Attitudes Toward Conflicting Political Institutions.

The article analyzes public attitudes toward conflicting political institutions of U.S. In the Spring of 1950, the Washington Public Opinion Laboratory in co-operation with the Department of History and Political Science conducted a survey at the State College of Washington. Five hundred and fifteen permanent adult residents of the this state were interviewed in order to study their attitudes toward selected aspects of Washington's state government. The article answers one of the survey questions whether attitudes towards the state legislature, political party, initiative, and blanket primary tend to reflect the idealized objectives of these political mechanisms or they tend to reflect their actual roles in state government. It is stated that since the initiative and the state legislature are mutually conflicting mechanisms for initiating and evaluating public policy, it was hypothesized that individuals holding favorable attitudes towards one should hold unfavorable attitudes towards the other. The survey results indicate that the attitudes of people toward these four political mechanisms only partially reflect their idealized and contradictory objectives.