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Freedom of the Press and Public Responsiveness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 November 2019

Dan Hiaeshutter-Rice Open the ORCID record for Dan Hiaeshutter-Rice [Opens in a new window] ,
Stuart Soroka Open the ORCID record for Stuart Soroka [Opens in a new window]  and
Christopher Wlezien Open the ORCID record for Christopher Wlezien [Opens in a new window]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Public responsiveness to policy is contingent on there being a sufficient amount of clear and accurate information about policy available to citizens. It is of some significance then, that there are increasing concerns about limits being placed on media outlets around the world. We examine the impact of these limits on the public’s ability to respond meaningfully to policy by analyzing cross-national variation in the opinion–policy link. Using new measures on spending preferences from Wave 4 of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, merged with OECD data on government spending and Freedom House measures of press freedom, we assess the role of mass media in facilitating public responsiveness. We find evidence that when media are weak, so too is public responsiveness to policy. These results highlight the critical role that accurate, unfettered media can play in modern representative democracy.

Type
Article
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , June 2021 , pp. 479 - 491
Copyright
© American Political Science Association 2019

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Footnotes

*

Data replication sets are available in Harvard Dataverse at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/OGQJXI

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Supplementary material: Link

Hiaeshutter-Rice et al. Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/OGQJXI
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