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The Pulse Disparaging marks for legislature from poll By ELLEN M. DRAN
Criticism of governmental institutions, especially legislative bodies, is something of an American tradition. Mark Twain's disparaging remark about Congress over a hundred years ago would not seem out of place on an editorial page today: "It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."
Now we have "facts and figures." In Illinois, it's the General Assembly that has become the target of criticism. Since 1984 the Illinois Policy Survey has asked Illinoisans to evaluate government institutions and officials. The results show a steady decline in the proportion of Illinois residents who rate the General Assembly excellent or good (see figure 1). For the first time since 1984, the number of poor-very poor ratings surpassed the good-excellent in 1991. Even more precipitous was the drop in the evaluation of the legislature when compared to a 1968 poll (by the Comparative State Elections Project): from 44 percent excellent-good to 16 percent. There is no lack of commentary explaining the diminishing public confidence in the General Assembly. Some have suggested that several years of negative campaigning for short-term electoral gain have done long-term damage to the reputation of all legislatures. Some suggest that Illinois' partisanly divided government — a Republican governor and a Democratic-controlled legislature — has produced unseemly bickering that has turned off the electorate on state government itself. Another possible cause of falling confidence is the gridlock in the institutions of state government, which leaves major problems to fester: crime, drugs, poor education, crumbling infrastructure, inadequate health care. The list goes on and on. At the root of all may be economic decline, which seems to defy solution by national institutions that are suffering their own gridlock. Whatever the causes, Illinois citizens see no end to problems and the rising tax bills from governments unable to resolve the problems; they vent their frustration on the impersonal institutions of government. The call for state legislative term limitation is part of that frustration, but it may also be stimulating low evaluations of the institution. The thinking might go something like this: If there is so much talk of restricting legislative tenure, there must be 30/April 1992/Ilinois Issues
something wrong with the institution, its members, or both. While the Illinois legislature is held in low esteem, individual members do better. The same dichotomy has frequently been observed for the U.S. Congress and individual representatives. In Illinois in the 1991 survey, only 16 percent rate the General Assembly good or excellent, but 25 percent rate their own state legislators this highly. At the other end of the scale, only 12 percent say their own representatives are doing a poor or very poor job, but 20 percent rate the General Assembly's job as poor. Democrats and Republicans do not differ in their ratings of either the General Assembly or their own legislators (see table 1). There is also little correlation between the educational level of respondents and their ratings of their own legislators, but the most highly educated citizens are more critical than others of the institution. Also, individuals with the highest level of political information (the political information scale measures level of knowledge of state politics) are somewhat more critical of their own legislators than their less informed counterparts but markedly more critical of the legislature as a whole. In sum, as the knowledge level of state political affairs increases, so does a negative attitude toward the legislature and legislators.
When giving reasons for ratings of the institution and their own legislators, the more negative the evaluation, the more likely were the respondents to have something specific in mind (see table 2). Sixty-six percent of respondents who thought the General Assembly is doing a poor job cited a specific reason, compared to only 20 percent of those who think its performance is good. The percentages are similar for the evaluation of individual legislators. From analysis of the reasons respondents give for choosing their ratings, by the way, it appears that an evaluation of "fair" is usually interpreted negatively. Among those who gave a reason for a "fair," "poor" or "very poor" rating of the General Assembly, the most frequent pertained to education issues (20 percent), followed by complaints about taxes or spending allocations (12 percent) and the budget delay at the end of the 1991 fiscal year (10 percent). The rest were a variety of reasons mostly related to policy, including gambling, the third Chicago airport, abortion and child care. The reasons for negative evaluations of individual legislators were more scattered, but education concerns were most frequently mentioned (19 percent) by those who rated their own legislators fair or lower. Unfortunately for state government in general, and the legislature in particular, negative events and assessments have a strong staying power. These impressions are constantly reenforced by bad news from the economy, seemingly intractable social problems and increasingly mean-spirited politics. The tradition of criticism is likely to continue, but today there is little of Mark Twain's humor about it. Ellen M. Dran is a research associate in the Center for Governmental Studies at Northern Illinois University, which has conducted the Illinois Policy Survey since 1984. April 1992/Illinois Issues/31 |
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