Highlights of 2011 - Institute for Policy Research - Northwestern ...

Politics, Institutions, AND Public Policy
a “Ponzi scheme” during a Republican presidential primary
debate. Despite such attacks, Cook pointed to strong and
stable public support for Social Security, devoid of polarization
by party, ideology, and age. Nearly 80 percent of respondents
said they considered it an “extremely important” program in
the 2010 General Social Survey, and that support has grown
by 15 percent since the early 1990s. Americans, however, are
concerned about the future viability of the program, which is
scheduled to stop paying full benefits in 2037 (after which time
it will only pay 75 percent). Cook is working on a project with
Moskowitz to examine how opinions about Social Security
have changed over the last 30 years, including knowledge of,
confidence in, and support for changes to the program.
How Presidents Use Public Opinion
With Larry Jacobs of the University of Minnesota, Druckman is
completing a book manuscript on the impact of public opinion
on the policy responsiveness of three presidents—Lyndon
Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. The researchers
rely on public statements, memoranda, and other archival
materials, including private polls run from the White House.
Scrutinizing private polls from the Reagan White House,
Druckman and Jacobs show that certain issue positions taken
by Reagan were responding to the concerns of the wealthy,
political independents, Baptists, born-again Protestants, and
conservative Republicans. The finding points to a more nuanced
understanding of how public opinion can be collected and
used at the highest levels of policymaking. It also demonstrates
how some economic and political interest groups can sway
government policy from the overall interests of the country.
opposite is true: Counter-frames generally are effective, and
repetition can strengthen those effects. Given the differences in
how individuals react, a single communication strategy might be
impossible to implement as the tactics that work on those with
weak viewpoints might backfire with those who hold stronger
ones. Chong is John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor
of Political Science.
American Abundance and the Paradox
of Poverty
IPR sociologist Monica Prasad’s forthcoming book, The Land
of Too Much (Harvard University Press), centers around three
key questions: Why does the United States have more poverty
than any other developed country? Why did it experience an
attack on state intervention starting in the 1980s, known today
as the neoliberal revolution? And why did it recently suffer the
greatest economic meltdown in 75 years? Prasad explores the
puzzle of why the United States has the most progressive tax
system of the advanced industrial world, yet one of the world’s
smallest public welfare states. She traces how U.S. economic
development grew from a model based on consumption
while European states focused on an economic model driven
by exports and investment. Fueled by a tradition of sweeping
government interventions, U.S. economic growth and strict
financial regulation increased private credit, which became the
means for meeting citizens’ needs—a stark contrast to the
cradle-to-grave social policies of a more protectionist Europe.
In turn, the U.S. economic path eventually wound its way to
more poverty, the “mortgage Keynesianism” that created the
housing bubble, and an anti-tax and anti-regulation sentiment
embodied by the recent rise of the Tea Party.
Counter-Framing
Druckman and fellow political scientist Dennis Chong, an
IPR associate, continue their work into further developing
their theory of how citizens form political opinions and how
political and media elites might affect these views. In particular
they have been testing their theories about which frames are
more likely to win when in competition and how long their
effects last. One of their latest papers looks at how electoral
campaigns and policy debates are dynamic processes that
unfold over time. In the contest for public opinion, each side
tries to frame issues to its advantage, but success also depends
on developing effective responses to opposition frames. In
this research, Druckman and Chong explore how the timing
and repetition of counter-frames affect their success. Using
an over-time experiment, they test several hypotheses about
whether the best counter-framing strategy depends on the
target audience. Their results show that, among individuals
who initially form strong opinions, a counter-frame has more
impact when it is not repeated and when more time elapses
between the initial frame and the counter-frame. But for those
people whose opinions are susceptible to change, the exact
IPR sociologist Monica Prasad finished a book on how the
United States came to have one of the world’s most progressive
tax systems, yet one of the world’s smallest public welfare states.
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