The American Public and the Room to Maneuver: Responsibility Attributions and Policy Efficacy in an Era of Globalization

Abstract

Despite the increasing integration of world markets, most political scientists contend that governments retain much policy "room to maneuver." Moreover, citizens presumably agree to increased trade and direct foreign investment because they believe their governments can cushion the impacts of market forces. In this sense, economic globalization is compatible with democracy. Rarely, however, are data provided that demonstrate citizens appreciation for the room to maneuver, let alone their positive evaluation of it.This paper reports results of the first study of American's attitudes about the room to maneuver. Employing data from an original experiment of randomly sampled adults, we address three questions. First, who do citizens identify as most responsible for the performance of the U.S. economy, elected officials or market forces? Second, how do individual attributes affect how citizens reason about the room to maneuver? And third, what is the relationship between judgments about the room to maneuver and satisfaction with democracy?We show that while a majority of Americans believe their governments retain the room to maneuver, there exists a substantial minority-mostly Republican identifiers and more educated citizens-which does not. Both this minority and the believers in room to maneuver majority are satisfied with democracy-seemingly because Republican partisans and the more educated see the room to maneuver as undesirable; they prefer less government, the kind of government that the Bush Administration presumably represents. Finally, as regards question wording effects, the results are mixed. On the one hand, contra other studies on globalization and public attitudes, we find no evidence of priming effects. However, attributions are shaped by the response set: when given an item attributing economic performance to national or international business cycles, a plurality of respondents attribute responsibility for national economic conditions to market forces rather than to elected officials. These findings require us to reconsider current thinking in international and comparative political economy on connections between market liberalization, policy efficacy, and democratic accountability.

In Times of Crisis: The Conditions of Pocketbook Effects

“…While a substantial portion of citizens continues to believe government officials possess room to maneuver the international economic landscape (Hellwig, Ringsmuth, and Freeman 2008), other voters now recognize that globalization constrains policymakers' abilities to manipulate economic outcomes (Hellwig 2001(Hellwig , 2008. But just because individuals may not see the government as primarily responsible for their personal material well-being (Kinder and Kiewiet 1979;Kramer 1971) does not mean that pocketbook concerns should not enter into their political assessments.…”

Survey Experiments in International Political Economy: What We (Don't) Know About the Backlash Against Globalization

“…In one example of the blame assignment design, Hellwig et al (2008) conducted a set of survey experiments of nationally representative Americans that randomly added the option to blame "national and international business cycles" for macroeconomic outcomes, along with the consistent multiple-choice options of "Congress," "president," "working people," and "business people." In groups that were assigned the additional option to blame business cycles, the proportion of respondents who blamed Congress and the president decreased by 29 percentage points, and 35.7% of respondents chose to blame business cycles.…”

“…Citizens' belief that their government can control globalization is often an assumption underlying the link between citizens' economic hardship and their demand for government protection, yet the extent to which citizens hold this belief varies across countries and over time. Hellwig et al (2008) show through a series of existing public opinion surveys that American respondents are generally more likely to blame elected officials, such as Congress and the president, for macroeconomic outcomes (64%) than their Western European counterparts. In contrast, the majority of European respondents in a 2001 survey agreed with the statement that "globalization cannot be controlled by governments" (Hellwig et al 2008).…”

Economic globalisation, the perceived room to manoeuvre of national governments, and electoral participation: Evidence from the 2001 British General Election

“…For work investigating into the macro-level determinants of room to manoeuvre perceptions, in particular objective levels of economic globalisation, see Duch and Stevenson (2006), Hellwig (2015) and Vowles (2008;2016); on the individual level determinants, see Hellwig et al (2008). I discuss the link between objective levels of economic globalisation and room to manoeuvre perceptions in the conclusion.…”