Currents
September 2018
3
Disconnect
U.S. Juxtaposed
“The Government-Citizen Dis-
connect” a new book by Cornell polit-
ical scientist Suzanne Mettler investi-
gates this paradox. What follows is
part of an interview by Vox.com.
“Government is not the solution to
our problem; government is the prob-
lem.”
President Ronald Reagan uttered
those words in his 1981 inaugural
address to the country. He was refer-
ring specifically to the government’s
role in helping bring the US out of an
economic crisis. But since then, it’s
become a kind of blanket truism in
Republican circles. The government
is a perennial boogeyman, and the
main policy objective on the right has
been to reduce the role of govern-
ment in public life.
But there’s a problem: Many who
accept this dogma are the very peo-
ple who need the government the
most. Research shows, for instance,
that Republican states are dispro-
portionately dependent on federal
services.
She looks at historical govern-
ment data as well as surveys of
Americans’ experiences with 21 fed-
eral social policies, including food
stamps, Social Security, Medicaid,
and the home mortgage interest
deduction.
And what she found was fasci-
nating: It turns out that people’s atti-
tudes toward welfare are a strong
predictor of how they’ll vote. But
even more interesting, the types of
federal benefits people get - and
whether they’re “visible” like food
stamps and Medicaid or “invisible”
like tax breaks - influence how they
perceive their own personal depend-
ency on social welfare programs.
Sean Illing: Your book focuses
on a contradiction at the center of
our politics: the disconnect between
citizens and the government they
rely on. How did this paradox
evolve? How did people become so
alienated from their government?
Suzanne Mettler: We’re in this
weird situation in which people have
to come to rely on government more
and more, and at the same time gov-
ernment has required less and less
of people. Now, you’d expect this to
mean that people’s attitudes toward
government have become favorable,
but the opposite is true. And this is
the paradox I’m grappling with in the
book.
It turns out that how much a per-
son actually benefits from govern-
ment services matters very little in
terms of shaping their attitude toward
government. And that’s true even
when controlling for all sorts of other
factors. About 44 percent of Ameri-
cans have unfavorable views of wel-
fare. And the people who have very
unfavorable views about welfare
continued on page 5 >
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