We can see this readily when we investigate the extent to which even ostensible “democracies” ignore the preferences of voters in favor of the preferences and goals of elites allied to the state. 

One study, published in 2014 by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, found exactly this:

“Not only do ordinary citizens not have uniquely substantial power over policy decisions; they have little or no independent influence on policy at all. By contrast, economic elites are estimated to have a quite substantial, highly significant, independent impact on policy.”

States do not enact the preferences of their voters, even when they bother with elections, because states are not “democratic” in any meaningful sense of bottom-up, consensual self-rule through cooperation. States enact the preferences of the elites who make up the state or, increasingly in the modern world, elites who stand apart from but have wholly captured the state as their agent.

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https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B