Partisan bias and citizen satisfaction, confidence, and trust in the U.S. Federal Government

Forrest V. Morgeson III, Pratyush Nidhi Sharma, Udit Sharma and G. Tomas M. Hult

Public Management Review, 2022, vol. 24, issue 12, 1933-1956

Abstract: While the U.S. federal government has adopted myriad initiatives mandating collection of citizen evaluations of its services, scant research exists into how prior biases such as those arising from political partisanship affect these performance metrics. In this study, we examine a multi-year sample asking U.S. citizens about their experiences with federal government services (n = 8,341). Guided by motivated reasoning theory, the results show that partisanship affects citizen satisfaction, confidence, and trust in the federal government during both Democratic (2015–2016) and Republican (2017–2018) presidential administrations. However, the results indicate an asymmetric ‘president-in-power’ effect, complicating efforts to interpret this data dynamically and over time as power changes hands.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1080/14719037.2021.1945667

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