The Dynamics of Representation: The Public, Politics, and Budgetary Policy

这项研究调查的重点是民意和政策随时间的相互关系。虽然公众舆论是否会影响政策有很多人知道，但公众本身是否会对政策行为做出反应，根据政策制定者的实际行动调整其对政策活动的偏好，这一点我们知之甚少。反应灵敏的公众实际上会表现得像一个恒温器，一旦偏离有利的政策温度，就会产生相应调整政策的信号，一旦充分调整，信号就会停止。这项研究调查考虑了公众是否表现出恒温行为，并主要依赖于对预算政策和公众对一段时间内支出偏好的统计分析，涉及一系列预算意见领域。这项研究既探讨了公众对预算政策增加支出的偏好的影响，也探讨了这些决定反过来对公众偏好的影响。初步分析表明，公众对决策过程的投入与决策过程产生的产出之间存在着很强的互惠关系。在最简单的意义上，当公众想要更多的支出时，它得到的更多，而当它得到更多的时候，它不想要更多。这项研究在公共政策/舆论相互关系方面产生了重要的见解。

This research investigation focuses on the interrelationship between public opinion and policy over time. While a lot is known about whether public opinion influences policy, little is known about whether the public is itself responsive to policy behavior, adjusting its preferences for policy activity in response to what policymakers acutally do. A responsive public would effectively behave like a thermostat, where a deaprture from the favored policy temperature produces a signal to adjust policy accordingly and, once sufficiently adjusted, the signal stops. This research investigation considers whether the public behaves thermostatically, and relies primarily on statistical analyses of budgetary policy and public preferences for spending over time, across a range of budget opinion domains. The research addresses both the influence of public preferences for more spending on budgetary policy and the influence of those decisions, in turn, on public preferences. Preliminary analysis suggests that there are strong reciprocal connections between public inputs into the policymaking process and the outputs the process generates. In its simplest sense, when the public wants more spending it gets more, and when it gets more it doesn't want as much more. This research produces important insights in the public policy/public opinion interrelationship.