(iPoster) In Government We Trust? Expanding Democracy via Comparative Urban Housing Policy

• In Event: Poster Session: Public Policy & Urban and Local Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Public Policy

Abstract

Given the critical balance between economic and political power, why do advanced democracies allow unfettered corporate and external ownership of residential housing while citizens, whom the government is supposed to represent, increasingly struggle to afford housing and have no say about living costs?

This question is answered through a comparative analysis of Jacksonville, Florida, Stockholm, Sweden, and Montreal, Canada. Today, political and economic equity, as well as the future of democracy, often hang precarious balance. There appears to be little support for advancing economic equity through the provision of access to affordable housing to ensure this critical balance with political equity, and the future of democracy is often in crisis. Is this lack of support a matter of trust?

By extending David MacDonald’s (2020) national level analysis of the relationship between trust in government and support for government spending within the United States (U.S.) to include the analyses of urban contexts within the U.S., Sweden, and Canada, we can begin to consider the presence of any exceptional circumstances as well as context similarities to expand democracy and promote economic growth.

Sweden is often considered to be the model contemporary social welfare state; however, preliminary analyses reveal that when it comes to housing, Sweden is very much like the U.S. and Canada in terms of speculative, market-based housing. Also, Canada has responded to the housing crisis from a policy perspective with the Prohibition on the Sale of Residential Properties to Non-Canadians Act, which presents a unique, policy response beyond public spending.

In this study, housing access and affordability, along with trust in government and support for government spending, presents a unique index from which to analyze the health of democracy in each context. Housing access and affordability and these relationships produce a more precise indicator of economic strength at the individual level than per capita GDP.

To create a foundation for these connections, this study traces the presence of Jeffersonian democratic ideals and the belief in the balance of economic and political equity for an enduring democracy from the founding through today using James Morone’s (2003) “us v. them” approach. This produces findings that demonstrate how the contemporary state of public policy reflects an elitism that falls short of the ideals and truncates the ability to expand democracy and uphold this balance of economic and political power.

To reinforce the connection between trust and the support for government spending, a series of linear regressions will be run to test these relationships, controlling for several demographic variables, for the U.S., Sweden, and Canada. More specifically, local analyses and ArcGIS Pro will be used to create maps that reveal relationships between housing affordability and demographic characteristics for the 3 urban contexts of Jacksonville, Florida, Stockholm, Sweden, and Montreal, Canada. These cases were chosen due to similar population sizes, to analyze the relationship between economic and political equity with respect to this relationship between trust in government and support for government spending within each country.

Through a comparison of these three cases, the expectation is that while there may be similarities in terms of a speculative, market-based housing supply, that there will also be context-specific findings that will reveal the effect that striving for greater equity can have, not only in terms of strengthening economies, but also in terms of strengthening democracy as well. Further, this takes into consideration the role of trust in government and support of government spending for each context, which may further reinforce these findings. The Jeffersonian belief in the balance of economic and political power to advance democracy through a greater distribution of equity appears to be increasingly missing or forgotten, yet this balance is essential to strengthen and expand democracy to counter the impact of future crises. This may be reinforced by a lack of trust in government as reflected in a decreased level of support for government spending. This study will reveal whether these imbalances and the relationship between trust and support for government spending is unique to the United States and if these relationships exist within Sweden and Canada as well.

Author

• Kristina L. Wright, University of Florida