Fed Up: The Determinants of Public Opposition to the U.S. Federal Reserve

• Published date: 01 December 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129241265703
• Author: Ian G. Anson
• Date: 01 December 2024

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2024, Vol. 77(4) 1279–1293

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129241265703

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Fed Up: The Determinants of Public

Opposition to the U.S. Federal Reserve

Ian G. Anson

1

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Abstract

The U.S. Federal Reserve plays a major role in the global economy, despite low public awarenessof its functions and

responsibilities. Scholars have recently noted three ongoing developments in the politics of the Fed: A dramatic increase

in the size of the Fed’s balance sheet, a decrease in the Fed’s insulation from partisan politics, and evidence that theFed

has struggled to manage inf‌lation in recent times. Despite the contributions of recent studies, little is known about how

Americans’levels of diffuse and specif‌ic public support for Federal agencies are inf‌luenced by trends in agencies’size and

scope, politicization, and performance. In this study, I use a survey experimental design to evaluate the effects of emphasis

frames on support for the Federal Reserve. Results demonstrate that while specif‌ic support declines in reaction to frames

that associate Fed actions with rising inf‌lation, messages about the Fed’s growing balance sheet erode diffuse support for

the Fed. However, when reminded of the Fed’s declining political independence, partisans’levels of support diverge.

These results imply the potential for substantial future declines in public support for the operation of this critical, yet

largely overlooked, Federal institution, especially among partisans of the presidential out-party.

Keywords

federal reserve, diffuse support, specif‌ic support, framing, agency independence

In recent years, scholars have articulated several important

critiques of the U.S. Federal Reserve (colloquially known

as the Fed; e.g., Binder and Spindel 2017;Hacker et al.

2022). Among these critiques, some have pointed to the

rapid growth of the Fed’s balance sheet in the post-Dodd-

Frank environment (Jacobs and King 2021), while others

have noted the Fed’s declining political independence

(e.g., Conti-Brown 2018;Fern´

andez-Albertos 2015). Still

others have critiqued the Fed’s seeming inability to

respond effectively to economic crises using its

conventional tools (e.g., Fligstein, Stuart Brundage, and

Schultz 2017;Lin and Neely 2020).

These critiques have been levied during an era in which

this little-understood Federal agency has rapidly become

more powerful. Since the Great Recession of 2008, across

a variety of metrics, the Fed has come to occupy a far more

central role in the U.S. economy (and consequently, in the

lives of American citizens) than ever before (e.g., Hertel-

Fernandez 2018). The rapid accretion of Fed power, as

well as the ongoing importance of monetary policy in the

post-COVID era, renders it a vital—yet infrequently

studied—topic for contemporary research. More broadly,

understanding perceptions of the nonpartisan Fed can also

help us understand the formation and maintenance of

public attitudes towards other similarly situated Federal

bureaucracies. As attitudes towards oft-unnoticed bu-

reaucracies like the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

continue to shift in response to recent political develop-

ments, understanding the contours of bureaucratic per-

ceptions constitutes a subject of growing interest in the

f‌ield of public opinion research (e.g., Anson and Kane

2022;Ophir 2019).

Studies of Fed support and approval are also important

because public attitudes towards the Fed have conse-

quences for its activities. While Paul Volcker’s famous

remark that “the Congress created us, and the Congress

can uncreate us”accurately identif‌ies the most proximate

source of Fed power and legitimacy, public dissatisfaction

can put pressure on Congress to constrain the Fed (Stiglitz

1

Department of Political Science, University of Maryland, Baltimore

County, Baltimore, MD, USA

Corresponding Author:

Ian G. Anson, Department of Political Science, University of Maryland,

Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Cir., 305 PUP, Baltimore, MD 21250,

USA.

Email: iganson@umbc.edu