They showed that it’s organized groups who actually influence politics. It’s obvious that lobbyists of corporations and industry associations will be among them, but it also includes unions, climate lobby groups, etc. But corporate lobby groups often have similar interests whereas most non-corporate groups only talk about very few issues, making them less visible (the paper suggests that they’ll be impactful if they all speak out in favor of the same things). Furthermore, who is actually part of such groups? It’ll be the well-off people who don’t have to work two or three jobs to survive. Now it’s common knowledge that the US is far from being the best democracy on earth, but I have a feeling that the EU where some of the better democracies are located works very similarly.
Therefore it’s neither correct nor fair or helpful to blame everyone. The elites need to be held accountable, or even better, be abolished.
That’s the only thing you’re getting wrong here, but it’s a very crucial point. Even in the best democracies on earth, political power does not come from the people as a whole, it is not distributed equally. It’s kind of difficult to prove or quantify but this study succeeded for the US: https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf
They showed that it’s organized groups who actually influence politics. It’s obvious that lobbyists of corporations and industry associations will be among them, but it also includes unions, climate lobby groups, etc. But corporate lobby groups often have similar interests whereas most non-corporate groups only talk about very few issues, making them less visible (the paper suggests that they’ll be impactful if they all speak out in favor of the same things). Furthermore, who is actually part of such groups? It’ll be the well-off people who don’t have to work two or three jobs to survive. Now it’s common knowledge that the US is far from being the best democracy on earth, but I have a feeling that the EU where some of the better democracies are located works very similarly.
Therefore it’s neither correct nor fair or helpful to blame everyone. The elites need to be held accountable, or even better, be abolished.