Support for Compromise in Principle and in Practice

This chapter reports a set of experiments that consider people’s appraisals of specific policy compromises in Congress, focusing on whether people like compromises less once they understand what types of policy concessions they entail. Drawing on recent congressional compromises on domestic violence legislation, education reform, and health-care policy, the experiments test whether people evaluate Congress and its policy outcomes differently when bills are represented as compromises where both sides made concessions in order to achieve policy gains. The results show that people are disappointed when they learn that a bill failed to pass due to members of Congress refusing to compromise. Members of Congress do not seem to be penalized for their support of compromise legislation. Policy compromises serve to boost the perceived legitimacy of the decision-making process, particularly among those who are ideologically opposed to the outcome.