Thinking About Government Authority: Constitutional Rules and Political Context in Citizens Assessments of Judicial, Legislative, and Executive Authority

Abstract

This study replicates and extends previous research on how citizens think about the appropriate exercise of authority across the three branches of government. Three similarly designed experiments with nationally representative samples confirm that what individuals are told about compliance with decision-making rules matters across institutions, but so does the political context in which officials are acting. Significantly, different aspects of political context interact with rules in unique ways in assessments of the appropriate exercise of judicial, legislative, and executive authority. Evidence indicates that citizens’ feelings about the President and their policy preferences are more important in assessments of the legitimacy of unilateral executive action in the Trump administration than they were during Obama’s presidency. This could reflect an erosion in the importance of constitutional norms in citizens’ assessments of executive authority, but other possible explanations specific to our inquiry are also discussed.