Does Receiving Government Assistance Shape Political Attitudes? Evidence from Agricultural Producers - - Political Science Now

When individuals person benefits from authorities programs, does it impact their attitudes toward those programs oregon toward authorities generally? A increasing lit blends argumentation feedback mentation and governmental behaviour probe to research these questions, but truthful acold it has focused astir exclusively connected societal policies specified arsenic the Affordable Care Act. In this article, we absorption connected a precise antithetic acceptable of authorities programs that scope a much conservative, agrarian population: cultivation assistance. Our survey ties administrative records connected information successful USDA workplace assistance programs to an original, first-of-its-kind survey measuring cultivation producers’ governmental attitudes. We find that receiving cultivation assistance is sometimes related to producers’ views of the programme delivering the benefits, but it depends connected the divisiveness of the programme and—for highly partisan programs—recipients’ ideology. However, receiving national cultivation assistance is not associated with much affirmative views of government.