POLS 1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Lgm-118 Peacekeeper, Aarp
5 Oct 2016
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In a democracy we expect that government will pursue policies to be responsive to public"s preferences and consistent with the majority opinion. Does public policy seem to be responsive: generally, yes, the more americans favor a policy, the more likely the government will adopt policy. Likewise: the more liberal a state"s citizens are, the more liberal the state"s policies are, the same with conservative states. Thermostatic theory : public adjusts its preferences for more" or less" government spending on education, health, defense, and other major categories, public wants more of x public gets more of x. Strong status quo bias to policy adoptionunpopular changes. Several reasons, but one of most important has to deal with fragmentation of governmental authority in the constitution On salient issues: aware of something. Whether social security payments should be cut. Whether the income tax should be raised. On many issues, yes: wealthy agree with most americans.
