Political beliefs, views about technocracy, and energy and climate policy preferences

Abstract

The use of technocratic decision-making, where policy decisions are made by elite experts, is an important aspect of policymaking in the United States. However, little work has examined public opinion about technocracy. Using data from a representative sample of the United States ( n = 1200), I explore differences in support for technocracy and the implications of that support for views about politically controversial energy sources and climate policies. Overall, I find that liberal Democrats, moderate/conservative Democrats, and moderate/liberal Republicans were more likely than conservative Republicans and moderate independents to support technocratic decision-making. In addition, I find that as support for technocracy increases, so does support for energy sources and climate policies; however, there are significant interaction effects across political beliefs.

Who supports science-related populism? A nationally representative survey on the prevalence and explanatory factors of populist attitudes toward science in Switzerland

“…RQ2 analyses only tested a monotonic linear association of political orientation and science-related populist attitudes—but are less capable to discern other relationships discussed in the literature, e.g. relationships that are U-shaped [ 6 ] or occur only for a specific range of political orientations [ 59 ]. We scrutinized these scenarios with two tests: We fitted a quadratic regression model explaining science-related populist attitudes with all explanatory variables used in the RQ2 regression plus the square of political orientation.…”

“…Yet others argued that critical attitudes toward certain scientific disciplines are more pronounced among left-leaning voters [ 58 ]. Further scholarship indicates that examining public beliefs about science requires discerning different nuances of political orientations [ 59 ].…”

Exploring channels and gaps in information dissemination and acquisition among energy scientists and the public: The southeast Asian context

“…Access to information helps in promoting environmentally friendly energy consumption habits, because accessibility can affect people's knowledge which, in turn, may lead to pro-environmental behaviors [74]. However, the unequal distribution of information has put the public in an inferior position to other stakeholders [35]. To examine what sources are available to laypeople and how they navigate these sources among the information agents, we asked the following question: RQ2: How does the public get energy-related information?…”

“…As information comes from scientists and is distributed through multiple channels, it is necessary to examine where it goes and how different information agents are located on the extended map of scientific information. Public communication of scientists has been widely investigated on issues of environment and climate change [ 34 , 35 ]. However, energy communication is still an emerging field with much uncertainty to clarify [ 36 ].…”