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      Neither the Purse Nor the Sword: Dynamics of Public Confidence in the Supreme Court

      American Political Science Review
      Cambridge University Press (CUP)

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          Abstract

          Systematic study of changes in support for the U.S. Supreme Court across time has not been undertaken. Armed with a time series of observations from 1966 through 1984, I provide a description of the ebb and flow of public esteem for the Court. Then I outline and test several plausible propositions about the dynamics of support. Statistical analyses compel the conclusion that apart from a relatively constant core of support, increases in judicial activism, inflation, and solicitude for the rights of the accused decreased confidence in the Court; the events surrounding Watergate and increases in presidential popularity and the public salience of the Court brought about increased popular esteem for the high bench. Previous scholars, based on cross-sections of individuals, have emphasized the public's ignorance of and disinterest in the Supreme Court and judicial policy making. The responsiveness of public support for the Court in the aggregate to political events and shifts in the behavior of the justices stands in stark contrast to the conventional image of United States citizenry as singularly out of touch with and unmoved by the Supreme Court.

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          Most cited references24

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          Comment: The Political Relevance of Trust in Government.

          “In God We Trust: Everyone Else Pays Cash.” America's political leaders should not pretend to godliness; no one will be fooled. According to prestigious biennial national surveys, the government's credit rating has steadily declined as a result of a disastrous foreign investment and growing consumer resistance to its “line” of products. Neither the country's present management nor its most prominent rivals inspire public confidence. How, then, can the political system rebuild its depleted reserves of political trust, the basis of future growth and stability? Will “one good season,” better advertising, new blood in the boardroom or product innovation be sufficient? Or is a drastic restructuring of the regime's organization and operating procedures the only alternative to liquidation?
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            Explaining Presidential Popularity: How Ad Hoc Theorizing, Misplaced Emphasis, and Insufficient Care in Measuring One's Variables Refuted Common Sense and Led Conventional Wisdom Down the Path of Anomalies

            Within the last ten years a new conventional wisdom has surfaced in political science which tells us that presidents inexorably become less popular over time. Not much else matters. Neither the economy, nor the Vietnam War, not even Watergate seems to have had much independent effect on presidential popularity once time is taken into account. Before embracing these conclusions we need to reconsider the method that produced them. I argue that previous research too willingly accepted time as an explanatory variable, enshrouding it with theoretical meaning. To preserve its explanatory power alternative, substantive variables were shortchanged in their operational definitions and measurement. In this article I reverse the emphasis. Here, time is rejected as an explanatory variable and is employed only as a diagnostic indicator of the adequacy of the equations. A variety of alternative representations of real-world forces such as the economy and war are tested and some considerably improve the time-series correlation between the environment and presidential popularity. With these substantive variables I propose a simpler, if less glamorous, theory of presidential popularity consisting of two hypotheses: first, popularity is related to real events and conditions, and second, that it responds slowly to environmental change. Popularity is then both experiential and incremental. The findings for Presidents Truman through Nixon support this common-sense view. The Korean War (measured by U.S. casualties), the Vietnam War (measured by the number of bombing missions over North Vietnam and the U.S. war dead), the economy (especially six-month changes in consumer prices), Watergate, international “rally” events, and early term surges of approval all contribute independently to short-term fluctuations in presidential popularity. Moreover, as predicted, popularity appears to be autoregressive even when represented by an instrumental variables surrogate measure to minimize serial correlation. When the equations are specified in this way, time proves to be unnecessary in order to explain trends in presidential popularity.
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              Rejoinder to “Comment” by Jack Citrin: Political Discontent or Ritualism?.

              In 1958 only 22 per cent of the total population felt that they could not “trust the government in Washington to do what is right” all or most of the time. By the fall of 1972 that figure had climbed to 45 per cent. Furthermore, the percentage of eligible voters participating in the 1972 presidential election was the lowest it has been since 1948; crises and scandals have continually plagued the government since the Watergate revelations; and the economic conditions of the country have provoked widespread uncertainty and anxiety among the populace. There is good reason, then, for the intense current interest in attitudes of political disaffection and alienation.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                applab
                American Political Science Review
                Am Polit Sci Rev
                Cambridge University Press (CUP)
                0003-0554
                1537-5943
                December 1986
                August 1 2014
                : 80
                : 04
                : 1209-1226
                Article
                10.1017/S0003055400185077
                dba88f22-0bf5-4f1a-9a0c-0220c2414c8c
                © 2014
                History

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