Connecting Economic Interests and Policy Preferences: The Role of Attitudes Toward Authority.

How do Americans connect their economic interests to their policy preferences? This paper analyzes conversations from multiple visits with 31 preexisting informal groups meeting in 23 communities sampled across a Midwestern state. The analyses focus on conversations about health care reform. They reveal that attitudes toward government are a central part of the way people structure their policy preferences. However, how this works varies by both individual and community economic background and perceptions of these backgrounds. In groups composed of people from more working-class backgrounds, people commonly express skepticism toward government as part of a general perspective of skepticism toward institutions of authority in general. In groups of professionals, people question and criticize government, but not authority in general. These perspectives are commonly intertwined with references to geography that operate as metaphors for resource inequalities, identification with sets of values and social classes, and perceptions of the exercise of authority. Recognizing these patterns is key to understanding the connections between economic interests and policy preferences and the possibilities for social policy reform. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]