establishments played key roles in defining the administration’s policy. Obama’s Guantánamo Review Task Force was composed of “senior military officers, federal prosecutors, FBI agents, intelligence analysts and officers, military prosecutors and investigators,” plus a range of legal personnel. The Obama administration shelved its initial plan to transfer Guantánamo prisoners to federal prisons within the United States because local officials were adamantly opposed.40 Thus, the administration ceded decision-making power on a key campaign promise to military, law enforcement, and local officials. And what the administration didn’t grant willingly, those agencies took without asking: despite the administration’s announced policy, the Pentagon worked behind the scenes to systematically obstruct the transfer of Guantánamo prisoners to foreign countries.41 Military and intelligence officials helped determine many other aspects of foreign policy, as well. Tactics like “enhanced interrogation” and assassination via the use of drones continued, and in the latter case increased, under Obama.42
Different state institutions possess different degrees of disruptive power. The Pentagon wields much more power than an agency like the EPA, for several reasons. It controls a gargantuan budget; it is directly in charge of implementing much of US foreign policy; and its firmly entrenched leadership is only loosely subject to politicians’ control. Military leaders often have close ties to defense contractors who share their interest in ever-expanding Pentagon budgets and wars, which reinforces the commanders’ sway in policy discussions.43
The EPA’s position is qualitatively different. Its budget is not commensurate with its enormous legal responsibility. And to the extent that the EPA seeks to protect the public against polluters, it draws ferocious corporate opposition that the military, law enforcement, or other conservative state agencies do not encounter. Anti-pollution measures may get a little support from renewable energy companies, but they lack the same degree of corporate backing that these other agencies enjoy. Only when the EPA acts in clear service to polluters, as it has under Trump, do its initiatives win strong business support.
Discussions of the power of state institutions often refer to a “deep state.” The term can be misleading, however, insofar as it implies a far-reaching conspiracy of state officials acting in concert to thwart the aims of elected politicians. The disruptive power of state institutions is usually more mundane, deriving from each entity’s ability to shape the enforcement of policies within its own domain. Disruption does not typically require secret coordination across agencies or a centralized cabal of conspirators.
Why Do the 99% Get Anything, Then?
Skeptical readers may accuse us of overstating the power of US elites. What about all those instances of successful progressive reform, when new laws or regulations or court rulings have benefited the public while apparently overcoming business opposition? How can we explain the restraints, however modest, that have been imposed on US military violence overseas or on police violence in US cities? Even if elites usually get what they want, they don’t always.
Indeed, any analysis of power must also explain the limits of that power. Elites face constant challenges. Most importantly, they must contend with competing elites and with popular forces.
Not all industries or corporations have the same interests. They tend to agree on basics like tax cuts for the wealthy and the deregulation of business, but other issues may divide them. For example, employers who fund employee health plans have an interest in containing the skyrocketing cost of healthcare, while the drug manufacturers and insurance companies naturally want to maximize their own profits, which means increasing the cost of health plans. Business may also face resistance from state elites. Judges or regulators may side with the public against polluters. The Pentagon may oppose the expansion of coastal oil drilling for fear that drilling would disrupt offshore military exercises. Conversely, state elites often find that businesses oppose policies that hurt their bottom lines, as several of our case studies will demonstrate.
Disagreement among these business and state actors often frustrates the efforts of individual institutions and industries. Sometimes that disagreement even opens the door to progressive reforms. The Obama administration’s 2010 healthcare reform and its overhaul of banking regulations both resulted largely from these disagreements among elites. Some business sectors wanted to rein in the health industries and the mega-banks because they themselves were being hurt by their unchecked greed and recklessness. Health costs were threatening employers’ profit margins, while the Wall Street crash of 2008 hurt many industries. This business discontent helped generate pressure for change, leading both political parties in the 2008 election to promise healthcare and financial reform.
A divided elite also increases the likelihood that popular pressure will be successful in changing policy. Intra-elite conflicts are not always a prerequisite for popular forces to have an impact—and social movements can actually create intra-elite conflicts, as we will discuss later—but they do raise the chances of success.
Popular disruption can take many forms. On the more dramatic end of the spectrum, workers may go on strike, consumers may boycott companies, soldiers may refuse to fight, young people may decide not to enlist in the military, and people everywhere may stage sit-ins, blockade streets, and engage in other kinds of overtly disruptive behavior. These disruptions increase the costs of the status quo from elites’ perspective, especially when the actions directly undermine business profits or the functioning of state institutions like the army. The elite institutions most affected by that disruption will often press others to capitulate, as when Southern capitalists pushed Southern politicians to concede to black protesters’ demand for desegregation.
Less overtly disruptive are lawsuits against corporations and state institutions. Being taken to court can increase the costs to elites, both in terms of money and public image. Lawsuits can also shift the legal and political terrain on which elites and social movements operate. The Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, making school segregation illegal, was the culmination of years of prior lawsuits. Although the ruling went almost entirely unenforced for over a decade, it was a significant morale-booster for the civil rights movement and altered the terms of the struggle between black activists and white supremacists in the years ahead.
At the less dramatic end of the resistance spectrum are acts like voting, working on an electoral campaign, and calling one’s legislators. These are generally less powerful than other forms of resistance, though they too can help put pressure on corporations and state elites. Corporations do not have total power to decide who wins an election; they might have preferred Republican candidates John McCain or Mitt Romney over Obama, but Obama was deemed more appealing to voters and therefore more likely to win, and thus attracted more corporate cash.44 Election outcomes, in turn, play some role in setting the general policy agenda. For instance, both the Democratic and Republican candidates in the 2008 election spoke of reforming healthcare and Wall Street, but the eventual details of those reforms were probably more progressive given that it was the Obama administration presiding over them. Likewise, the judges appointed by recent Democratic and Republican presidents have differed significantly in ideology. The fact that the two parties have different electoral bases requires victorious candidates to take at least some action on certain campaign promises once elected. As a result, there is some difference in policy between Democrats and Republicans, even if the difference is exaggerated by most commentators and by both parties themselves.
But, while elections may help put progressive reforms on the table, they are rarely the most important variable in determining policy. Much more important are the disruptive forces that constrain politicians of both parties into supporting particular interests.
