Public Opinion Quarterly Advance Access published online on October 26, 2007
Public Opinion Quarterly, doi:10.1093/poq/nfm043
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Examining Citizens' Beliefs that Government Should Run Like Business
Address correspondence to AMY GANGL; gangla{at}union.edu
According to both scholars and cultural critics, a majority of Americans increasingly prefer market mechanisms to political processes or else simply equate democratic government with free markets. Some cultural critics go so far as to identify an emerging consensus among Americans that government is most fair and just when it runs like a business. This manuscript draws on analyses of a split-ballot framing experiment of 400 adults. The results suggest that beliefs that government would be more effective if it were run like a business are somewhat malleable. When people are presented with some of the reasons that democratic government works slowly and deliberatively, they are more likely to evaluate political processes positively compared to when they are exposed to information that suggests that democratic processes should work more efficiently like a business.
AMY GANGL is with Political Science, Union College, Social Sciences Building, Schenectady, NY 12302, USA. The author would like to thank John Zumbrunnen, John Sullivan, Wendy Rahn, Jamie Druckman, Gene Borgida, Vanessa Baird and Zoe Oxley as well as the editor and three anonymous reviewers for very helpful comments and suggestions.