'Intuitive Federalism' and Public Opinion Toward Government

Abstract

Recent research has shown that citizens attribute different policy responsibilities to the national, state, and local governments. We call this set of public orientations "intuitive federalism.'' Building upon previous work in this area, we use new and unique data from a national-level internet survey of the American electorate to confirm the existence of meaningful public opinion on topics of federalism. We also show that attitudes about the policy aspects of federalism influence citizens' more general assessments of government and the political system. Specifically, satisfaction with government and society is affected not only by what public officials are doing, but also by which levels of government are doing it. American citizens possess relatively sophisticated understandings of federalism and this has important consequences for broader evaluations of the political system.