Published on the LSE USAPP blog on 31 October 2019
In a highly polarized political environment, it is not surprising that even basic democratic institutions become a matter of partisan conflict. The Federal Government of the United States is no exception in this respect. As research shows, partisans trust the government more when their party controls the Congress or the presidency. Yet, it seems that it is mostly conservatives and Republicans that strongly derive their support for the federal government depending on who sits in the Oval office.
In a recent research with John Jost and Vishal Singh, we find that in the United States, conservatives trust the government more than liberals when the president in office shares their own ideology. Furthermore, liberals are more willing to grant legitimacy to democratic governments led by conservatives than vice versa. A similar difference applies to Republicans compared to Democrats. This is what we call an “asymmetrical president-in-power effect”, namely that support for the government fluctuates more among conservatives and Republicans than liberals and Democrats depending on who is in the White House, in line with recent commentary.