Power to the people?

 In 1946, a short-lived survey organization called the Psychological Corporation (which seems to have been connected to the Gallup Poll) asked "Would you agree that everybody would be happier, more secure and more prosperous if working people were given more power and influence in the government, or would you say we would all be better off if the working people had no more power than they have now?" 59% said they should have more power, 29% the same, and 12% less (8% weren't sure).  The question has never been repeated, but in 2017 an AP-NORC survey asked if various groups  had "too much, too little, or neither too much nor too little power and influence in Washington?" and one of those groups was "working people".  69% said too little, 28% neither too much nor too little, and 2% too much.  The questions are similar enough so that I think we can say there's been a real change.  

Breaking it it down by education (% should be more/same/less influence, and omitting "don't knows"):

                                      1946                    2017
HS                               61/28/11              69/28/4
Some college              40/42/18              70/28/2
College grad               32/46/22              73/26/1

A small change among people with only a high school education, and a much larger change among people with a college education.  Another way to look at it is that more educated people were substantially less likely to agree that "working people" should have more power in 1946. but that education made essentially no difference in 2017.

 In 1946 unions were important and there was a good deal of labor conflict, so some respondents may have thought of labor unions when they heard "working people."  That is, to some extent the difference may be a change in the interpretation of "working people" rather than in general beliefs about who should have power and influence.  But I don't think this is the whole story:  the distribution of opinions among union members in 1946 was about the same as the distribution among the general public in 2017.  So the comparison supports a point I've made several times:  that people have become less inclined to assume that the authorities know better than ordinary people do.  Moreover, this change has been stronger among people in higher social positions.  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

Economics and/or politics?

 In recent decades, there have been a number of cases of "democratic erosion" or "backsliding"--elected leaders changing the rules to make it more difficult to oppose their policies or vote them out of office.  A paper by Eli Rau and Susan Stokes looks at democracies between 1995 and 2020 and finds that economic inequality was associated with a higher risk of backsliding.*  They considered per-capita GDP and the previous duration of democracy, which reduce the risk of other threats to democracy (like military coups and civil war) and find no clear connection to backsliding.  But they didn't consider another factor that I thought was potentially important:  presidential versus parliamentary systems of government.  First, it may be easier for outsiders to attain power in presidential systems, since it's not necessary to recruit and organize candidates for seats in parliament in order to win.  Second, presidential systems create the chance of conflict between the president and the legislature.  Third, it's more difficult to remove unpopular or unfit leaders in a presidential system:  impeachment takes time and requires a supermajority.  As a result, presidential systems may have a higher risk of backsliding.  

I began with a classification of forms of government from Wikipedia and reduced them to three types:  parliamentary, presidential, and an intermediate ("semi-presidential") category.  Semi-presidential systems have both a directly elected president and a prime minister who is responsible to the legislature--France is a prominent example.  There were also three countries in the system that didn't fit into the classification (Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Micronesia).  The table shows the risk of backsliding by form of government:

                                          Years at risk          episodes         Risk
Parliamentary                      1115                       4                   0.35%
Semi-Presidential                  516                       5                   0.97%
Presidential                            488                     14                   2.89%
                      
Other                                         78                      0                    0

For example, the United States had 22 years of being at risk (1995-2016), and in one of those (2016) began an episode of backsliding.  2017-20 are not considered because we were already in a state of backsliding.  I'll consider the "risk" of emerging from an episode later.  

So there is a substantial association between form of government and the risk of backsliding.  But what if we consider both inequality and form of government?

Constant    -7.52        -8.15          -8.51         -8.37
                   (1.04)     (1.18)          (1.46)       (1.21)

Gini            .078          .063           .081          .078
                   (.024)       (.027)        (.031)        (.026)

Form                            .59            
                                    (.28)         

Semi                                               1.34
                                                       (0.73)

Presidential                                    1.23
                                                       (0.59)

Non-Parliamentary                                             1.26  
                                                                           (0.56)

"Form" defines parliamentary systems as 1, semi-presidential as 2, and presidential as 3.  The third column compares each to the baseline of parliamentary systems.  The estimates for presidential and semi-presidential are similar, so the fourth column combines them into a single "non-parliamentary" group.  Statistical criteria don't permit a choice between the models in columns 2-4, but I think the arguments I gave apply about equally to presidential and semi-presidential forms, so I would go with #4 if I had to choose.  I thought that controlling for form of government might reduce or eliminate the estimated effect of inequality, but that wasn't the case.  

I also estimated models for the chance of leaving a state of backsliding.  Neither inequality nor the form of government had any clear effect, so I don't show the results.  

*The classification is from a working paper by Melis Laebens, who spoke of "executive aggrandizement," and suggested that it was a development of the post-Cold War period.  Until then, "aspiring autocrats would not be as concerned with maintaining a democratic facade."

"When will I get credit....? When will people understand.....? When will Polls reflect the Greatness of America...?"

 During the Biden administration, popular perception of economic conditions was very negative, even though actual conditions weren't bad according to the standard statistics.  Now the Trump administration faces the same problem (my title is a quote from a Trump post on Truth Social).  The Michigan Consumer Surveys report an "Index of Consumer Sentiment" every month, and in the last 20 years or so they have also recorded party identification.  The figure shows the ICS average for supporters of the President's party and the opposition party (omitting the transitional months when party control changes, e. g. Nov 2024-Jan 2025).  

The ups and downs follow a similar pattern, but opposition party perceptions have a downward trend.  The low point for supporters of the president's party was February 2009, when the country was in a severe recession.  For supporters of the opposition party, perceptions have been below the February 2009 levels for most of the past three years.  So to some extent, the negative perceptions just reflect the growth of negative partisanship--supporters of the other party seeing things as very bad rather than pretty bad.  But even today, a lot of people (30%-40%) are not partisans.*  What do they think?  The next figure compares independents' ICS to the average of Democratic and Republican values.

 

The diagonal line means equal values for independents and the average of Democrats and Republicans.  Most points are below the line, meaning that independents are more negative than partisans, presumably because they tend to have more negative views of politics and politicians.  The red dots are the months in the second Trump term:  they tend to be farther below the line, meaning that the gap between independent and partisan perceptions has been consistently larger than average.  The next figure shows changes in the gap over time:

It seemed to bounce around without much pattern until sometime around the middle of 2022--since then, independents have steadily become more negative relative to partisans.  Why?  When economic conditions are ambiguous, independents may be influenced by general impressions about whether the president is paying attention to the economy.  In the last couple of years of his administration, it seemed like Biden was more focused on foreign affairs, and during his second administration the economy hasn't been prominent among Trump's concerns.  There were two earlier months when independent perceptions were unusually negative--April and May 2012.  I don't remember exactly what was in the news then, but I do recall that during the Obama administration there were sometimes complaints that he wasn't focusing on the economy.  Going farther back, in 1992 economic perceptions were more negative than economic statistics suggested they should be.  My hypothesis suggests that tendency should have been particularly strong among independents:  George HW Bush was generally seen as being more interested in foreign affairs than in economics.   

*It drops to about 10%-15% if you ask whether people "lean" towards one party, but the Michigan surveys don't do that.  

It's the same old song

 I recently got an e-mail urging me to contribute a paper to the International Journal of Arts, Humanities & Social Science (IJAHSS).  That name rang a bell--last year I discovered that I was listed as the editor of the EON International Journal of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences.  Was the similarity in names just a coincidence?  I looked at the website for the IJAHSS and it looked a lot like what I remembered of the EIJAHSS--the major change is that there publication fee is up to $300 (previously $200).   They list an "Advisory Board" and an "Editorial Board" and I was relieved to find that I'm not included on either one.  The editor-in-chief is given as Val Dusek, of the Department of Philosophy at the University of New Hampshire.  I did a search for him and discovered that he died in May of this year.  I recognized one of the names on the editorial board, Ted Jelen of the University of Nevada Las Vegas.  A search revealed that he died in November 2017, several years before the journal started.  I haven't searched for any of the other people listed as members, but I wonder if there's a strategy there--dead people aren't going to find out and object to the misuse of their names.  

For they/them

 For many people, attachment to a party isn't primarily a matter agreement on specific issues, but a general sense that it's concerned with people like you or that you care about.  From time to time, Gallup has asked "which political party--the Republican or Democratic--do you think serves the interests of the following groups the best."  The most recent was in August 2024, when they asked about wealthy people, business and professional people, military veterans, small business people, retired people, recent immigrants who came to the US legally/recent immigrants who came to the US illegally [random half samples], parents of children under 18, black people, poor people, Hispanic people, women, labor union members and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.  The figure shows breaks opinions down by party.  The horizonal axis shows the percent of Republicans who think that the Republican party best serves the interests of each group:  for example, 57% of Republicans think that the Republicans are best for union members.  The vertical axis gives the percent of Democrats who think that the Democratic party best serves the group:  for example, 88% of Democrats think that the Democrats are best for union members.*

Over 90% of Democrats think that their party is best for LGBT people, women, legal immigrants, Hispanics, retired people, parents, black people, and poor people.  80-90% think that their party is best for small business, veterans, illegal immigrants, and union members.  Then there are two groups that trail:  business and professionals at 56% and wealthy people at 9%.  Among Republicans, only 19% say that their party is best for LGBT people and illegal immigrants; majorities think that the Republicans are best for all other groups, although they're generally not as strong as the majorities among Democrats.  

Eight of these groups were also included in a survey in 1990.  The next two figures show changes in Democratic and Republican perceptions between 1990 and 2024:

The diagonal lines indicate equal values in 1990 and 2024.  Points above the line mean that a higher percentage of partisans saw their party as better for the group in 2024 than in 1990.  For both Democrats and Republicans, seven of the eight are above the line.  This could be interpreted as a general increase in polarization:  strong partisans are more likely to see their party as better for (almost) everyone.  Another potential factor is feelings about the groups:  partisans will want to claim groups that they like and connect the other party to groups that they dislike.  For both Democrats and Republicans, wealthy people are the one exception to the general pattern:  I would interpret this as an example of a general rise of anti-elitist sentiment:  members of both parties are more reluctant to be associated with serving the interests of wealthy people.  A few other cases are notable for large increases between 1990 and 2024:  Republicans became considerably more likely to say that their party was best for black people (33% to 76%) and poor people (39% to 76%).   Again, I would say that this reflects a change in the way that Republicans like to think of themselves.  

*People who say that the parties are equal or who don't know are counted with those who say the other party is better.  

American wokeness

 A few years ago, I compiled information from a number of surveys and concluded that perceived discrimination against blacks increased sharply around 2015.   I recently ran across a question that I hadn't noticed then, which I'll use to check and update those conclusions.  The question is "In general, do you think blacks have as good a chance as white people in your community to get any kind of job for which they are qualified, or don't you think they have as good a chance?"  It was first asked in 1963, then again in 1978, then in 1989 and pretty frequently since then.*  The figure shows the percent who said they did have as good a chance minus the percent who said they didn't.

It increased between 1963 and 1978, then stayed about the same for several decades.  Agreement was higher in two surveys from January and October 2009, which probably reflected general optimism associated with Barack Obama's election as president.  In February 2015, 72% thought black people had an equal chance and 28% that they didn't.  The next time the question was asked was in July 2016:  64% said they did and 36% that they didn't.  In July 2020, it was 58% and 42%.  In July 2021, it was 55% and 44%.  People often say that there was a period of "peak woke" for a year or two after the murder of George Floyd, but that it's receded as maybe even been replaced by a backlash.  However, when the question was asked in June 2025, the results were almost the same as in 2020 and 2021 (55%-42%).  

In my earlier post, I suggested that the change in opinion was the result of media coverage and viral videos about police misconduct and the mistreatment of black people in everyday life.  But why did they find such a large and receptive audience?  In a book published in 1981, Samuel Huntington proposed that American politics was marked by periods of "creedal passion"--when substantial groups of people became upset about the gap between widely held values (the "American creed") and actual social conditions.  Of course, the "American creed" is hard to define, but I would say that a belief in social mobility for both individual and groups is a major part of it.  Americans accept a lot of inequality, but don't like anything that resembles a caste system, with hereditary groups at the top and bottom.  After the civil rights laws of the 1960s, the general view was that in a generation or two, the class distributions of blacks would be similar to that of whites.  But although there was some decline in racial inequality, it was slow--that is, there was increasing tension between the ideal of a mobile society and the reality of enduring inequality.    And if racial inequality is the result of discrimination, then it's clear what can and should be done to reduce it.  As a result,  people were attracted to that explanation:  the alternative was that we might just have to live with it for a long time, maybe forever.

That leads to the question of why the change in views on race hasn't led to substantial reforms--if anything, public policy has shifted away from trying to reduce racial inequality.  I'd say it was a lack of political leadership.  In its absence, the desire to do something led to actions that were unhelpful or sometimes counterproductive (e. g., dropping standardized tests in university admissions).  

*It referred to "negroes" the first time it was asked.  I also include a few that asked:  "Do you think that blacks who live in your community do or do not...have as good a chance as whites to get a job for which they're qualified?"

Inside and outside

 A couple of weeks ago, I had a post on declining public confidence in universities.  Most people who've written on this topic say that the cause is internal--something universities have done or failed to do-- and that they need to reform in order to win back support.   I suggested that the major cause was external:  that leading Republicans had become more critical of universities, and the public (especially Republicans) followed.  In this post, I'll elaborate on that point, focusing on one frequently mentioned factor:  political bias.  Megan McArdle writes "in the wider world, asking whether academia really skews left makes you look like an idiot or, slightly more charitably, like someone so encased in a bubble that they don’t even know what they’re missing."   In 2021, an Axios/Ipsos survey asked if you agreed or disagreed with the statements "colleges and universities are biased in favor of liberal ideas and beliefs" and "colleges and universities are biased in favor of conservative ideas and beliefs."  I combined those into five groups:  those who thought they were biased in favor of only liberal beliefs, only conservative beliefs, both liberal and conservative beliefs, not biased, and don't know.*

                                    All            College grads
Liberal only                37%            49%
Conservative only        9%               7%
Both                             9%                6%
Not biased                   14%              17%
Don't know                  32%              21%

Less than half of people believe that there is a liberal bias.  Among the public, 32% think that there is a conservative bias or no bias; among college graduates, it's 30%.  And even among college graduates, a lot of people say they don't know.  So in the "wider world," there isn't a consensus on the topic.  

These results illustrate a more general point.  Although there's a good deal of media coverage of higher education, it's a niche topic--it rarely appears on TV news or in local newspapers.  Also, there are no standard measures that are regularly reported--even someone who follows the issue just gets a collection of individual events. As a result, actual conditions have little influence on public perceptions.  But if a prominent politician speaks out about universities, that is a major story, and people have a sense of how to react:  it depends on how they generally feel about that politician.  So what political leaders say does make a difference.  

*People who said they were biased in favor of one side and didn't know about the other were counted as biased in favor of only that side.  Disagree on one and don't know about the other were counted as not biased, so the "don't know" category means don't know on both questions.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]