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The Masses Are the Ruling Classes
The Masses Are
The Ruling Classes
Policy Romanticism, Democratic Populism,
and American Social Welfare
William M. Epstein
1
1
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the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
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Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
Liz
My love
In memoriam
Lilian Epstein (1916–2014)
David Smail (1938–2014)
CON TEN T S
Prefaceâ•…â•…ix
Acknowledgmentsâ•…â•…xix
Referencesâ•…â•…233
Indexâ•…â•…247
PREFACE
Many, many years ago, when cars were drawn by horses and horses were
drawn by artists, and beer was drawn by little people with furry feet,
romanticism inspired a peaceful, gracious land. People accumulated social
capital through unbidden generosities and spent it during times of travail,
maintaining a moral balance that protected children, families, marriage,
intellect, freedom, justice, and the mixed but still free market. It grew into
the American way of life, perhaps not ideal, but still the best thing yet in
civilization, ordained by a wise Providence as a light unto humanity with
a destiny for progress—t wo furry steps forward, one furry step back.
Yet, somehow modernity has ruined the gifts of tradition, and the pre-
siding romantic ethos of the United States is anything but kind, warm,
generous, and supportive. It’s the wicked witch of the north, not Glinda.
Formal philosophies of romanticism and the Romantic period are obvi-
ously instances of romanticism, although not among its more influential
expressions. Social policy romanticism and social welfare romanticism
have been far more influential and harmful than the poetic wanderings
and philosophic musings of late-18th-and early-19th-century writers and
thinkers with their passions for nature, order, transcendence, and mean-
ing. Romanticism in social policy, that is, policy romanticism, is not a lit-
erary tradition but a cultural one embedded in the thoughts and choices
of the American people.
Some of the wisest and most inspiring analysts have noted the per-
sistent irrational strain in American policy choices. Richard Hofstadter
(1953) restricted anti-intellectualism to recurrent but marginal politi-
cal and social enthusiasms. Harold Bloom (1992) considered the perva-
sive superstition, emotionality, and sense of chosenness of the American
religion but stopped short of attributing his analysis to general social
preferences for the romantic. Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen, William
Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven Tipton (1996) scoped out the terrain
of excessive individualism, largely in American thought but only that, fail-
ing to go further into American policy making and further toward a more
general consideration of the pervasive influence of romantic thinking on
policy making. Still and all, analysts such as Bloom, Hofstadter, Bellah et
al., and notable others probably intended their observations to be taken
broadly as commentary on American society. However, they prudently
drew back from the difficulty of ever reaching conclusions that apply to
the consistent dominance of any one influence over policy choice. Instead
they contented themselves with deep scrutiny of limited sectors in the
hope that it would imply more searching questions about American soci-
ety and its policy choices.
The wariness is quite understandable. It is difficult to measure the
actual dominance of any influence in politics and society. The society
cannot be divided into multiple sectors for prospective, randomized
experimentation—the definitive methodology for the isolation of cause.
Moreover, the difficulties of coming up with a sampling frame for culture,
let alone the impediments to instrument construction and measurement
itself, are daunting. The problem of identifying the factors that deter-
mine decision making in the political and social realms remains gener-
ally intractable. In the end, then, the logic of broad arguments concerning
social policy making is deprived of strong methodology. It must depend
on the balance of evidence, which is a very unsatisfying retreat from rigor.
Disconfirming evidence, inevitable bias in the choice of evidence, and,
even worse, ambiguities in what the evidence means will persist to weaken
arguments about political influence based on nonexperimental data.
The exception occurs when large homogeneous factions compete over
their policy preferences. The winner defines influence. However, this situ-
ation is rare in the United States. The overlap between traditional social
and economic elites on the one side and less fortunate classes on the
other is customarily very large (Page & Shapiro, 1992, among many oth-
ers). Reported differences among groups are small. When differences do
occur they appear to be issue-specific rather than broadly ideological. The
common broad consensus in the United States still poses a problem of
whether elites lead or follow the masses, an unresolvable problem except
when they differ on specific policies that set them at loggerheads, which
again is rare.
The limitations of method and thus its standing as truth undercuts the
authority of even the best of the literature that attempts to identify the
causes of social problems and recommend solutions. Stiglitz, Krugman,
and the vast majority of the wisest and most astute, humane, and dedicated
policy analysts in the social sciences and across the political spectrum
who attend to issues of economic inequality, politics, and social problems
often engage in a common fallacy. They confuse correlation with cause,
[x] Preface
especially when they abandon the narrow sophistication and authority of
their expertise to write broadly as public intellectuals on pressing social
issues. In this way, inequality and the elites that occur along with social
problems are assumed to be their cause rather than a result of other factors
such as embedded values in the culture. When analysts do find a conve-
nient proximate cause, they usually fail to trace its roots back to ideologi-
cally uncomfortable precursors. Similarly, when the proximate cause is
unacceptable ideologically, it is regressed to a more fitting cause. Yet, tests
of cause in these areas are not feasible; for reasons of ethics, practicality,
and cost, it is impossible to randomize society into control and experi-
mental groups to address the genesis of social problems. The result is an
ideological soup with infrequent rational guidance, if even this.
Facing the intractable problems of testing causal influences over social
decision making, the analysis of pervasive, dominating romanticism in
American policy can at best reach only plausible conclusions. Like most
political and social assertions with aspirations to general applicability,
it comes in the end to rely on the balance of evidence, coherence, and
reasonableness—three very unsatisfying, amorphous, and far-too-pliant
criteria. Thus hobbled, the present work elaborates an argument—the
analysis of a number of characteristic social welfare programs defines a
romantic constellation of embedded social preferences that dominate
general social decision making—w ithout rational proof. Yet the same
impairments of logic, proof, and evidence also frustrate historical analysis
and the largest portion of the social sciences. Intellectual life moves along
without certainty, but hopefully with challenges to reigning orthodoxy,
which may in the end contend for a better society.
The possibility has been long neglected, or imperfectly addressed
through uncertain strategies such as opinion polling, that the masses of
the American people dominate the choice of social policy and that their
guiding, embedded preferences are romantic more than pragmatic. The
reigning orthodoxy of policy analysis from the right, the left, the center,
and the edges is tactfully ideological, holding the American people inno-
cent of the problems they suffer. The left blames national problems on the
1% who have presumably usurped power and brainwashed the masses;
the right blames the media, out-of-control big government, and an insidi-
ous liberal elite for national decline; the center is forever indicting the two
extremes; and the edges of both sides invent conspiracies, usually of this
world but occasionally from others.
Although the book’s ideas are largely illustrated through the social
services, the abiding influence of popular consent is intended gener-
ally. Given the enormous openness of American society and the fact of
Preface [ xi ]
near-universal suffrage, democratic consent would seem to be more plau-
sible than the alternatives: that the nation is a victim of conspiracy, pro-
paganda, usurpation, autonomous government, and imperfect pluralism.
Yet its plausibility also entails the impolitic and unpleasant correlate that
may explain its neglect: if the American people are largely responsible for
social policy, then they are also responsible for the problems that beset the
nation, notably enormous economic and social inequality. Even worse, if
the masses rule policy choice, then the persistence of material and social
deprivation that lies easily within the economic capacities of the nation
to address suggests that Americans are by and large short-sighted, self-
centered, and mean-spirited—morally hyphenated more than ethnically
hyphenated.
Thus, arguments about who and what controls social policy making
are invariably speculative except in the face of obvious tyranny and coer-
cion (or as noted above in the case of persistent class rivalry). Yet it is still
plausible to conjecture about the seeds of oppression: whether the tyrant
usurped power from a freedom-loving people or whether the desires of
the people for order, stability, and direction created the tyrant. Were the
German people Hitler’s first victims, or did Hitler represent the general
will of the German people—their anti-Semitism, militarism, nationalism,
depravity, and lust for dominance? Similar questions arise about Stalin in
Russia, Tito in Yugoslavia, Peron in Argentina, Mao in China, Castro in
Cuba, Gadafi in Libya, the military in Egypt, and so forth. In the absence
of frank tyranny, the question of control over social policy in the United
States remains a tougher question.
More than forty years of great and growing social and economic
inequality in the United States failing to arouse a broad and angry reac-
tion draws attention back to the possibility of mass influence over social
policy making—that popular attitudes rather than the conspiracies of
elites and propaganda determine policy choices. It appears that those
most affected, perhaps more than 50% of the population, accept large and
growing inequality. Acceptance may have much to do with the extreme
individualism at the core of American culture that engenders American
policy making in both the public and private spheres. The notion is shared
by both those who suffer and those who do not. The heroic self-reliance
and self-creation of American culture, accompanied by a preference for the
subjective and the gnostic, along with the assurance of both personal and
national chosenness, complete a powerful, mutually reinforcing romanti-
cism of social behavior. American pragmatism endures as a weak influence.
The concept of policy romanticism borrows from analyses of the
Romantic period as well as philosophy and literature in general. However,
[ xii ] Preface
policy romanticism is in many respects distinct principally because it
handles a political and social temperament as well as its expression in
social institutions. In contrast with policy romanticism, romanticism is a
philosophy, even an artistic mood as well as their realization in painting
and literature and even a notion of reality itself. Perhaps the most telling
distinction between the Romantic and romantic policy making lies in the
distinction between elite, intellectual style and social influence. Romantic
literature was a fashion in art, but romantic policy making has engendered
enduring social institutions in the United States. The Romantic is ephem-
eral and episodic, but the romantic appears to be stolid, continuous, and
enduring. The Romantic gave great pleasure; but the romantic in policy
making has created many problems and much mischief. The United States
has nurtured a better culture because of the Romantic, but the romantic
has seriously limited its promise.
Romantic philosophy seeks to justify a particular theory of reality;
it does not profess to describe or measure the prevalence of its ideas in
social attitudes, or draw out its implications for specific social policy. The
Romantic philosophies stand up better as descriptions of the political and
social assumptions of American society—the rejection of the objective
and the embrace of metaphysics and psychic reality—than as explana-
tions and justifications of the world. The American policy-making process
acts as if reality were will and self-invention—as though the United States
were pursuing a Divinely directed march toward the ideal of civilization.
The romantic dominance of American policy making is neither new
nor undemocratic. It characterizes the nation and points to its greatest
vulnerability: an indifference toward its own citizens that threatens its
future more than global warming, war, or environmental pollution. In
fact, the toxicity of its embedded romanticism already harms more of its
citizens than does any alien hostility or threat of nature. The tyranny of
democracy may be more resistant to change than the rule of an autocrat,
who can be removed by political action. The romantic national consensus
has proven impervious to world war, devastating economic collapse, and
the periodic demographic tumults of mass immigration.
The immense growth in American wealth and thus its capacity to
address material deprivation has not translated into the political will
to address the nation’s social problems. Since the 1960s, the growth of
income and wealth have coincided with even larger increases in inequal-
ity. The per capita gross domestic product doubled between 1970 and
2011, while the American Gini coefficient—the principal measure of
income inequality—rose from .394 in 1970 to .469 in 2010. Among
the 30 nations included in the Organization for Economic Cooperation
Preface [ xiii ]
and Development, only Turkey, Mexico, and Portugal suffered greater
income inequality in 2005 (Central Intelligence Agency n.d.). According
to Central Intelligence Agency data, inequality in the United States puts
it in the company of Bulgaria, Uruguay, the Philippines, and Cameroon
(ibid.). In comparison with other industrial nations, government transfers
in the United States only weakly repair inequality; transfers in most other
industrial nations have twice the effect (Babones, 2012).
Between 1970 and 2010, the household income share of the lowest
quintile fell from 4.1% to 3.3%, and the household income share of the
wealthiest quintile rose from 43.0% to 50.2%. In 1970, the 10th percentile
household income was $10,152 and the 95th percentile household income
was $116,129 (in 2010 dollars); the ratio of 90th percentile household
income to 10th percentile household income was 9.22. In 2010, the 10th
percentile household income was $11,904 and the 95th percentile house-
hold income was $180,810 (in 2010 dollars); the ratio of 90th percentile
household income to 10th percentile household income rose to 11.67.
Although the real household income of the 10th percentile has risen by
17.2%, the real household income of the 95th percentile has risen fully
39.9%. The greatly increased inequality poses serious threats to more
than half the nation, whose incomes have not kept up with costs or needs.
Moreover, employment is increasingly precarious, with relatively few blue
collar jobs that pay wages sufficient to raise children and to meet contem-
porary American expectations.
Whether inequality is a problem of deprivation or a solution to the
problem of motivation and character is largely an ideological point. Yet the
nation seems content with its social and economic stratification, with only
desultory reactions to extensive material need, especially in consideration
of its capacity to address economic and social problems. There has been
little protest against growing inequality, and American public policy has
consistently tracked away from economic redistribution since the 1960s.
The common explanation for the persistence of problems blames various
political actors for pursuing narrow self-interest, and often through illegal
conspiracies. Only rare analyses seat growing inequality and persistent
deprivations in the consent of the American people.
The current work references social and economic conditions in America
in passing. This has been done in profound detail by numerous analysts.
They are cited and briefly discussed, but just this. The book’s purpose is
to amplify the argument that American policy making is deeply repre-
sentative and romantic rather than progressive and pragmatic. It details
the degree to which social welfare programs and policies embody and
express broadly popular, regnant American preferences. The dominance
[ xiv ] Preface
of democratic populism challenges alternative notions of American policy
making, notably that the popular preferences of the nation have been sub-
orned by a variety of illegitimate political forces or independent, “autono-
mous” factors, or that political pluralism has been seriously compromised.
The book is divided into two principal sections: the first, containing the
Introduction and Chapters 1 through 4, explains social policy making as
romantic. The Introduction argues against the possibilities that power in
the United States has been usurped by illegitimate elites or an autono-
mous federal government, or that pluralism has been seriously compro-
mised. American decision making is democratic but populist rather than
elitist and defined by its embedded romantic notions in rejection of prag-
matism. The Introduction lays out the proposition that policy making in
the United States is determined by a broad democratic consensus. In spite
of episodic pitfalls and threats to democratic processes, mass preferences
prevail in policy making rather than the far more common assumption
that conspiracies of illegitimate elites rule the nation. Democratic consent
is formed more through an ecology of detached roles than through coher-
ent and objective consideration.
Chapter 1 identifies the Romantic precursors to policy romanticism.
The standard concept of romanticism is explored as inner experience,
imagination and inspiration, individualism and the will, the roman-
tic quest, and the romantic mood. These characteristics constitute the
essence of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s philosophy. He is the quintessential
American romantic.
Chapter 2 sets policy romanticism within the context of American
policy making and describes its core concepts of extreme individualism,
gnostic thinking, and a sense of chosenness. The chapter argues that the
core of these preferences defining social reality is more emotional, super-
stitious, and traditional than rational or even reasonable. In spite of recur-
rent bouts of progressive reform, democratic populism dominates both
public and private policy.
Chapter 3 points out that the pursuit of the authentic self in the dif-
ferent styles of American psychotherapy and in the self-help literature is
a pervasive expression of policy romanticism in American culture. The
pursuit of the romantic self constitutes an archetype of American belief.
Chapter 4 explores the quest for the authentic self in illuminations of
the true self, in theories of organizational leadership, and in other sorts of
Preface [ xv ]
personal quests for the authentic soul. The national investment in roman-
tic quests sustains the preferences for social efficiency, superstition, and
quick authenticity. These preferences supplant serious material attempts
to repair inequality and begin to explain the minimalism and the underly-
ing architecture of most social services.
The five chapters that constitute the second section interpret a vari-
ety of characteristic American social welfare programs in the private
sector (Year Up, Communities in Schools, and Generations of Hope
Communities) and in the public sector (the federal food stamp pro-
gram and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families). The chapters that
discuss the private sector programs outline the programs, report their
evaluated outcomes, and then reconsider the evidence of their success.
The food stamp program (Chapter 8) is first described and then analyzed
as a romantic expression of the culture, with the chapter finally return-
ing to discussion of the forces that control social policy. Chapter 9 ana-
lyzes Temporary Assistance for Needy Families as part of the broader
reforms of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities
Reconciliation Act. After describing the reforms and the politics that cre-
ated them, Chapter 9 interprets the changes as the broad triumph of emo-
tion over reason. These values dominate the American cultural tradition.
All five programs are popular institutions of culture that characteristi-
cally reaffirm its embedded romantic values rather than pragmatic provi-
sions to address serious social problems.
The Conclusion draws out the implications of policy romanticism for
American social progress. Policy romanticism impedes the maturity of
American society, and its growth toward decency.
In one form or another, romanticism may be the oldest of humanity’s
social perspectives. Myth, religion, and symbolism express the sublime
realities at its core. The belief systems of culture may well inspire their for-
mal expressions in art and philosophy more than the inventions of artists
and thinkers compel mass acceptance. Art and philosophy may be elite
inventions; romantic policy is broadly consensual and sanctioned by use.
Romantic policy emerges from the lived experience with its social rep-
resentations rather than from intellectual contrivances, no matter their
consistency, coherence, or beauty. Those representations are essentially
political and not at all rational while society abides many contradictions
and self-defeating choices, routinely defying the efforts of reason.
A subculture of the pragmatic, encompassing the scientific, has always
existed in the United States, with few threats to its persistence but also
with little chance of its dominance. The pragmatic subculture provides
the technological innovations, the specialized skills, and the managerial
[ xvi ] Preface
capabilities that account for the nation’s phenomenal wealth. It also car-
ries along the supportive values of rational thought, free expression,
functional individualism, and social tolerance. Yet pragmatism remains
a decidedly minority voice with a weak but palpable influence on policy
that survives within a pervasive romantic environment. Perhaps the two
are mutually dependent, but this is not apparent. More plausibly, the
romanticism of American life erects a formidable barrier to the matura-
tion and promise of American civilization.
Preface [ xvii ]
ACKNOW LED GMEN T S
C harles Lindblom (1980), the eminent social scientist, was also emi-
nently restrained in introducing analysis that could not be tested. He
suggested, but only as intuitions, four factors that characterize American
policy making: limited rationality, political and social inequalities among
groups, a special advantage for business, and a process of negotiating among
players. He did not address the problem of political legitimacy by comment-
ing on whether inequality and the privileges of business were democratically
sanctioned or imposed through unfair, illegal, or anti-democratic processes.
He also observed that rational information concerning policy outcomes and
policy making was rare and partisan analyses were plentiful, but he did not
impute the disparity to political, financial, or technical factors. He did not
offer an explanation of why or how the system developed.
In contrast, the usual theorists of policy making are not as restrained
as Lindblom and graduate their intuitions of political truth into full-scale
explanations of what determines American social policy. Yet their theo-
ries rarely make use if ever of the appropriate methods to test cause, or
even offer an expansive coverage of more than a narrow range of policy.
As a result, the analysis of policy and policy itself are typically ideologi-
cal expressions rather than applications of social science. Yet it is nearly
impossible to consider social policy making without at least an implicit
assumption about its determining forces. The ideological nature of the
assumptions is rarely acknowledged.
By and large, contemporary explanations of social policy identify three
types of actors that determine social policy: illegitimate elites, including
autonomous actors, which subvert democratic processes and intents;
imperfect pluralism, which reduces the variety of political actors; and
mass determination, that is, policy making, which is in fact democratic,
reflecting popular preferences and emerging from sanctioned processes.
The problem of adjudicating between the theories of policy making
is probably intractable. Although proximate policy makers are easy to
identify—public officials, lobbyists, corporate leaders, and the socially
prominent—whether they carry a broad mandate and are fulfilling demo-
cratic preferences is much more difficult to test. The only reasonable test
of the influence of various groups is to measure their self-defined pref-
erences and track which one prevails. However, the test is problematic
first because it is difficult to assess self-defined preferences—opinion
polls are notoriously unreliable—and second because differences among
stable groups are rarely large. It is much easier to attribute self-interest
to groups than to assume that those whose interests are maximized are
in control; unfortunately, this latter process, although common, is still a
poor approximation of live politics.
It is also very difficult to assess the truth of prior claims about the
effects of policy since most policies are best guesses deprived of experi-
mental testing, which is customarily impossible. Keynes, as a prominent
example, may be a more reasonable guide to fiscal policy than the sug-
gestions of the free marketeers and the supply siders, but the attraction
of Keynesian macroeconomics rests largely on its political appeal to a
broad section of society more than on its long-term rationality in achiev-
ing economic growth. The fiscal stimulus during the Great Recession of
2008 was probably compromised more by a general belief in balancing the
budget than by the dominance of any narrow interest, including business.
Indeed, the modest stimulus that finally emerged carried the support of
the business sector to keep up demand but lacked the full backing of popu-
lar sentiment, which was also concerned about the inflationary threats of
large sustained federal deficits. The modesty of the stimulus was broadly
consensual—a balancing between players who were well representative
of American preferences—however inadequate it may have been in han-
dling the recession. The elites played through the policy game, but largely
representing approved national constituencies. In typical fashion, the
nation was more content with persistent unemployment than the threat
of inflation; stated with less delicacy, the employed far outnumbered the
unemployed.
Still and all, conspiracies of illegitimate elites seem implausible, or per-
haps only plausible as a common, recognized, and universal strategy in
group competition. In the immensely open society of the United States,
enduring elites of power and wealth customarily enjoy the consent of
Preference is best denoted by the free choice of an option and only weakly
indicated through surveys of opinions and intentions, which are at least
1. The ecology of detached roles, explored later in the chapter, describes a mechanism by
which social preferences graduate into social policy outside of any formal political process,
let alone rational scrutiny. Put another way, the ecology of detached roles summates the
totality of the nearly infinite choices of individuals in a society.
all such studies (including those in which I have participated [including Page &
Shapiro 1983]) have very likely overestimated the extent of responsiveness. All have
been prey to varying combinations of sampling and aggregation biases and specifi-
cation errors, especially specification errors involving the omission of relevant vari-
ables and relationships that might have revealed the opinion-policy relationship to be
partly spurious or reciprocal. (Manza et al., 2002, p. 326)
Page’s critique covers his own work (e.g., Page & Shapiro 1983) as well
as other major efforts (notably Erikson, MacKuen, & Stimson, 2002): “A
major problem, the same problem that has plagued nearly all quantitative
research in this area, is the omission of independent variables that may
affect both opinion and policy and create a spurious relationship between
the two” (Manza et al., 2002, p. 328).
The problems outlined in Manza et al. have been reprised over the
decades and persist to undercut the authority and utility of opinion poll-
ing. First, it is not legitimate to infer causal relationships from obser-
vational (nonexperimental) data. The fallacy of inferring cause from
correlational data bedevils much policy research. While a statistically sig-
nificant correlation suggests a relation, it is not legitimate to assume that
even a very strong relationship implies cause. For example it is a fallacy to
conclude that the close relationship between height and weight implies
cause in either direction. To the contrary both height and weight would
seem to be the result of other factors such as genetic inheritance and nutri-
tion. As another example, there is a very strong correlation between dying
and being in bed. If cause was implied it would be prudent to sleep on
the sofa. The contention that responses to polls imply the cause of social
policy is a heroic surmise.
I n t roduct ion [ 7]
At the same time the customary assessment of implemented policy also
has often been impaired by the hit-and-miss definitions of policy. The pol-
icy reference itself is often unclear, for example Social Security meaning
specific programs or a sense of deserts or a symbol of citizenship, tradi-
tion, family, or ethnicity. As Page adds, the level of policy is often ignored
while individual policies in a particular area may move in opposite direc-
tions but are still “scrunched into a single, liberal-conservative … trend
line” (Manza et al., 2002, p. 329).
In the end, the study of public opinion has not provided grounds on
which to either endorse or reject the influence of mass preferences over
policy. Indeed, the current prevalence of alternative theories of policy
influence seems uninhibited by any strong evidence of mass influence.
For the past few decades, there seems to be declining general respect
for the argument that opinion polls have demonstrated the influence of
mass preferences. Within political science and the polling community
itself, there is persistent skepticism about the accuracy of measuring pub-
lic opinion by polling (Manza et al., 2002; Epstein, 2006; among many
others).
Voting is often indicative of preference, but because so many values and
issues are packaged in elections it is often impossible to discern the values
that prompt the vote. Uncoerced choices made in daily life are probably
clearer indicators of the preferences of a society: patterns of family forma-
tion; popular culture; participation in sports, the arts, and social groups;
patterns of housing; budget priorities in personal spending; choice of
occupation; education; and of course behaviors that show satisfaction and
dissatisfaction. What people say is usually far less meaningful than what
people freely choose to do.
It is understandable that policy criticism has largely ignored mass pref-
erence as the dominant factor in social policy making. To attribute the
persistence of social problems to the masses is to criticize them, a very
unwise strategy for those seeking popular support. The charge of illegiti-
macy, imperfect pluralism, or far more irrational factors creating scape-
goats preserves the innocence of the governed. It also preserves many
social scientists’ delusions of rationality and neutrality and obscures their
accommodations with political power, their ambitions, and the difficul-
ties of making a living. At worst the masses have been beguiled by con-
spiracies and lies, and the task for the reformer is to awaken them to their
peril.2
2. The literature of conspiracy is immensely rich, and claims of conspiracy have achieved
the status of inventive creativity in a longstanding but underappreciated genre of literary fic-
tion. Steiger and Steiger (2013) summarize hundreds of largely recent claims of conspiracy,
LIBRO DECIMOSESTO
Capitolo
CLXXV. La rivoluzione francese Pag. 1
CLXXVI. Buonaparte in Italia. I Giacobini.
Fine di Venezia 24
CLXXVII. La Cisalpina. Conquista di
Roma, Napoli e Piemonte 63
CLXXVIII. Riazione. I Tredici mesi. Italia
riconquistata. Pace di
Luneville 97
CLXXIX. Buonaparte ordinatore. Rimpasto
di paesi. Concordati. Pace di
Presburgo. Regno d’Italia 130
CLXXX. I Napoleonidi a Napoli 194
CLXXXI. Ostilità col papa 213
CLXXXII. Campagne di Spagna e di
Russia. Caduta dei
Napoleonidi 237
LIBRO DECIMOSETTIMO
Capitolo
CLXXXIII. La restaurazione. Il liberalismo.
Rivoluzioni del 1820 e 21 299
CLXXXIV. La media Italia. Rivoluzioni del
1830. 371
CLXXXV. Letteratura. Classici e Romantici. 418