An important stylized fact about American government is that many societal problems persist despite expert recognition that better outcomes are technically feasible. What explains the weakness of the political demand for more effective public policies? This study investigates one factor that may contribute to the attenuated demand for policy improvements: namely, the belief among many affluent citizens that they are personally insulated from societal problems. Drawing on a national public opinion survey, we show that affluent Americans believe their resources and ability to activate powerful social networks affords them a measure of personal insulation from key problems in areas such as education, healthcare and neighborhood safety. We also find that the affluent express a more optimistic view than other respondents of the average citizen’s financial situation and capacity to manage problems in several domains. Taken together, our results have important implications for understanding how highly influential Americans think about public policy in an era of inequality.
{"title":"Affluence and the Demand-side for Policy Improvements: Exploring Elite Beliefs About Vulnerability to Societal Problems","authors":"Alan S. Gerber, Mackenzie Lockhart, E. Patashnik","doi":"10.1515/for-2024-2007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/for-2024-2007","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 An important stylized fact about American government is that many societal problems persist despite expert recognition that better outcomes are technically feasible. What explains the weakness of the political demand for more effective public policies? This study investigates one factor that may contribute to the attenuated demand for policy improvements: namely, the belief among many affluent citizens that they are personally insulated from societal problems. Drawing on a national public opinion survey, we show that affluent Americans believe their resources and ability to activate powerful social networks affords them a measure of personal insulation from key problems in areas such as education, healthcare and neighborhood safety. We also find that the affluent express a more optimistic view than other respondents of the average citizen’s financial situation and capacity to manage problems in several domains. Taken together, our results have important implications for understanding how highly influential Americans think about public policy in an era of inequality.","PeriodicalId":513080,"journal":{"name":"The Forum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141796531","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Why do Republicans sometimes decline to enact voter suppression measures, even when contextual conditions (unified control of state government, electoral threats from Democrats, and racial threats from African American and Latinx voters) suggest that they should? We argue that ideological diversity within state Republican parties plays an important role in moderating Republican efforts to adopt policies that substantially increase the cost of voting. When a state Republican Party is more ideologically diverse, members may differ significantly on the preferred severity of voting restrictions and the priority of ballot restrictions relative to other issues. Thus, more heterogeneous Republican Parties may be less willing and able to institute voter suppression measures. In contrast, more ideologically unified Republican Parties face fewer barriers to collective action in advancing ballot restrictions, facilitating their adoption of voter suppression measures. We illustrate our arguments with case studies from Georgia and Alabama.
{"title":"How Ideological Diversity Moderates Republican Support for Voter Suppression Measures: The Cases of Georgia and Alabama","authors":"Jesse H. Rhodes, Adam Eichen","doi":"10.1515/for-2024-2012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/for-2024-2012","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Why do Republicans sometimes decline to enact voter suppression measures, even when contextual conditions (unified control of state government, electoral threats from Democrats, and racial threats from African American and Latinx voters) suggest that they should? We argue that ideological diversity within state Republican parties plays an important role in moderating Republican efforts to adopt policies that substantially increase the cost of voting. When a state Republican Party is more ideologically diverse, members may differ significantly on the preferred severity of voting restrictions and the priority of ballot restrictions relative to other issues. Thus, more heterogeneous Republican Parties may be less willing and able to institute voter suppression measures. In contrast, more ideologically unified Republican Parties face fewer barriers to collective action in advancing ballot restrictions, facilitating their adoption of voter suppression measures. We illustrate our arguments with case studies from Georgia and Alabama.","PeriodicalId":513080,"journal":{"name":"The Forum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141796513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Climate change has been on the national agenda since the late 1970s, yet until recently, little progress had been made at the federal level because of the dominance of the fossil fuel industry within the policy subsystem. In this article, we use multiple streams approach with process tracing methods to examine why significant climate policy was able to pass in 2022, despite growing polarization, when previous attempts had all failed. We examine two key case studies, the failure of Waxman-Markey in 2010 and the success of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. In 2010 some climate organizations were hesitant about cap and trade as a policy mechanism to address climate change and failed to stimulate advocacy in their grassroots. Since then, climate groups rallied around an alternative policy approach, which involves investing in clean technology inspired by the Green New Deal. Activists built significant power within the Democratic Party, evident in climate policy remaining prominent on the policy agenda at the beginning of Biden’s presidency. Moreover, media outlets have improved their coverage of extreme weather events by tying them to climate change. In short, the political dynamics changed with growing grassroots climate advocacy, motivating citizens to elect Democratic leaders capable of passing climate legislation and keeping climate high on the policy agenda.
{"title":"Climate Change Policy Development: A Multiple Streams Analysis of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022","authors":"Morgan McGlynn, Aaron C. Sparks","doi":"10.1515/for-2024-2014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/for-2024-2014","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Climate change has been on the national agenda since the late 1970s, yet until recently, little progress had been made at the federal level because of the dominance of the fossil fuel industry within the policy subsystem. In this article, we use multiple streams approach with process tracing methods to examine why significant climate policy was able to pass in 2022, despite growing polarization, when previous attempts had all failed. We examine two key case studies, the failure of Waxman-Markey in 2010 and the success of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. In 2010 some climate organizations were hesitant about cap and trade as a policy mechanism to address climate change and failed to stimulate advocacy in their grassroots. Since then, climate groups rallied around an alternative policy approach, which involves investing in clean technology inspired by the Green New Deal. Activists built significant power within the Democratic Party, evident in climate policy remaining prominent on the policy agenda at the beginning of Biden’s presidency. Moreover, media outlets have improved their coverage of extreme weather events by tying them to climate change. In short, the political dynamics changed with growing grassroots climate advocacy, motivating citizens to elect Democratic leaders capable of passing climate legislation and keeping climate high on the policy agenda.","PeriodicalId":513080,"journal":{"name":"The Forum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141816684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Few federal agencies have generated more controversy than the small Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in the Department of Education. From desegregation and bilingual education to intercollegiate athletics, sexual harassment, and transgender rights, it has turned short civil rights statutes into lengthy administrative rules. It thus offers a useful window into what has become known as “the administrative state.” But this window is far from transparent: OCR rarely uses standard Administrative Procedure Act rulemaking, opting instead for unilateral “Dear Colleague Letters” written with little external participation; the bulk of its resources are devoted to investigation of individual complaints, with little public explanation of the outcomes. Innovation and expansion of the agency’s mission has not come from the permanent bureaucracy, but from the courts and from agency leaders appointed by the president. From the 1960s through the 1990s, the result was slow but steady accretion of power and responsibility. More recently political polarization and shifting Supreme Court jurisprudence has led to more rapid alteration of agency policy and enforcement practices.
{"title":"Inside the “Administrative State”: The Enigmatic Office for Civil Rights","authors":"R. S. Melnick","doi":"10.1515/for-2024-2011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/for-2024-2011","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Few federal agencies have generated more controversy than the small Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in the Department of Education. From desegregation and bilingual education to intercollegiate athletics, sexual harassment, and transgender rights, it has turned short civil rights statutes into lengthy administrative rules. It thus offers a useful window into what has become known as “the administrative state.” But this window is far from transparent: OCR rarely uses standard Administrative Procedure Act rulemaking, opting instead for unilateral “Dear Colleague Letters” written with little external participation; the bulk of its resources are devoted to investigation of individual complaints, with little public explanation of the outcomes. Innovation and expansion of the agency’s mission has not come from the permanent bureaucracy, but from the courts and from agency leaders appointed by the president. From the 1960s through the 1990s, the result was slow but steady accretion of power and responsibility. More recently political polarization and shifting Supreme Court jurisprudence has led to more rapid alteration of agency policy and enforcement practices.","PeriodicalId":513080,"journal":{"name":"The Forum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141666615","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Less than 1 year after President Biden announced a sweeping plan to reduce – and in many cases eliminate – the student loan burden for the 46 million Americans who hold educational debt, the Supreme Court ruled the proposal unconstitutional in Biden v. Nebraska. Media accounts immediately speculated about whether the Court’s actions would spell trouble for the President’s reelection efforts, presuming that voters would punish Biden for a perceived policy failure. Despite, or perhaps because of, these concerns, the administration has continued to pursue student debt forgiveness through other means, and highlighting these efforts has been a key component of the president’s re-election strategy. Prior research suggests that Democrats, and the president in particular, stand to benefit electorally from pursuing student debt relief. But did the Supreme Court’s decision to block the president’s plan change who voters hold accountable for the problem of student loan debt? And to what extent is the issue motivating voters from different constituencies in 2024? This study leverages insights from an original survey experiment fielded in August 2023 to explore the dynamics of blame attribution for federal student debt cancellation efforts. We find that, contrary to media speculation, voters place much greater blame on the Supreme Court and congressional Republicans for the problem of student debt, while President Biden receives relatively little blame. We consider the implications of these findings for the short-term electoral politics of student debt relief policy as well as the increasingly salient politics of debt relief more broadly.
{"title":"Blame, Policy Feedback, and the Politics of Student Debt Relief Policy","authors":"Mallory E. SoRelle, Serena Laws","doi":"10.1515/for-2024-2009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/for-2024-2009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Less than 1 year after President Biden announced a sweeping plan to reduce – and in many cases eliminate – the student loan burden for the 46 million Americans who hold educational debt, the Supreme Court ruled the proposal unconstitutional in Biden v. Nebraska. Media accounts immediately speculated about whether the Court’s actions would spell trouble for the President’s reelection efforts, presuming that voters would punish Biden for a perceived policy failure. Despite, or perhaps because of, these concerns, the administration has continued to pursue student debt forgiveness through other means, and highlighting these efforts has been a key component of the president’s re-election strategy. Prior research suggests that Democrats, and the president in particular, stand to benefit electorally from pursuing student debt relief. But did the Supreme Court’s decision to block the president’s plan change who voters hold accountable for the problem of student loan debt? And to what extent is the issue motivating voters from different constituencies in 2024? This study leverages insights from an original survey experiment fielded in August 2023 to explore the dynamics of blame attribution for federal student debt cancellation efforts. We find that, contrary to media speculation, voters place much greater blame on the Supreme Court and congressional Republicans for the problem of student debt, while President Biden receives relatively little blame. We consider the implications of these findings for the short-term electoral politics of student debt relief policy as well as the increasingly salient politics of debt relief more broadly.","PeriodicalId":513080,"journal":{"name":"The Forum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141701224","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Politically, the mid-term election of 2022 not only switched partisan control of one of the major branches of American national government but shifted party balance within that government as a whole. Yet analytically, this resulted from a shift in the House of Representatives so minute – 9 seats changed hands in a body of 435 members – that many of the usual tools for dissecting American elections had nothing to say. Which means at a minimum that analysis of this particular contest requires some larger, nested framework for its interpretation. This paper is an attempt to provide one such framework.
{"title":"Electoral Dynamics for 2022: The House of Representatives in the Modern Era","authors":"Regina Wagner, Byron E. Shafer","doi":"10.1515/for-2024-2002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/for-2024-2002","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Politically, the mid-term election of 2022 not only switched partisan control of one of the major branches of American national government but shifted party balance within that government as a whole. Yet analytically, this resulted from a shift in the House of Representatives so minute – 9 seats changed hands in a body of 435 members – that many of the usual tools for dissecting American elections had nothing to say. Which means at a minimum that analysis of this particular contest requires some larger, nested framework for its interpretation. This paper is an attempt to provide one such framework.","PeriodicalId":513080,"journal":{"name":"The Forum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139840114","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Politically, the mid-term election of 2022 not only switched partisan control of one of the major branches of American national government but shifted party balance within that government as a whole. Yet analytically, this resulted from a shift in the House of Representatives so minute – 9 seats changed hands in a body of 435 members – that many of the usual tools for dissecting American elections had nothing to say. Which means at a minimum that analysis of this particular contest requires some larger, nested framework for its interpretation. This paper is an attempt to provide one such framework.
{"title":"Electoral Dynamics for 2022: The House of Representatives in the Modern Era","authors":"Regina Wagner, Byron E. Shafer","doi":"10.1515/for-2024-2002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/for-2024-2002","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Politically, the mid-term election of 2022 not only switched partisan control of one of the major branches of American national government but shifted party balance within that government as a whole. Yet analytically, this resulted from a shift in the House of Representatives so minute – 9 seats changed hands in a body of 435 members – that many of the usual tools for dissecting American elections had nothing to say. Which means at a minimum that analysis of this particular contest requires some larger, nested framework for its interpretation. This paper is an attempt to provide one such framework.","PeriodicalId":513080,"journal":{"name":"The Forum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139780181","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Alison W. Craig. 2023. The Collaborative Congress: Reaching Common Ground in a Polarized House. Cambridge University Press. $110 cloth. 225 pages","authors":"S. Gaynor","doi":"10.1515/for-2024-2004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/for-2024-2004","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":513080,"journal":{"name":"The Forum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139854105","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Alison W. Craig. 2023. The Collaborative Congress: Reaching Common Ground in a Polarized House. Cambridge University Press. $110 cloth. 225 pages","authors":"S. Gaynor","doi":"10.1515/for-2024-2004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/for-2024-2004","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":513080,"journal":{"name":"The Forum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139794213","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Much research has suggested that Republican candidates in U.S. presidential elections benefit from voter bias against non-White groups. The present study supplements this research by including in the analysis bias against Whites. Estimates from the American National Election Studies 2020 Time Series Study indicated that a nontrivial percentage of the U.S. population has a bias that disfavors Whites, with this bias more prevalent among Democrats than Republicans. Further analyses estimated the extent to which the type of voter racial bias that favors Republican presidential candidates offsets the type of voter racial bias that favors Democratic presidential candidates. Estimates for the 2020 U.S. presidential election indicated that the two-party vote share for Donald Trump was higher among voters who rated Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians/Asian-Americans equal to each other on 0-to-100 feeling thermometers than among the full population of two-party voters, suggesting that Donald Trump was disadvantaged on net by the electorate including racially biased voters. These results call into question research that has used an unrepresentative set of racial attitudes to suggest that, in recent U.S. presidential elections, only Republican candidates have benefitted from racial bias among the electorate.
许多研究表明，美国总统选举中的共和党候选人受益于选民对非白人群体的偏见。本研究在分析中加入了对白人的偏见，是对上述研究的补充。美国全国选举研究 2020 年时间序列研究》（American National Election Studies 2020 Time Series Study）的估算结果表明，美国人口中有相当比例的人存在不利于白人的偏见，这种偏见在民主党人中比在共和党人中更为普遍。进一步的分析估计了有利于共和党总统候选人的选民种族偏见在多大程度上抵消了有利于民主党总统候选人的选民种族偏见。对 2020 年美国总统大选的估计结果表明，在对白人、黑人、拉美裔和亚裔/亚裔美国人的感觉温度计从 0 到 100 的评分相同的选民中，唐纳德-特朗普的两党得票率高于所有两党选民，这表明唐纳德-特朗普在包括有种族偏见的选民在内的选民中处于不利地位。这些结果质疑了一些研究，这些研究使用了一组不具代表性的种族态度来表明，在最近的美国总统选举中，只有共和党候选人从选民的种族偏见中获益。
{"title":"Racial Bias and U.S. Presidential Candidate Preference","authors":"L. J. Zigerell","doi":"10.1515/for-2024-2001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/for-2024-2001","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Much research has suggested that Republican candidates in U.S. presidential elections benefit from voter bias against non-White groups. The present study supplements this research by including in the analysis bias against Whites. Estimates from the American National Election Studies 2020 Time Series Study indicated that a nontrivial percentage of the U.S. population has a bias that disfavors Whites, with this bias more prevalent among Democrats than Republicans. Further analyses estimated the extent to which the type of voter racial bias that favors Republican presidential candidates offsets the type of voter racial bias that favors Democratic presidential candidates. Estimates for the 2020 U.S. presidential election indicated that the two-party vote share for Donald Trump was higher among voters who rated Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians/Asian-Americans equal to each other on 0-to-100 feeling thermometers than among the full population of two-party voters, suggesting that Donald Trump was disadvantaged on net by the electorate including racially biased voters. These results call into question research that has used an unrepresentative set of racial attitudes to suggest that, in recent U.S. presidential elections, only Republican candidates have benefitted from racial bias among the electorate.","PeriodicalId":513080,"journal":{"name":"The Forum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139860805","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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