POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY | Volume 134 Number 3 2018-19 | www.psqonline.org © 2019 Academy of Political Science 537 Book Reviews The Government‐Citizen Disconnect by Suzanne Mettler. New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 2018. 224 pp. $29.95. Much research posits a “disconnect” between the public and government. This work focuses primarily on the behavior of politicians and the mismatch between their policy actions and citizens’ preferences. Suzanne Mettler’s book concentrates instead on the public and the degree to which people accurately perceive and appreciate what government does. This book complements her earlier work Submerged State, which delineated how many government policies, such as tax expenditures, are not visible to many citizens, which distorts their views. The Government‐Citizen Disconnect, by contrast, examines how experience with government policies influences what people think. Mettler poses a paradox between declining trust in government and a growing role for government in people’s lives in the United States and then attempts to explain it. Her hypothesis is that group interests and identities have overridden personal experience as sources of public perceptions, and most of the book traces the empirical evidence. Mettler sets the stage by recognizing the downward trend in trust in government and detailing the expanding role of government over time, emphasizing that “we are all beneficiaries.” She then turns to survey data collected in 2008 as part of her Social and Government Issues and Participation (SGIP) Study. Included there are items relating to political attitudes (and participation) and experiences with various federal government programs. The SGIP data allow interesting analyses of people’s experiences with government and their correlates. Mettler reveals that the larger the number of means‐tested programs a respondent reports using, the (much) more likely the person is to agree that government social programs have helped in times of need. She demonstrates a similar effect for users of specific programs, particularly those that come in the form of payments, such as the former Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, in comparison with those embedded in the tax code, such as the earned income tax credit. She also shows that beneficiaries of certain higher education policies, namely, the GI Bill and Pell Grants, are more likely to agree that the government has provided opportunities to improve people’s standard of living. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/psq/article/134/3/537/6848440 by guest on 13 January 2023