Billionaires and Stealth Politics
by Benjamin I. Page, Jason Seawright and Matthew J. Lacombe
University of Chicago Press, 2018
Cloth: 978-0-226-58609-0 | Paper: 978-0-226-58612-0 | Electronic: 978-0-226-58626-7
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226586267.001.0001
ABOUT THIS BOOKAUTHOR BIOGRAPHYREVIEWSTABLE OF CONTENTS

ABOUT THIS BOOK

In 2016, when millions of Americans voted for Donald Trump, many believed his claims that personal wealth would free him from wealthy donors and allow him to “drain the swamp.” But then Trump appointed several billionaires and multimillionaires to high-level positions and pursued billionaire-friendly policies, such as cutting corporate income taxes. Why the change from his fiery campaign rhetoric and promises to the working class? This should not be surprising, argue Benjamin I. Page, Jason Seawright, and Matthew J. Lacombe: As the gap between the wealthiest and the rest of us has widened, the few who hold one billion dollars or more in net worth have begun to play a more and more active part in politics—with serious consequences for democracy in the United States.

Page, Seawright, and Lacombe argue that while political contributions offer a window onto billionaires’ influence, especially on economic policy, they do not present a full picture of policy preferences and political actions. That is because on some of the most important issues, including taxation, immigration, and Social Security, billionaires have chosen to engage in “stealth politics.” They try hard to influence public policy, making large contributions to political parties and policy-focused causes, leading policy-advocacy organizations, holding political fundraisers, and bundling others’ contributions—all while rarely talking about public policy to the media. This means that their influence is not only unequal but also largely unaccountable to and unchallengeable by the American people. Stealth politics makes it difficult for ordinary citizens to know what billionaires are doing or mobilize against it. The book closes with remedies citizens can pursue if they wish to make wealthy Americans more politically accountable, such as public financing of political campaigns and easier voting procedures, and notes the broader types of reforms, such as a more progressive income tax system, that would be needed to increase political equality and reinvigorate majoritarian democracy in the United States.
 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Benjamin I. Page is the Gordon Scott Fulcher Professor of Decision Making at Northwestern University and the author or coauthor of several books, including Democracy in America?Jason Seawright is associate professor of political science at Northwestern University. Matthew J. Lacombe is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University.
 

REVIEWS

“Incredibly important. The authors provide—for the first time—a clear sense of the politics and political activity of the top one hundred billionaires in America, matching what billionaires have said with what they’ve done and showing the troubling transparency gap that is critical to the evolution of policy. Billionaires and Stealth Politics is a key addition to understanding our current political reality, focused on it most significant lever.”
— Lawrence Lessig, author of America, Compromised

“The wealth held by American billionaires exceeds the Gross Domestic Product of dozens of countries. They exercise tremendous influence over society, the economy, and politics. Yet their impact is not well-understood. Page, Seawright, and Lacombe have given us a compelling and original piece of work on an important topic.”
— Darrell M. West, Brookings Institution

TABLE OF CONTENTS


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226586267.003.0001
[billionaires;democracy;political power]
Chapter 1 introduces the billionaires who are the primary subjects of the book: the one hundred wealthiest US billionaires, those who occupy the upper reaches of the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans. The chapter profiles some of the billionaires near the top of the list, such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Charles and David Koch, the Walton Family, and Michael Bloomberg. It also focuses on what the group as a whole is like. We find that the billionaires in our study are overwhelmingly white and male, and that they tend to be older and of Western European origin. The chapter then inquires where their money came from: inheritance? entrepreneurship? what sorts of businesses? The end of the chapter briefly explores issues of “fair compensation” involving merit and effort, help from others, and just plain luck. It closes by considering some political implications of vast concentrations of wealth.
This chapter is available at:
    https://academic.oup.com/chica...


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226586267.003.0002
[billionaires;democracy;taxes;social security;stealth politics]
Chapter 2 focuses on billionaires’ general political activity, as well as their words and actions related to economic issues. It describes our web-scraping research techniques, which were used to identify all statements made by the wealthiest one hundred billionaires, over a ten year period, about many specific policies related to taxes and Social Security. We also searched for the actions – such as financial contributions to issue-specific organizations – the billionaires have taken on these specific issues. We find substantial evidence of stealth politics. On these issues, many billionaires have engaged in extensive political actions that aim to move public policy in directions that most Americans oppose. But they have rarely made serious political arguments in public or offered reasons for their actions. Most billionaires have said nothing at all about specific policies involving taxes or Social Security, particularly when their preferences are much more conservative than those of the general public. Many act, but very few explain why. They do not try to convince their fellow citizens to agree with them. They avoid accountability.
This chapter is available at:
    https://academic.oup.com/chica...


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226586267.003.0003
[Warren Buffett;John Menard Jr.;Carl Icahn;David Koch;case studies;multi-method social science]
Chapter 3 explores in more depth the tax- and Social Security-related words and actions of four particular billionaires—Warren Buffett, John Menard Jr., Carl Icahn, and David Koch. These four were carefully selected to provide methodological leverage on issues of causal inference, causal mechanisms, and possible measurement errors, so that a closer look at them provides further confirmation of our stealth politics theory. Intensive analyses of these four cases confirm the stealth politics theory and suggest that our systematic quantitative analyses do not suffer from major measurement error issues. Beyond their methodological purposes, the cases are also of interest in themselves. They happen to represent nearly the full range of political philosophies that are embraced by US billionaires. Buffett occupies a center-left position on the liberal/conservative continuum, not far from the views of average Americans. Menard is a hard-line economic conservative; Koch a libertarian; and Icahn a sort of populist who served as an advisor to Donald Trump. Missing—not by accident—is any billionaire who can be called a thoroughgoing liberal on both social and economic issues. In the United States, economically liberal billionaires are very rare.
This chapter is available at:
    https://academic.oup.com/chica...


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226586267.003.0004
[billionaires;social issues;immigration;abortion;same-sex marriage]
Chapter 4 applies our web-scraping and public records techniques to billionaires’ statements and actions concerning certain social, cultural, or moral issues. We find little evidence of stealth politics on the issues of abortion or same-sex marriage, where billionaires’ policy preferences tend to be less divergent from those of the general public than they are on taxes or Social Security. When it comes to immigration policy, however—where some billionaires’ taste for cheap imported labor clashes with many Americans’ cultural or economic anxieties about foreign immigrants—stealth politics reappears. Many billionaires actively work in favor of high levels of immigration, especially for high-skill workers. But few say much about that in public.
This chapter is available at:
    https://academic.oup.com/chica...


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226586267.003.0005
[billionaires;state and local politics;boundary control;campaign contributions]
Chapter 5 examines the major financial investments certain billionaires have made on the state and local levels. It also examines the substantial impacts that these investments have had, particularly in states like Wisconsin, Kansas, and North Carolina. In those states, billionaires and organizations that they control have helped elect extremely wealth-friendly governors and so many wealth-friendly state legislators that the control of state governments has changed drastically, and economics-related public policy has veered in new, extremely conservative directions. It is no exaggeration to say that those billionaires have helped reshape state politics. The chapter then focuses on one particular political strategy, the strategy of “boundary control,” which some billionaires have used with considerable success. In the boundary control strategy, federal-level and state-level campaign contributions are coordinated so as to win state-level favors and benefits while warding off federal-level interference.
This chapter is available at:
    https://academic.oup.com/chica...


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226586267.003.0006
[billionaires;democracy;inequality;democratic reform;campaign contributions]
Chapter 6 relates our findings to general ideas about democracy. It mentions the damage to political equality that may result if the wealthiest Americans wield much more political influence than other citizens can muster. The chapter focuses on the special problems posed by stealth politics, which helps billionaires avoid being held accountable by their fellow citizens. The book closes by suggesting some possible remedies that citizens might want to pursue if they wish to make wealthy Americans more politically accountable – namely, getting the stealthiness out of politics by increasing transparency in the realm of campaign contributions. It also notes the broader types of reforms that would be needed if one wished to increase political equality and reinvigorate majoritarian democracy in America.
This chapter is available at:
    https://academic.oup.com/chica...