scholarly journals When and How New Policy Creates New Politics: Examining the Feedback Effects of the Affordable Care Act on Public Opinion

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence R. Jacobs ◽  
Suzanne Mettler
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Affordable Care Act ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Policy Feedback ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Feedback Effects ◽  
New Politics ◽  
The Affordable Care Act

Following E. E. Schattschneider’s observation that “a new policy creates a new politics,” scholars of “policy feedback” have theorized that policies influence subsequent political behavior and public opinion. Recent studies observe, however, that policy feedback does not always occur and the form it takes varies considerably. To explain such variation, we call for policy feedback studies to draw more thoroughly on public opinion research. We theorize that: (1) feedback effects are not ubiquitous and may in some instances be offset by political factors, such as partisanship and trust in government; (2) policy design may generate self-interested or sociotropic motivations, and (3) feedback effects result not only from policy benefits but also from burdens. We test these expectations by drawing on a unique panel study of Americans’ responses to the Affordable Care Act. We find competing policy and political pathways, which produce variations in policy feedback.

Is the Affordable Care Act Cultivating a Cross-Class Constituency? Income, Partisanship, and a Proposal for Tracing the Contingent Nature of Positive Policy Feedback Effects

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Chattopadhyay
Keyword(s):  
Affordable Care Act ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Policy Feedback ◽  
Feedback Effects ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Public Managers ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The Affordable Care Act ◽  
Nationally Representative

Abstract Social Security and Medicare enjoy strong political coalitions within the mass public because middle-class Americans believe they derive benefits from these programs and stand alongside lower-income beneficiaries in defending them from erosion. By pooling data from nine nationally representative surveys, this article examines whether the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is cultivating a similar cross-class constituency. The results show that middle-income Americans are less likely than low-income Americans to say the ACA has helped them personally so far. On the other hand, partisanship conditions the relationship between income and beliefs about benefits likely to be derived from the ACA in the long run. In total, the results suggest that cross-class Democratic optimism about long-run benefits may enable the ACA to reap positive beneficiary feedbacks, but a large and bipartisan cross-class constituency appears unlikely. Drawing on these results, this article also makes theoretical contributions to the policy feedback literature by underscoring the need for research on prospections' power in policy feedbacks and proposing a strategy for researchers, policy makers, and public managers to identify where partisanship intervenes in the standard policy feedback logic model, and thereby to better assess how it fragments and conditions positive feedback effects in target populations.

The Affordable Care Act and Mass Policy Feedbacks

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 567-580
Author(s):  
Andrea Louise Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Affordable Care Act ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Causal Models ◽  
Policy Feedback ◽  
Feedback Effects ◽  
Policy Effects ◽  
New Information ◽  
The Affordable Care Act ◽  
Empirical Approaches

Abstract The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has allowed researchers to examine mass policy feedback effects—how public policies affect individuals' attitudes and political behaviors—in real time while using causal models. These efforts help address criticisms of the extant feedbacks literature and have revealed new policy feedback effects and new information on the conditions under which policy feedbacks occur. The ACA case also raises empirical and theoretical questions about the types of data needed to assess feedback effects, the magnitude of policy effects required for detection, the time frame in which feedbacks occur, and the suitability of various empirical approaches for assessing policy feedback effects. Thus, the ACA not only adds an important empirical case to the study of policy feedbacks but also helps refine policy feedback theory.

Making What Government Does Apparent to Citizens: Policy Feedback Effects, Their Limitations, and How They Might Be Facilitated

2019 ◽  
Vol 685 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-46
Author(s):  
Suzanne Mettler
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Policy Feedback ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Feedback Effects ◽  
The Public

Public policies sometimes generate “policy feedback effects,” reshaping public opinion and political participation among beneficiaries or the public generally, often with the effects of generating supportive constituencies that help to sustain the program. Yet such effects do not always occur; in fact, despite that Americans use more social policies than ever, antipathy to government runs high—evidence of a seeming “government-citizen disconnect.” Policy design and delivery matters for policy feedback, as policies that make government’s role more visible may make more of an impression on beneficiaries; yet political polarization and distrust in government can interfere with such effects. In addition, those who are most aware of the government’s role in social provision often participate least in politics, and vice versa. This article considers strategies that public officials and other civic and political leaders can use to facilitate policy feedback effects.

Affordable Care Act Moving to New Stage of Public Acceptance

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (6) ◽  
pp. 911-917 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence R. Jacobs ◽  
Suzanne Mettler ◽  
Ling Zhu
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Affordable Care Act ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Public Acceptance ◽  
Political Risks ◽  
The Affordable Care Act ◽  
The Law ◽  
Multiple Challenges ◽  
New Phase

Abstract The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was enacted in a deeply polarized context, and it has endured multiple challenges to its implementation and its very existence that continue to this day. Yet, we find that the law is entering a new phase of acceptance among the American public, such that it presents political risks to politicians who would dare to weaken it. We have conducted a panel study of Americans' public opinion on the ACA since 2010, returning to the same respondents every two years to ask the same questions. This approach, which is essential for tracking change, reveals that support for the ACA is growing and the most intense opposition is receding. It also shows that Americans' sense of the law's impact on their lives is at least holding steady and in some respects growing. Most strikingly, those who feel favorably toward the law are more engaged politically than those who oppose it, and they are more likely to take it into account when they vote. These trends indicate that the law, despite the legal and political obstacles it still confronts, is becoming more firmly established in public opinion and through patterns of political participation.

The ACA a Decade In: Resilience, Impact, and Vulnerabilities

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 595-608
Author(s):  
Mark A. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Affordable Care Act ◽  
Cost Control ◽  
Insurance Coverage ◽  
Universal Coverage ◽  
The Affordable Care Act

Abstract A decade after its enactment, the Affordable Care Act remains both politically viable and consequential, despite Republican efforts to end it. The law's impact on insurance coverage is substantial but remains distant from universal coverage, while its contributions to cost control are at best limited. National public opinion data collected by the author in 2018 reveal both strengths and vulnerabilities in the act.

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