Trust in Government

Trust in government has multiple meanings, many sources, and numerous consequences. David Easton distinguished between diffuse support—that is, trust in the institutions and mechanisms of government—and specific support, trust in current officeholders. Researchers also can ask about trust in specifie institutions within government (legislative, judicial, executive, law enforcement), at all levels (federal, state, and local).

Political life, even at a routine and mundane level, entails risk. When we vote for a candidate, pay our taxes, or obey the law, we hope that our efforts will not be wasted or exploited. Civic life, in a nutshell, demands that we trust our government to uphold its end of the democratic bargain. Survey research has tracked the rise and fall in political trust over the decades and has tried to identify the factors that sustain this tenuous but critical component of civilization.

Many surveys use a single item that simply asks respondents how much they “trust the government.” By far the most frequently used item is Question 1 from the biennial National Elections Study (NES): How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right—just [Page 911]about always, most of the time, or only some of the time?

But what exactly is being measured? Many scholars criticize the NES scale (consisting of four items) for tapping predominantly short-term feelings about current office-holders, rather than long-term beliefs about the institutions and mechanisms of government. Because continuity is everything in the study of political trends, however, the NES instrument is likely to remain.

Survey results indicate that trust in government has declined substantially since the 1960s. A majority of the American public these days trusts the government “only some of the time.” This has caused great concern for the survival of government and civic life in general. Several scholars have proposed a reciprocal relationship between trust in government and social capital, which can be thought of as trust in one's fellow human beings. To investigate this hypothesis, scholars have used data from the General Social Survey, which asks participants to report on the confidence they hold in various institutions, including the Executive Branch, the Supreme Court, and Congress. Congress, it turns out, is the institution Americans love to hate more than any other.

Fluctuations in trust follow recent government performance as well as political scandal, but a dislike for today's politicians does not necessarily mean rejection of our way of government. Standard trust measures perhaps exaggerate public disregard for government, for they lump together skeptical respondents with the truly cynical. When the scale is extended on the less trusting end, only about a quarter of the population place themselves below the midpoint. Still, trust in government has never approached the high point it reached in the 1960s, even after the economic boom of the late 1990s. The accumulation of political scandal, beginning with Watergate and Vietnam, seems to have soured a whole generation on politicians, if not the basic foundation of democratic government.

Polls taken in the months following the September 11 attacks showed an extraordinary jump in trust. This was commonly seen as a “rally round the flag” effect, wherein the attacks inspired extraordinary national unity. A closer look revealed that the attacks merely temporarily shifted respondents' focus to international affairs, where the government has always enjoyed greater public confidence.

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