In 2007, the Pew Global Attitudes Project asked people for their reaction to the statement : "The state [or government] controls too much of our daily lives." In the United States, 28% said they completely agreed and 37% mostly agreed. This was more agreement than in Canada (a combined total of 59% agreeing), Sweden and Spain (both 61%), but no different from Britain and France (64 and 65%), and less than Italy and Germany (73% and 74%).
In less developed countries, people are generally less likely to agree, but there is a lot of variation. For example, in Bangladesh, 43% completely agree and 41% mostly agree, but in Peru, only 8% completely agreed and 23% mostly agreed. There are some general patterns--for example, agreement is relatively low in East Asian countries--but also a good deal of variation among countries that seem pretty similar in other ways: for example, Brazil (76% agree) and Argentina (40%).
It would be interesting to try to come up with some sort of objective measurement of state control of daily life, and then normalize these poll results against that baseline level. At least in theory, Americans are less predisposed to tolerate government intrusion than Old World statists are. Whether one thinks that particular aspects of the regulatory state are good or bad, it should be possible to identify some reasonable number of parameters of state intrusiveness to quantify in various countries.
ReplyDeleteYes, I was thinking along those lines. It's easy to get measures of the scope of the welfare state, but harder for other forms of regulation. Still, it would be interesting to try. Of course, "too much" has to be understood relative to what people think is the right amount. The similarity of the numbers for the US and western Europe suggests that, in stable democracies, people get about the amount of government that they want.
DeleteI don't know, the particular numbers for the US and western Europe suggest to me that people are getting about 20% more government than they want.
DeleteI figure people will tend to say that there's relatively too much control over themselves and too little over other. Given the way the question is worded they're likely to be thinking about themselves when they answer. So it's hard to draw a conclusion from the level: I'm struck by the lack of obvious variation among countries with different policies.
DeleteI'm no expert in survey design but it does strike me that the question is poorly worded. As you imply, nobody is going to be eager to say that someone else - whether it's the state or a private actor - should have more control over them, so it's maybe not surprising that the responses to the question as worded are going to skew toward the "agree" end. A more neutrally framed question might use some term like "regulates" or "is involved in" rather than "controls."
ReplyDeleteOr, maybe all of that puts more weight on subtleties of wording than a survey directed at the general public supports. In my own line of work, designing a questionnaire (such as one to be put to a jury or jury pool) typically results in every single word being haggled over, batted back and forth between adversaries, so that every possible biasing nuance is supposedly wrung out of it.
Yes, I think it would have been better to put the issue as a choice between positions--something like too much control vs. government needs to do more to protect people. But if you do it that way, some people will object that the options aren't mutually exclusive.
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