In all three areas, a sizable majority of Republicans say the government should play a major role, but far fewer say the government is currently doing a good job. The pattern is much different when it comes to the federal government helping people get out of poverty and ensuring access to health care.
On these issues, low performance ratings correspond with small percentages of Republicans seeing a major role for the federal government.
As with Republicans, Democratic views of government role and performance differ the most over the issue of immigration.
This pattern generally holds across the issues where Democratic ratings of government performance are relatively low or mixed. Ensuring access to quality education and maintaining infrastructure are two other areas where Democratic evaluations of government performance are tepid but support for government playing a major role remains high.
Among Democrats, advancing space exploration stands out as the one issue for which there is not majority support for a major government role. Among Republicans and Republican leaners, those who describe themselves as conservative are more critical of government performance than those who describe their political views as moderate or liberal.
The largest ideological gap among Republicans is over the job the government is doing strengthening the economy. But on poverty and immigration, fewer than half of both groups say the government is doing a good job. There are no issues for which moderate and liberal Republicans are more critical of government performance than conservatives.
However, there are several issues for which there are hardly any ideological gaps among Republicans, including protecting the environment and ensuring safe food and medicine. Among Democrats and Democratic leaners, liberals are more critical of government performance than moderates and conservatives on some issues central to the party, such as protecting the environment, ensuring access to education and helping people get out of poverty.
On other key issues, such as strengthening the economy and managing immigration, there are no significant divides between the two groups. Two of the front-running candidates for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have made the implicit assumption that Americans want government to get much more involved in solving our nation's problems and righting wrongs across a wide variety of societal functions, including healthcare, education, the way businesses operate, energy, agriculture, housing, banking, and personal income and wealth.
At the same time, President Donald Trump has criticized the size and scope of the very government he heads, and the Republican Party has argued that "much of what the federal government does can be improved, much should be replaced, and much needs to be done away with or returned to the states. Neither of these approaches is exactly what the American people want, as we have seen. Certainly, as a result of the clash of these two approaches, some acceptable solutions may emerge.
But it would be much more effective if political candidates recognized that the public is ambivalent about its federal government and doesn't accept rigid, ideological assumptions that the federal government is either the salvation for the nation's problems or the bane of the nation's existence.
The public would benefit most, the data show, from reasoned debate, discussion and justifications for exactly what the government should or should not be doing in each major area of our society, with all the risks and benefits that involvement entails. Learn more about public opinion metrics that matter for the presidential election at Gallup's Presidential Election Center. Search, examine, compare and export nearly a century of primary data. Subscribe to the Gallup News brief and real time alerts.
Stay up to date with our latest insights. While Americans continue to evaluate socialism negatively, they have become somewhat more open to an expanded role for government in solving the country's problems. Fewer than half of Americans agree that Donald Trump or any of the top three Democratic presidential candidates have the personality and leadership qualities that a president should.
Republicans' and Democrats' preferences for wanting a president who sets a good moral example or one who agrees with them on issues are different now than during the Clinton presidency. Americans feel the government has too much power but appreciate services the government provides. Ministry of Interior Ministries of Interior carry the responsibility for a broad range of law enforcement services from community police through to investigations, border management and penitentiary management.
Internal Management of Law Enforcement Institutions All law enforcement institutions require robust internal management systems to ensure the effective delivery of services, prevent corruption and the waste of limited financial and human resources. Human Resources Management Transparent and effective human resources management provides a robust means for enhancing professionalism among law enforcement personnel, including their civilian management and civilian staff.
Financial Resources Management Financial resources management is based on the premise that the law enforcement sector is subject to the same principles of public sector management as other sectors. Anti-Corruption and Building Integrity A key issue uniting approaches to human and financial resources management is the need for a strong anti-corruption framework. Codes of Conduct Interior ministries need to ensure that each law enforcement agency adheres to codes of conduct formulated at national and international levels.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ministries of Foreign Affairs can positively influence the delivery of transparent and accountable security policies in a variety of ways. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits.
Manage consent. Close Privacy Overview This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website.
We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent.
You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. Necessary Necessary. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Non-necessary". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
It does not store any personal data. Non-necessary Non-necessary. Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. An excellent example of a program of this sort is the United States educational program for veterans after World War II. Each veteran who qualified was given a maximum sum per year that could be spent at any institution of his choice, provided it met certain minimum standards.
Another is the arrangement in France whereby the state pays part of the costs for students attending non-state schools. The imposition of minimum standards on privately conducted schools, as suggested above, might not be enough to achieve this result.
The issue can be illustrated concretely in terms of schools run by religious groups. Schools run by different religious groups will, it can be argued, instill sets of values that are inconsistent with one another and with those instilled in other schools; in this way they convert education into a divisive rather than a unifying force.
Carried to its extreme, this argument would call not only for governmentally administered schools, but also for compulsory attendance at such schools. Existing arrangements in the United States and most other Western countries are a halfway house.
Governmentally administered schools are available but not required. However, the link between the financing of education and its administration places other schools at a disadvantage: they get the benefit of little or none of the governmental funds spent on education — a situation that has been the source of much political dispute, particularly, of course, in France.
The elimination of this disadvantage might, it is feared, greatly strengthen the parochial schools and so render the problem of achieving a common core of values even more difficult. This argument has considerable force. But it is by no means clear either that it is valid or that the denationalizing of education would have the effects suggested. On grounds of principle, it conflicts with the preservation of freedom itself; indeed, this conflict was a major factor retarding the development of state education in England.
How draw a line between providing for the common social values required for a stable society on the one hand, and indoctrination inhibiting freedom of thought and belief on the other? Here is another of those vague boundaries that it is easier to mention than to define. In terms of effects, the denationalization of education would widen the range of choice available to parents. Given, as at present, that parents can send their children to government schools without special payment, very few can or will send them to other schools unless they too are subsidized.
Parochial schools are at a disadvantage in not getting any of the public funds devoted to education; but they have the compensating advantage of being funded by institutions that are willing to subsidize them and can raise funds to do so, whereas there are few other sources of subsidies for schools.
Let the subsidy be made available to parents regardless where they send their children — provided only that it be to schools that satisfy specified minimum standards — and a wide variety of schools will spring up to meet the demand.
Parents could express their views about schools directly, by withdrawing their children from one school and sending them to another, to a much greater extent than is now possible. In general, they can now take this step only by simultaneously changing their place of residence.
For the rest, they can express their views only through cumbrous political channels. Perhaps a somewhat greater degree of freedom to choose schools could be made available also in a governmentally administered system, but it is hard to see how it could be carried very far in view of the obligation to provide every child with a place. Here, as in other fields, competitive private enterprise is likely to be far more efficient in meeting consumer demands than either nationalized enterprises or enterprises run to serve other purposes.
The final result may therefore well be less rather than more parochial education. Another special case of the argument that governmentally conducted schools are necessary to keep education a unifying force is that private schools would tend to exacerbate class distinctions.
Given greater freedom about where to send their children, parents of a kind would flock together and so prevent a healthy intermingling of children from decidedly different backgrounds. Again, whether or not this argument is valid in principle, it is not at all clear that the stated results would follow.
Under present arrangements, particular schools tend to be peopled by children with similar backgrounds thanks to the stratification of residential areas. In addition, parents are not now prevented from sending their children to private schools. Only a highly limited class can or does do so, parochial schools aside, in the process producing further stratification.
The widening of the range of choice under a private system would operate to reduce both kinds of stratification. As in other cases of natural monopoly, the alternatives are unrestricted private monopoly, state-controlled private monopoly, and public operation — a choice among evils. This argument is clearly valid and significant, although its force has been greatly weakened in recent decades by improvements in transportation and increasing concentration of the population in urban communities.
The arrangement that perhaps comes closest to being justified by these considerations — at least for primary and secondary education — is a mixed one under which governments would continue to administer some schools but parents who chose to send their children to other schools would be paid a sum equal to the estimated cost of educating a child in a government school, provided that at least this sum was spent on education in an approved school.
It would meet the just complaints of parents that if they send their children to private nonsubsidized schools they are required to pay twice for education — once in the form of general taxes and once directly — and in this way stimulate the development and improvement of such schools. The interjection of competition would do much to promote a healthy variety of schools. It would do much, also, to introduce flexibility into school systems.
Not least of its benefits would be to make the salaries of school teachers responsive to market forces. It would thereby give governmental educational authorities an independent standard against which to judge salary scales and promote a more rapid adjustment to changes in conditions of demand or supply. Why is it that our educational system has not developed along these lines? A full answer would require a much more detailed knowledge of educational history than I possess, and the most I can do is to offer a conjecture.
The development of such machinery is a phenomenon of modern times that has come to full flower only with the enormous extension of personal taxation and of social security programs. In its absence, the administration of schools was regarded as the only possible way to finance education.
Of course, as some of the examples cited above suggest, some features of the proposed arrangements are present in existing educational systems. And there has been strong and I believe increasing pressure for arrangements of this general kind in most Western countries, which is perhaps to be explained by the modern developments in governmental administrative machinery that facilitate such arrangements.
Many detailed administrative problems would arise in changing over from the present to the proposed system and in administering the proposed system. But these seem neither insoluble nor unique. As in the denationalization of other activities, existing premises and equipment could be sold to private enterprises that wanted to enter the field, so there would be no waste of capital in the transition.
The fact that governmental units, at least in some areas, were going to continue to administer schools would permit a gradual and easy transition. The localized administration of education in the United States and some other countries would similarly facilitate the transition, since it would encourage experimentation on a small scale and with alternative methods of handling both these and other problems.
Difficulties would doubtless arise in determining eligibility for grants from a particular governmental unit, but this is identical with the existing problem of determining which unit is obligated to provide educational facilities for a particular child.
Differences in size of grants would make one area more attractive than another just as differences in the quality of education now have the same effect. The only additional complication is a possibly greater opportunity for abuse because of the greater freedom to decide where to educate children.
Supposed difficulty of administration is a standard defense of the status quo against any proposed changes; in this particular case, it is an even weaker defense than usual because existing arrangements must master not only the major problems raised by the proposed arrangements but also the additional problems raised by the administration of the schools as a governmental function. The preceding discussion is concerned mostly with primary and secondary education.
For higher education, the case for nationalization on grounds either of neighborhood effects or of natural monopoly is even weaker than for primary and secondary education. At successively higher levels of education, there is less and less agreement. Surely, well below the level of the American college, one can expect insufficient agreement to justify imposing the views of a majority, much less a plurality, on all.
The lack of agreement may, indeed, extend so far as to cast doubts on the appropriateness of even subsidizing education at this level; it surely goes far enough to undermine any case for nationalization on the grounds of providing a common core of values. Governmental institutions in fact play a smaller role in the United States in higher education than at lower levels.
They have wanted to maintain their independence from government, yet at the same time have felt driven by financial pressure to seek government aid. The preceding analysis suggests the lines along which a satisfactory solution can be found. Public expenditure on higher education can be justified as a means of training youngsters for citizenship and for community leadership — though I hasten to add that the large fraction of current expenditure that goes for strictly vocational training cannot be justified in this way or, indeed, as we shall see, in any other.
Restricting the subsidy to education obtained at a state-administered institution cannot be justified on these grounds, or on any other that I can derive from the basic principles outlined at the outset. Any subsidy should be granted to individuals to be spent at institutions of their own choosing, provided only that the education is of a kind that it is desired to subsidize.
Any government schools that are retained should charge fees covering the cost of educating students and so compete on an equal level with non-government-supported schools.
0コメント