scholarly journals Policy Responsiveness to Public Opinion

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert S. Erikson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Causal Chain ◽  
Causal Mechanism ◽  
Policy Responsiveness ◽  
The Public ◽  
Policy Representation ◽  
Advanced Democracies

Policy responsiveness is a goal of democratic government—that government action responds to the preferences of its citizens. It is conceptually distinct from “representation,” whereby government actions mirror the preferences of public opinion. Governments can be representative without a direct responsiveness causal mechanism. Policy can respond to public opinion but remain biased due to other influences besides the public. Responsiveness is no certain result in a democracy, as there are many links in the causal chain that must be unbroken for it to be at work. Citizens can vote politicians in or out of office based on the adequacy of their policy representation. But are they up for the task? Do elected officials believe they must follow public opinion, and do they know what their constituents want? Ultimately, how strongly does government policy reflect citizen views? This essay addresses these questions. The literature reviewed here covers only policy representation in the United States. For related coverage, including outside the US sphere, see essays by Will Jennings (Mechanisms of Representation) and Christopher Wlezien (Advanced Democracies: Public Opinion and Public Policy in Advanced Democracies) as part of this Oxford Bibliographies in Political Science series. One conclusion is that public opinion is an influential force in determining public policy in the United States, especially when it comes to setting the ideological tone of policy in the states or the nation. The degree of influence may seem surprising given what we know about voters’ capabilities. Yet there is reason for caution as well as optimism. The general public’s influence sometimes faces the headwinds of hostile economic forces. Influence is not equally distributed across all segments of the public.

Evaluating Policy Representation with Dynamic MRP Estimates: Direct Democracy and Same-Sex Relationship Policies in the United States

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 441-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel C. Lewis ◽  
Matthew L. Jacobsmeier
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Dynamic Models ◽  
The United States ◽  
Multilevel Regression ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Policy Responsiveness ◽  
Policy Representation

Does direct democracy strengthen popular control of public policy in the United States? A major challenge in evaluating policy representation is the measurement of state-level public opinion and public policy. Although recent studies of policy responsiveness and congruence have provided improved measures of public opinion using multilevel regression and poststratification (MRP) techniques, these analyses are limited by their static nature and cross-sectional design. Issue attitudes, unlike more general political orientations, often vary considerably over time. Unless the dynamics of issue-specific public opinion are appropriately incorporated into the analyses, tests of policy responsiveness and congruence may be misleading. Thus, we assess the degree of policy representation in direct democracy states regarding same-sex relationship recognition policies using dynamic models of policy adoption and congruence that employ dynamic MRP estimates of attitudes toward same-sex marriage. We find that direct democracy institutions increase both policy responsiveness and congruence with issue-specific public opinion.

Public opinion and public policy in the United States

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saundra K. Schneider ◽  
William G. Jacoby
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Aggregate Level ◽  
The Public ◽  
Democratic Responsiveness ◽  
Policy Attitudes ◽  
Policy Field ◽  
The Relationship

In a properly-functioning democracy, public opinion should not only be correlated with, but also a major determinant of, public policy. Is that the case in the United States? In this chapter, we address that question by covering the major lines of empirical research on the relationship between American public opinion and public policy. We begin with early work that emphasized the limits of popular thinking about government, creating the apparent need for democratic elitism in governmental action. More recent literature includes perspectives from the public policy field, and research on democratic responsiveness at both the national and state levels. Major lines of work emphasize the existence of rational public opinion at the aggregate level which ‘smooths out’ the inconsistencies that may exist within individual policy attitudes. Seminal studies have considered both the degree of correspondence between opinion and policy (i.e., ‘the rational public’), and models that specify how policy responds to opinion (thermostatic responses and the macropolity). Recent methodological innovations have led to new insights about democratic responsiveness in the American states. Our general conclusion is cautiously optimistic: Policy generally does follow the contours of citizen preference, but elites also have opportunities to shape manifestations of public opinion.

Public Opinion and Morality Policy: Lessons from Canada and the United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mildred A. Schwartz ◽  
Raymond Tatalovich
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Morality Policy ◽  
The Public

Abstract To clarify why research examining the responsiveness of governments to public opinion produces mixed results, the authors focus on issues involving contested moral values that are known to be highly salient to the public and hence more likely to be linked to public policy. Canada and the United States, where the same issues have emerged, allow them to isolate the factors resulting in majoritarian congruence, where policies follow public opinion. The authors attribute finding even less congruence than previous research to the dominance of the courts in ruling on morality issues, although they also find a greater role for the legislature in Canada. The authors raise the possibility that the very salience of the issues inhibited political action from conflict-avoidant politicians.

The Public Agenda

2019 ◽  
pp. 219-242
Author(s):  
Shaun Bevan ◽  
Will Jennings
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Survey Question ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Public Agenda

This chapter considers the question of what shapes the public agenda and how, in turn, the public agenda influences public policy. It introduces the survey question about the most important problem as a measure of the public agenda—comparing evidence on the policy issues attended to by publics in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain, and also the degree to which public opinion itself is subject to “punctuations.” The analysis shows how the public agenda reflects both the problem status and level of media coverage of certain issues (specifically crime and the economy). Lastly, it presents evidence on the correspondence between the priorities of citizens and those of policymakers.

Two Models of Public Opinion: Bacon's ‘New Logic’ and Diotima's ‘Tale of Love’ (The Prothero Lecture)

1974 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 79-96
Author(s):  
Samuel H. Beer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Representative Government ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Work Done

It is appropriate that an American should address himself to the subject of public opinion. For, in terms of quantity, Americans have made the subject peculiarly their own. They have also invested it with characteristically American concerns. Most of the work done on the subject in the United States is oriented by a certain theoretical approach. This approach is democratic and rationalist. Both aspects create problems. In this paper I wish to play down the democratic problem, viz., how many of the voters are capable of thinking sensibly about public policy, and emphasize rather the difficulties that arise from modern rationalism. Here I take a different tack from most historians of the concept of public opinion, who, taking note of the origin of the term in the mid-eighteenth century, stress its connection with the rise of representative government and democratic theory.

scholarly journals Asia`s Role in Internet Governance

2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-142
Author(s):  
Park Y. J.
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Internet Governance ◽  
The Public ◽  
Policy Negotiation ◽  
Global Public Policy

Most stakeholders from Asia have not actively participated in the global Internet governance debate. This debate has been shaped by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers(ICANN) since 198 and the UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF) since 2006. Neither ICANN nor IGF are well received as global public policy negotiation platforms by stakeholders in Asia, but more and more stakeholders in Europe and the United States take both platforms seriously. Stakeholders in Internet governance come from the private sector and civil society as well as the public sector.

scholarly journals The world public opinion towards the American foreign policy of presidents of the United States of North America in the years 2001–2016

2021 ◽  
pp. 163-184
Author(s):  
Przemysław Potocki
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
World System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
The Usa

The article is based on an analysis of certain aspects of how the public opinion of selected nations in years 2001–2016 perceived the American foreign policy and the images of two Presidents of the United States (George W. Bush, Barack Obama). In order to achieve these research goals some polling indicators were constructed. They are linked with empirical assessments related to the foreign policy of the U.S. and the political activity of two Presidents of the United States of America which are constructed by nations in three segments of the world system. Results of the analysis confirmed the research hypotheses. The position of a given nation in the structure of the world system influenced the dynamics of perception and the directions of empirical assessments (positive/negative) of that nation’s public opinion about the USA.

Public Opinion and Foreign Electoral Intervention

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 (3) ◽  
pp. 856-873 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL TOMZ ◽  
JESSICA L. P. WEEKS
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Demand

Foreign electoral intervention is an increasingly important tool for influencing politics in other countries, yet we know little about when citizens would tolerate or condemn foreign efforts to sway elections. In this article, we use experiments to study American public reactions to revelations of foreign electoral intervention. We find that even modest forms of intervention polarize the public along partisan lines. Americans are more likely to condemn foreign involvement, lose faith in democracy, and seek retaliation when a foreign power sides with the opposition, than when a foreign power aids their own party. At the same time, Americans reject military responses to electoral attacks on the United States, even when their own political party is targeted. Our findings suggest that electoral interference can divide and weaken an adversary without provoking the level of public demand for retaliation typically triggered by conventional military attacks.

The Public Hospital and its Local Ecology in the United States Some Relationships between the “Plight of the Public Hospital” and the “Plight of the Cities”

1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Shonick
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Public Hospital ◽  
The United States ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Tax Structure ◽  
Hospital Services ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
The Public ◽  
Local Ecology

The “plight” of the public hospital in the United States is examined from the point of view of its relationship to the “plight” of the cities. Fifty-five large cities are examined and for 38 of these cities that have such hospitals the relationships of levels of public hospital services to local demographic, government fiscal, and tax structure conditions are analyzed. The principal findings point to the existence of some strong relationships and the implications for public policy of these associations are discussed.

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