A Broken Public? Americans’ Responses to the Great Recession
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7258107 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Clem Brooks (0000-0002-1406-2291, Indiana University), Jeff Manza (0000-0002-8163-8334, New York University) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 78 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 727-748 |
| Publication date | 2013-09-30 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Sociological Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-1224 • E-ISSN: 1939-8271 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0003122413498255 |
| OpenAlex | W1966330484 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 87 |
| References cited | 77 |
Did Americans respond to the recent Great Recession by demanding that government provide policy solutions to rising income insecurity, an expectation of state-of-the-art theorizing on the dynamics of mass opinion? Or did the recession erode support for government activism, in line with alternative scholarship pointing to economic factors having the reverse effect? We find that public support for government social programs declined sharply between 2008 and 2010, yet both fixed-effects and repeated survey analyses suggest economic change had little impact on policy-attitude formation. What accounts for these surprising developments? We consider alternative microfoundations emphasizing the importance of prior beliefs and biases to the formation of policy attitudes. Analyzing the General Social Surveys panel, our results suggest political partisanship has been central. Gallup and Evaluations of Government and Society surveys provide further evidence against the potentially confounding scenario of government overreach, in which federal programs adopted during the recession and the Obama presidency propelled voters away from government. We note implications for theoretical models of opinion formation, as well as directions for partisanship scholarship and interdisciplinary research on the Great Recession
Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Government (linguistics · Great recession · Keynesian economics · Microfoundations · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Presidency · Public economics · Public opinion · Public policy · Recession · Scholarship · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Social Capital and Networks · Social Policy and Reform Studies
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| Unique citing works | 87 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 7,25 |
| Citation span | 2014 - 2026 (13) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 87 |