Policy feedback and public opinion

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• EGPP: European Governance and Politics Programme
• SOLID: Policy Crisis and Crisis Politics. Sovereignty, Solidarity and Identity in the EU post 2008

Join this conversation with Marius Busemeyer, based on a co-authored article in the British Journal of Political Science ('Beyond positive and negative', Busemeyer, Abrassart and Nezil 2021).

The study of policy feedback on public attitudes and policy preferences has become a growing area of research in recent years. Scholars in the tradition of Pierson usually argue that positive, self-reinforcing feedback effects dominate (that is, attitudes are commensurate with existing institutions), whereas the public thermostat model developed by Wlezien and Soroka expects negative, self-undermining feedback. Moving beyond the blunt distinction between positive and negative feedback, this article develops and proposes a more fine-grained typology of feedback effects that distinguishes between accelerating, self-reinforcing, and self-undermining, specific and general, as well as long- and short-term dynamic feedback. The authors apply this typology in an analysis of public opinion on government spending in different areas of the welfare state for twenty-one OECD countries, employing a pseudo-panel approach. The empirical analysis confirms the usefulness of this typology since it shows that different types of feedback effects can be observed empirically.

By invitation only.