we believe it.
Consider the case of estate taxes: The theoretical range of policy choices goes from 0% to 100% rates. Successfully rebranding estate taxes as "death taxes" in the US narrowed the range up for serious discussion.
To me it looks like the data are consistent with both "no oligarchy to see here" and "the oligarchy successfully shaped preferences through rhetoric and agenda-setting." What data might resolve which story is more plausible?
Re: preferences, I think that there’s something to that point. Note though that people who are less likely to be fooled (like the educated/more intelligent ones) are more in line with orthodox ideas, so I think it’s more plausible that orthodox ideas are widespread (where they are) due to correct cognitive processing of them. Of course, there’s space for manipulation even there, but I think it’s narrower.
Moreover, the most interesting result to my mind is what happens when people disagree. Branham et al. show that when there’s explicit disagreement (so no space for manipulation), it’s still virtually a coin-toss between ordinary people (middle class) and rich ones. Though the Bowman paper mentioned in the comments rightly complicates this and shows somewhat more evidence of bias.
In general, I’m not all that sympathetic to arguments point to mass manipulation/preference shaping, because I think the evidence leans more toward the idea that people are hard to manipulate/shape when they have strong incentives not to be manipulated (see my https://statsandsociety.substack.com/p/the-dominant-ideology-thesis-is-an). Nevertheless, the one place where there’s much more room for maneuver are abstract politics and elections (precisely due to lack of incentives to get it right). So, again, I think there’s something to what you say; though I wouldn’t want to overstate it.
1. I meticulously avoid the word manipulation. If I am rich while others are poor I am going to tell myself and others a story that explains where I landed in the game of life. My story will be all the more compelling if I believe it. And if I am rich, I'm going to have an easier time broadcasting it. This is an observation, not an accusation.
2. Speculatively, regarding young people's openness to socialism: The Fall of the Wall and socialism's implosion was the inciting event for political reflection for my generation (yours, too?). But it's becoming less and less salient for younger cohorts.
Thanks, I was looking for a good overview of this literature as it had grown too large for me since I read the Gilens paper. You made me do a slight edit on my latest post in light of this.
This is a useful correction to the lazy version of the debate.
“Oligarchy” can become a slogan that flattens evidence. But the opposite mistake is also dangerous: treating unequal responsiveness as a normal imperfection rather than a democratic injury.
Ordinary people do not need the most dramatic label.
They need an honest account of where influence is unequal, which decisions it changes, who pays the price, and what reforms would make voice more measurable than status.
Are these studies not comparing apples and oranges? Why are we looking at policy preferences of individuals? What about corporations? Lobbying? Big tech is to me the most glaring example, which has gone largely unregulated in the US for the past several decades. Oh, and we also just had an unelected tech CEO acting as a Federal agency auditor with basically zero congressional approval or oversight and dictate funding policy towards many agencies. I'm having a difficult time reconciling this information with the claim that we're not sliding into (or already in) a functioning oligarchy.
Well, if we want to understand how responsive government policies are to what people want, then we have to look at whether governments do what the people want. And if we found out that governments usually do what rich people want but not what poor or middle class people want, that would be a problem.
Now, is that all? Couldn't we also look at corporations and lobbying? Sure, why not both? It's probably much harder to effectively measure the latter, but yeah, I'm all for it.
I'm simply responding to popular claims that we have good evidence (from Gilens and Page-like studies) that liberal democracies (or the US in particular) are oligarchies. I'm showing the broader Gilens-Page-like research is much more nuanced than the popular claims circulating on social media.
Was about to write something similar. Moreover, how many of the legislative acts that pass through a legislative / executive branch of a country are actually directed at helping the lower classes? I follow the Romanian law on a daily basis and most of those administrative ones are just made to permit business to be done. Once in a while you get a bump in unemployment benefits which impacts 500.000 people, perhaps that is how it may look skewed towards poorer peeps?
I would add one point that I did not notice. Many of the studies you mentioned show that policies implemented is more reflective of the views of voters in the 50-80 percentile income range. That is hardly evidence of a plutocracy or a bias towards the rich. At most, it is a bias towards the college-educated professionals, who are ironically the one most likely to claim that we live in an oligarchy.
Point #6 is right on the money! Many of the representation gaps that exist (like in immigration policy) are related to the education gap. PMC-adjacent folk like McManus seem to like to point the finger at rich folk, but it is less self-aggrandizing that some of the policy gaps that help fuel right populism are due to the over-indexation of your interests and values.
Im curious about definitional differences of what constitues 'rich'. I think those of us americans at least, have a solid understanding that someone who makes a million dollars per year is rich, but not rich enough in the outsizied influence question. A highly educated, high income family ofc has informatiomla assymetry with macro/micro and policy in general. The question to ask for a study, in my view at least. Is the difference between normal 'rich' people and the billionaire class in terms of political influence. I imagine we may find a large discrepancy. However, one may also look at peter theil vs george soros. Both members of the extreme rich, with different views. They spend money and with their outsizied influence change the government or laws or at min, who is able to run for government. Who has political influence when it comes to DNC and RNC talking points? Is there a class based political influence difference along party line? Does peter theil and goergoe soros just go back and forth, thus creating a correlation with D v R lower class people? Who controls the media and propoganda efforts, creating the questions to be answered by policy, without a focus on the questions themselves? Either way, I am really enjoying your book on capitalist realism, and its nuanced take to the discussion.
Personally, this is my preferred study because it overcomes a lot of the issues in both Gilens’ method as well as Branham et al.’s: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ssqu.12791
Thanks, will take a closer look.
I genuinely am curious to hear your thoughts afterwards so please do!
Yep, it's a pretty cool study; more granular than Branham et al.'s. I updated somewhat. :)
I mean, the same critique from Enns (2026) applies to it (explicitly so).
https://sociologicalscience.com/articles-v13-21-528/
True, that's a whole other can of worms with these papers.
This is indeed an interesting paper, thanks. I will say, though, that it’s a shame Enns doesn’t investigate further *why* policies with relatively greater support from the affluent have a higher baseline rate of passing, since that seems like a rather important question. In the most basic theory of liberal democracy, politicians are supposed to position themselves around the median voter. So this intercept difference—the fact that policies relatively favored by the affluent have a higher baseline pass rate than policies relatively favored by ordinary citizens—is not something that should simply exist in the first place.
Bowman also spends large chunks of his paper discussing the role of status quo bias and how it distorts win rates, and as far as I can tell, Enns does not really dispute that part. Enns references Erikson a couple of times, saying near the end that “Future research should also further consider what accounts for the group intercept. As Erikson (2015) suggests, this could reflect the broader political environment, which might include factors such as organized interest groups, the superrich, status quo bias, and policymakers’ own preferences”. But Bowman’s method is designed specifically to get around the basic status-quo-bias problem, even if Enns is right that it cannot be interpreted straightforwardly as the affluent personally controlling policy change.
In any case, if Erikson’s explanation is correct, then the basic premise of unequal responsiveness as a result of economic power still seems to survive. If policies favored by the affluent are more likely to pass because of organized interests, the superrich, or policymakers’ own preferences (why aren’t elected officials closer to the preferences of the median voters? I don’t know, and Enns doesn’t really provide an answer either), that is not exactly a vindication of median-voter democracy. It just relocates the mechanism.
I wouldn't call it Erikson's "explanation" or a status-quo bias. It the possibility that these policies may be harder to enact given the political environment, like poor-favored policies being more costly, for example. And Enns goes further to explain why this might not even be an advantage. So I'm not clear on how this overcomes the Simpsons paradox problem he talks about (unless you're not claiming that).
> Why social Europe appears to experience more unequal representation than liberal America is puzzling and warrants further scrutiny.
My Italian partner would explain this by arguing that the educated elite of Europe have more of a stranglehold on politics and policy in Europe than in America.
Is that actually the reason? 🤷♂️
Ha, could be part of it. :)
It’s certainly an explanation in line with my own suspiscions, but it also seems to demand the question of why European intelligentsia should exercise greater influence in the first place.
I’ve read some procedural explanations for why cross-party ideological capture on certain subjects occurs quite often in the European Parliament which could empower intellectuals, but none of those proposed mechanisms really make sense with respect to national legislation.
Maybe due to less social mobility in Europe vs US? A rich American is more likely to have a poor or middle class parent or grandparent than a rich European.
It’s possible, but due to an absolutely wider gap between the poor and the rich in the US, several European countries actually have relatively higher relative social (or at least economic) mobility between generations.
The US still tends to win out on absolute measures of economic mobility, but it’s a more mixed picture when we use relative measures.
Could it also be that the policy preferences of high income, educated individuals differ from those of low income, uneducated individuals in Europe relatively more than they do in the US?
Perhaps linguistic fragmentation plays a role as well. Low income, uneducated Europeans tend to be monolingual in their national tongue, while elite Europeans all read and debate in English; this alone might cause more elite/non-elite differentiation in Europe than in the US, where elites and non-elites at least share the same language of political discourse.
Hm, yeah, perhaps!
I appreciate this response to my tweet, but am irritated it doesn’t really engage with what I said or cited carefully. Which is strange given we’re talking about two tweets and three pictures. When applied to my more general views its even more off the mark.
Firstly even in the initial sequence of tweets I referenced three large books: Gilens, Eatwell/Goodwin, and Piketty (2020). Tibor is welcome to disagree with all of them, but the essay only discusses the first. The second book by Eatwell and Goodwin was the primary source I referenced on ordinary people’s perception that elites run the country in their interest and have little concern for the mass of citizens. Its notable these findings came from right of center scholars who can hardly be accused of squishy leftism (albeit at least one of whom later became sympathetic to right wing populism). I also cited Piketty’s Capital and Ideology (2020), the concluding section of which examines many of these issues on a much broader scale and reaches similar empirical conclusions. These build on his earlier empirical work in the better known Capital in the Twenty First Century (2013)
Secondly, I never claimed that Western “liberal democracies, such as the US and other advanced societies, are virtually plutocratic, hollowed-out non-democracies where ordinary people have close to no say compared to rich folks, are locked out of the system and just generally not represented.” My exact words were “ordinary people perceive their governments as being unresponsive to their wishes. And worse that this perception is grounded in reality because governments are in fact responsive to the wealthy...”. I summarized this, based on the aforementioned studies and others-we haven’t even gotten into the vast legal socio-legal literature on the American judicial system’s tendencies to favor and be manipulatedthe wealthy. See Cohen, Chemerinsky, Haltom and McCann- as constituting “strong oligarchic tendencies.” Tendencies even Tibor’s studies by and large acknowledge exist, even if they deny they’re as severe.
This makes it somewhat ironic Tibor would imply I’m “biased” in reading the literature. This feels to me like a topic he wanted to write on and decided to use my Tweets as a convenient prompt. Even though they don’t make a claim as strong as what he imputes to me in the Tweets, let alone my academic work which he could have engaged with.
If I thought there was nothing worthwhile in liberal democracy, or that they had entirely regressed into oligarchy, I wouldn’t have written the two books on “liberal socialism” he references at the beginning. That said I agree with the two most important liberal philosophers (Mill and Rawls) that while markets have their place in the long run capitalism (private ownership of the means of production or commanding heights of the economy) is morally incopatible with the aims of a principled liberalism. As Rawls points out capitalism-even welfare state capitalism-is incompatible with the principle that citizens getting fair value from their political rights. And I stand by the claim that evidence suggests that’s increasingly true in fact as well.
There is even less evidence that socialist regimes result in “ citizens getting fair value from their political rights,” particularly if you reject welfare state capitalism as a form of socialism.
Not all. What Sejersted calls the "Scandinavian variant of socialism" and Dragsted "Nordic socialism" (the left end of social democracy and at least in the 1970s under Palme beyond) are commonly cited as the most democratic societies in the world. Moreover this has been the case for decades now. Palme once described Sweden as "more socialist than those countries that call themselves socialist" and in that respect socialism has been a great boon for presenting what is possible in developed states.
They are also by and large high trust societies with notably dense levels of economic democracy. Whats admirable about them is how "fair value from the political rights" doesn't just apply to the state but the "basic structure" more comprehensively. This more closely approximates what Rawls recommended when he described liberal socialism as a more just liberal regime which would be characternized by a far more equal distribution of property and ideally worker run firms in the Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy.
But isn’t that just a “welfare-state capitalism” that you already claimed is “incompatible with the principle that citizens getting fair value from their political rights?”
No, since Scandinavian or Nordic socialism isn't defined primarily by the simple redistribution of goods to provision a social minimum-even a generous one. Its primary achievement, stressed by Misgeld, Moline and Amark (1992) and Sejersted was challenging the wage labor and capital relationship by intensely empowering the former from the 1920s up to the 1980s. This reflects the serious class conflict the countries experienced in the early 20th century that ended with adoption of the model. But even before then there were already natal experiments; Dragsted points out even before social democracy Denmark was famous for its high levels of worker coops.
They aren't perfect, but this comparative mass empowerment and institutionalization of labor is what distinguishes the Scandinavian variant of socialism from welfarism. As Sehon pointed out socialism comes in many forms, and by all metrics these countries are far more socialist than most comparators. And-not coincidentally-more successful and democratic.
Also Rawls' point was "even" welfare state capitalism is deficient this way. Rawls was clear, and I agree, it is still better than pure capitalism. I'd include in that the unjust neoliberal and now right wing populist system we have now. But we ought not to settle for simply "better" when that turned out to be insufficient to innoculate us against the current slide into banality...
I think that you are greatly exaggerating the difference between the economic and social welfare policies of Scandinavia and the rest of the Western world. You are relying on stereotypes that are decades out of date.
Both have changed considerably since 1980, so they now share far more in common than differences. To claim this huge difference of Scandinavia compared to “ unjust neoliberal and now right wing populist system we have now” is simply not factual.
The Western nations are all clearly capitalist economies, and they all have extensive welfare states. And they all have very similar political rights.
And you are conveniently ignoring dozens of socialist regimes with few political rights that are clearly socialist.
That is why the concept of “Liberal Socialism” is an oxymoron. No Scandinavian citizen or party would accept that label. Scandinavia is neither Liberal, nor Socialist, and it is increasingly electing governments of the Right. Apparently, Scandinavians prefer the "slide into banality".
I gave you several citations to my point actually. The first was Sejersted's seminal 2011 book "The Age of Social Democracy" which details how what he terms the "Scandinavian variant of socialism" emerged and drew from socialist and liberal traditions. Not to mention Dragsted's "Nordic Socialism" and Ostberg's "The Rise and Fall of Swedish Social Democracy" from the antiquarian years 2025 and 2024 respectively. Sehon's book "Socialism: A Logical Introduction" is from 2024 and links many of the same empirical points to principled arguments. The fact that what I'm talking about was also stressed in 1992's "Creating Social Democracy" shows you how longstanding these historical facts have been acknowledged.
Notably as Bergstrom points out when developing Nordic socialism the movement's main thinkers and wonks emphasized "what is shared by liberalism and socialism. In their ultimate aims, liberalism and socialism are to a large extend in agreement, wrote Sandler in the Nationalization Committee. These arems are freedom, welfare, and the levelling of difference to the degree this is compatible with continued probgress. Karleby agreed but also said that liberalism gave ownership rights their petit bourgeois artisan form, one that is not develpoped for that degree of large-scale activity demonstrated by modern production. Socialism has gone further to develop these ultimate aims under modern economic conditions." So apparently many would accept the characterization.
I'm afraid your evaluation that is deeply of date and simply wrong according to actual experts in the model. Older and contemporary.
As I mentioned that does not make these countries utopias, and I agree with Ostberg that some of them are moving in the wrong direction by abandoning what made them distinctive and succesful. But that doesn't mean there aren't core lessons to be drawn from their creative peaks; lessons they ought to remember themselves. When Olof Palme described Sweden as more socialist than the allegedly socialist countries the country was described as probably the best in the world aside from the weather.
On the more general point about "liberal socialism" you are also simply wrong. You may not like liberal socialism, and thats fine. By since J.S Mill described himself as falling under the "general designation of socialists" in his Autobiography through Rawls' defending "liberal socialism" or 'property owning democracy" as the only two just liberal regimes it is a longstanding theoretical tradition with many impressive luminaries (Keynes, Hobhouse, Macpherson Mouffe, Bobbio, Rossellli etc). The two most impressive liberal philosophers in two centuries defended it. If you disagree with them you ought to explain why. But handwaving away a theoretical tradition that exists simply as a matter of empirical fact is strange.
Great analysis as usual. I read this one soon after your review of the Mattei book and couldn't help putting them into context with each other. Especially regarding your earlier speculation about whether laypeople subscribe to orthodox or heterodox economic theories: Don't these data point to a convergence of (economic) preferences on orthodox ideas?
Some of the other comments go in the following direction as well: The effective and legitimate way to exert political power in a liberal democracy is upstream from policy preferences. If you can convince people that "there is no alternative" and "government is not the solution, government is the problem" - underscoring that with the evidence that "the Eastern bloc collapsed under its self-contradictions" - then that would indeed explain why reported preferences largely align across social classes.
Note that "exerting power by shaping preferences" is infinitely preferable to many alternatives to exerting power. I just think it's fine to push back against the "there is no alternative" story; it becomes true when we believe it.
Consider the case of estate taxes: The theoretical range of policy choices goes from 0% to 100% rates. Successfully rebranding estate taxes as "death taxes" in the US narrowed the range up for serious discussion.
To me it looks like the data are consistent with both "no oligarchy to see here" and "the oligarchy successfully shaped preferences through rhetoric and agenda-setting." What data might resolve which story is more plausible?
Thanks! And good observations.
Re: preferences, I think that there’s something to that point. Note though that people who are less likely to be fooled (like the educated/more intelligent ones) are more in line with orthodox ideas, so I think it’s more plausible that orthodox ideas are widespread (where they are) due to correct cognitive processing of them. Of course, there’s space for manipulation even there, but I think it’s narrower.
Moreover, the most interesting result to my mind is what happens when people disagree. Branham et al. show that when there’s explicit disagreement (so no space for manipulation), it’s still virtually a coin-toss between ordinary people (middle class) and rich ones. Though the Bowman paper mentioned in the comments rightly complicates this and shows somewhat more evidence of bias.
In general, I’m not all that sympathetic to arguments point to mass manipulation/preference shaping, because I think the evidence leans more toward the idea that people are hard to manipulate/shape when they have strong incentives not to be manipulated (see my https://statsandsociety.substack.com/p/the-dominant-ideology-thesis-is-an). Nevertheless, the one place where there’s much more room for maneuver are abstract politics and elections (precisely due to lack of incentives to get it right). So, again, I think there’s something to what you say; though I wouldn’t want to overstate it.
Consider that, among the youth especially, people are quite critical of capitalism (and accepting of socialism): https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/09/19/modest-declines-in-positive-views-of-socialism-and-capitalism-in-u-s/ That’s weird if their preferences got shaped by the “dominant capitalist elite.”
Appreciate that, Tibor. I'd add only two things:
1. I meticulously avoid the word manipulation. If I am rich while others are poor I am going to tell myself and others a story that explains where I landed in the game of life. My story will be all the more compelling if I believe it. And if I am rich, I'm going to have an easier time broadcasting it. This is an observation, not an accusation.
2. Speculatively, regarding young people's openness to socialism: The Fall of the Wall and socialism's implosion was the inciting event for political reflection for my generation (yours, too?). But it's becoming less and less salient for younger cohorts.
Thanks, I was looking for a good overview of this literature as it had grown too large for me since I read the Gilens paper. You made me do a slight edit on my latest post in light of this.
Nice!
This is a useful correction to the lazy version of the debate.
“Oligarchy” can become a slogan that flattens evidence. But the opposite mistake is also dangerous: treating unequal responsiveness as a normal imperfection rather than a democratic injury.
Ordinary people do not need the most dramatic label.
They need an honest account of where influence is unequal, which decisions it changes, who pays the price, and what reforms would make voice more measurable than status.
Are these studies not comparing apples and oranges? Why are we looking at policy preferences of individuals? What about corporations? Lobbying? Big tech is to me the most glaring example, which has gone largely unregulated in the US for the past several decades. Oh, and we also just had an unelected tech CEO acting as a Federal agency auditor with basically zero congressional approval or oversight and dictate funding policy towards many agencies. I'm having a difficult time reconciling this information with the claim that we're not sliding into (or already in) a functioning oligarchy.
Well, if we want to understand how responsive government policies are to what people want, then we have to look at whether governments do what the people want. And if we found out that governments usually do what rich people want but not what poor or middle class people want, that would be a problem.
Now, is that all? Couldn't we also look at corporations and lobbying? Sure, why not both? It's probably much harder to effectively measure the latter, but yeah, I'm all for it.
I'm simply responding to popular claims that we have good evidence (from Gilens and Page-like studies) that liberal democracies (or the US in particular) are oligarchies. I'm showing the broader Gilens-Page-like research is much more nuanced than the popular claims circulating on social media.
Was about to write something similar. Moreover, how many of the legislative acts that pass through a legislative / executive branch of a country are actually directed at helping the lower classes? I follow the Romanian law on a daily basis and most of those administrative ones are just made to permit business to be done. Once in a while you get a bump in unemployment benefits which impacts 500.000 people, perhaps that is how it may look skewed towards poorer peeps?
That's addressed in my piece (points 3 and 4).
🤢🤮
Excellent overview.
I would add one point that I did not notice. Many of the studies you mentioned show that policies implemented is more reflective of the views of voters in the 50-80 percentile income range. That is hardly evidence of a plutocracy or a bias towards the rich. At most, it is a bias towards the college-educated professionals, who are ironically the one most likely to claim that we live in an oligarchy.
Excellent.
Point #6 is right on the money! Many of the representation gaps that exist (like in immigration policy) are related to the education gap. PMC-adjacent folk like McManus seem to like to point the finger at rich folk, but it is less self-aggrandizing that some of the policy gaps that help fuel right populism are due to the over-indexation of your interests and values.
Im curious about definitional differences of what constitues 'rich'. I think those of us americans at least, have a solid understanding that someone who makes a million dollars per year is rich, but not rich enough in the outsizied influence question. A highly educated, high income family ofc has informatiomla assymetry with macro/micro and policy in general. The question to ask for a study, in my view at least. Is the difference between normal 'rich' people and the billionaire class in terms of political influence. I imagine we may find a large discrepancy. However, one may also look at peter theil vs george soros. Both members of the extreme rich, with different views. They spend money and with their outsizied influence change the government or laws or at min, who is able to run for government. Who has political influence when it comes to DNC and RNC talking points? Is there a class based political influence difference along party line? Does peter theil and goergoe soros just go back and forth, thus creating a correlation with D v R lower class people? Who controls the media and propoganda efforts, creating the questions to be answered by policy, without a focus on the questions themselves? Either way, I am really enjoying your book on capitalist realism, and its nuanced take to the discussion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy
https://values.institute/what-are-the-values-of-a-corporatocracy/