Shifting Terrain of Americans’ Relationship to Government and Rural-Urban Divide

• In Event: Pluralism in Attitudes Toward American Government

Abstract

Over the past 60 years, Americans’ respect for government – once characterized by high levels of trust and political efficacy – has declined precipitously, even despite the fact that more and more denizens rely on some form of government social provision. During the same period, the United States has shifted away from its long-term political divide between the North and the South and become fractured by a new cleavage between rural and urban dwellers nationwide. These changes have occurred in the context of other political developments, including party realignments and the ebbs and flows of different racial orders, as well as deindustrialization and the shift to the knowledge economy. We seek to explore the relationship between these developments by analyzing the American National Election Study Cumulative File, from 1947 to the present, in combination with several place-based, county-level political economic measures, drawn from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis and other sources. These data will permit us 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, comparing rural and urban residents. We will explore the timing and character of change over time in these relationships, and how they relate to partisanship and presidential vote choice. We hope to illuminate patterns underlying contemporary place-based polarization and threats to democracy.

Authors

• Trevor Brown, Cornell University

• Suzanne Mettler, Cornell University