Partisan Signaling and Asymmetric Support for Democratic Institutions

• In Event: Elite Cues & Motivated Reasoning

Abstract

Given modest knowledge about political affairs, how do citizens form judgments of public officials within a large, complex democracy? The president is arguably the most well-known individual in the country, and this project explores how the president serves as a primary conduit for partisan cue-taking, influencing public support for a myriad of political and bureaucratic institutions and actors. We develop a theory of “asymmetric support” in which citizen perceptions of political institutions, and the key actors within, are influenced by the president’s partisanship as a key cognitive cue. Moving beyond the literature’s focus on electoral institutions, we offer nuanced expectations about how the presidential partisan cue influences attitudes towards even non-electoral, ostensibly politically neutral institutions. Drawing on original survey data that includes over a dozen experimental modules, we assess the efficacy of these propositions by exploring how the presidential partisan heuristic affects public perceptions of both elected and insulated institutions, including the U.S. Congress, state executives, law enforcement, and the U.S. military among others. More than other available heuristics, our experiments show that presidential partisan cues sharply influence attitudes towards a host of both elected and non-elected institutions. The findings have numerous implications for our understanding of the practical limits on executive authority in a separation of powers, federalized system. While the formal limits are many, presidents may effectively consolidate their authority by manipulating public support for a wide range of political elites. This work contributes to a broad literature on the Presidency, Congress, legal institutions, political behavior, political psychology, public opinion, and experimental analysis.

Authors

• Ali Shiraz Masood, Rhodes College

• Ryan Strickler, Colorado State University, Pueblo

• Michael Zilis, University of Kentucky