Exhibit 696 ยท Peer-reviewed reply
The Insufficiency of 'Democracy by Coincidence': A Response to Peter K. Enns
There simply is not enough coincidence of policy outcomes and middle-class preferences to justify the conclusion that middle-income Americans are likely to be satisfied with the policies their government adopts.
Gilens agrees with Enns that congruence without influence is 'democracy by coincidence' and that it has political implications. He argues that the cases where policy departs from middle-class preferences are important, highly salient issues; that Enns's 'relative policy support' is vague; that Enns overlooks characteristics of the data and makes erroneous calculations; and that coincidence is no substitute for responsiveness. Only the first page (p. 1065) was read, as a page image from the publisher; pp. 1066-1071 were not available. Later literature (Elkjaer and Klitgaard 2024, p. 320) quotes p. 1070: coincidental representation is a 'pale, counterfeit, simulacrum of democracy'.
- Source
- Martin Gilens, Perspectives on Politics 13(4), pp. 1065-1071
- Date
- December 2015
- Quoted from
- p. 1065
- Grade
- Peer-reviewed
- Document
- https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592715002327
- Accessed
- 2026-11-09
- Cited by
- Findings citing this exhibit