Americans' Attitudes Toward Federalism.

ABSTRACT: Contemporary and historical political debates often revolve around principles of federalism, in which governing authority is divided across levels of government. Despite the prominence of these debates, existing scholarship provides relatively limited evidence about the nature and structure of Americans' preferences for decentralization. We develop a new survey-based measure to characterize attitudes toward subnational power and evaluate it with a national sample of more than 2000 American adults. We find that preferences for devolution vary considerably both across and within states, and reflect individuals' ideological orientations and evaluations of government performance. Overall, our battery produces a reliable survey instrument for evaluating preferences for federalism and provides n

SUBMITTER: Rendleman H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9438388 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature