Pluralism in Attitudes Toward American Government

Session Submission Type: Virtual Full Paper Panel

Session Description

How do American citizens form their attitudes toward government? This question has figured prominently in the study of American politics and public opinion for decades, and it has only become more relevant in recent years. With intense political polarization manifesting itself in a number of areas, the role of government in society is more hotly contested than ever before. Views among the public range from a positive embrace of government to complete opposition fueled by conspiracy theories about a malicious “deep state.”

Because of the ever increasing relevance of debates over the role of the state, this panel brings together both leading and junior scholars to explore pluralism in citizens’ attitudes toward American government: The panel’s overarching goal is to explore the socioeconomic, demographic, psychological, and political factors that influence citizens’ views of the state.

In the first paper “The Shifting Terrain of Americans’ Relationship to Government and the Rural-Urban Political Divide,” Trevor Brown and Suzanne Mettler investigate the urban-rural divide in citizens’ respect for government. This question is particularly relevant because, over the past sixty years, Americans’ respect for and trust in government has declined precipitously. During the same period, a new political cleavage between rural and urban dwellers has emerged nationwide. Therefore, Brown and Mettler seek to explore the relationship between a number of political, social, and economic developments related to the growing urban-rural divide and views of government by analyzing the American National Election Study Cumulative File, from 1947 to the present, in combination with several other political-economic measures, drawn from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis among others. They aim to explore how local economic conditions, the make-up of the economy, and the use of federal social transfers relate to Americans’ attitudes toward government.

In the second paper “Using Everyday Indicators to Understand Public Attitudes and Inform Criminal Justice Reform,” Amy Lerman and Naomi Levy explore the complex role that criminal justice agencies play in shaping Americans’ views of government. Policing, incarceration, and others punitive activities are especially important for how residents of low-income and minority communities perceive public institutions. At the same time, many of these communities are now coalescing on a new vision for safety that includes upfront investments in collective wellbeing among others. Community members want to see appropriate, effective and equitable policy reforms. Thus, in this paper, Lerman and Levy ask: How would we design and assess criminal justice reforms if the concept of “safety” was truly being defined by communities themselves? Central to this idea is an understanding that individuals in over-policed and under-served neighborhoods have distinct experiences and understandings of what it means to be safe. Lerman and Levy consider how “bottom-up” approaches to measurement, combined with researcher-practitioner partnerships, can inform our understanding of public opinion towards police. Using data from an Everyday Indicators project in Oakland, they show how this type of research can help move “Defund Police” as an aspirational idea toward “Re-Imagining Safety” as a scalable, replicable model for systemic reform.

In the third paper, “Emotions, Personality, and Americans’ Attitudes Toward Government,” Steven Webster argues that anger—a phenomenon that is experienced across the political spectrum—can powerfully alter Americans' views of the government. Drawing on a survey experiment with over 3,000 respondents, he finds that emotional manipulations of anger cause Americans to believe that the government is corrupt. However, these results are dependent upon an individual's trait-based measure of anger: Those whose personality predisposes them towards anger are more likely to be influenced by such emotional manipulations.

In the fourth paper, “What Determines American Citizens' Views of the Administrative State? The Roles of Belief Systems, Political Affiliation, and the Covid Pandemic,” Edgar Cook and Jan Vogler explore how American citizens perceive the administrative state (or public bureaucracy). Based on an original survey with more than 1,100 participants, they present a comprehensive analysis of the factors that influence Americans’ attitudes toward the public bureaucracy. Among others, they explore the interactive effects of various experimental conditions with citizens’ belief systems, political affiliations, and personal exposure to the Covid pandemic.

Taken together, the papers on this panel explore a pluralism of factors that influence American attitudes toward government. Each contribution seeks to answer a fundamentally important question related to critical contemporary debates and real-world developments.

Sub Unit

• Division 37: Public Opinion

Chair

• John H. Aldrich Duke University

Discussants

• Laura Stoker University of California, Berkeley

• Marc J. Hetherington University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Individual Presentations

• Shifting Terrain of Americans’ Relationship to Government and Rural-Urban Divide - Trevor Brown, Cornell University; Suzanne Mettler, Cornell University

• Using Indicators to Understand Attitudes and Inform Criminal Justice Reform - Amy E. Lerman, UC Berkeley; Naomi Levy, Santa Clara University

• Emotions, Personality, and Americans’ Attitudes Toward Government - Steven W. Webster, Indiana University

• What Determines American Citizens' Views of the Administrative State? - Edgar V. Cook, Duke University; Jan P. Vogler, University of Konstanz