Volume 13, Issue 3

Americans have become less trusting of their federal government since the late 1950s. Most accounts of trust in government are based upon the performance of the economy. I argue that two additional factors are essential for understanding the sharp fall in trust in government in recent years: the level of partisan polarization in the Congress (as reflected in the ideological distance between the parties on roll calls) and the inability of Congress to enact legislation (gridlock).

Why has Congress, once a widely trusted institution, experienced such a uniquely dramatic decline in the public’s confidence, and what are the consequences for democracy? This article sets out to systematically address these questions. First, I discuss how we can gauge Americans’ levels of trust in Congress. Second, I examine trends over time in public trust in Congress, looking both partisan differences within this measure, and also overall differences in comparison to other institutions. Third, I examine various ways in which the much-noted rise in party polarization in Congress might explain the downward trend in Americans’ trust in that institution. Finally, I explore one potentially important consequence of declining trust in the legislative branch: Americans’ willingness to obey laws. The results suggest that those interested in the problem of declining trust in government would be wise to focus their attention on Congress. Compared to other institutions, the problem in Congress appears more severe, more intractable, and carries greater political consequences.

This paper argues that distrust in government is not an inadvertent byproduct of economic change, scandals, and cultural and identity politics, but rather grows out of strategic efforts to promote and harness it for political purposes. Elites encouraging distrust interact with grassroots movements, which they can only loosely direct and control. Identifying four strategic benefits of distrust: organizational, electoral, institutional and policy, the paper discusses how Republicans and conservative movement organizations in the Tea Party age used distrust to develop groups and achieve coherence, try to influence primaries and win elections, argue for the constitutional powers of institutions they control, and seek to influence public policy. Paying special attention to health policy, we examine how, after distrust was successfully used to thwart President Bill Clinton’s proposed reforms, it was employed to try to stop and then to exact a price for President Barack Obama’s passage of the Affordable Care Act. While Tea Party rhetoric and current streams of distrust are often associated with racialized messages and anti-Obama sentiment, we contend they are likely to persist after Obama leaves office, particularly given the Tea Party’s comfort with ungovernability and long-standing conservative use of government distrust.

The early 2000s has witnessed the rise of a new phenomenon in public opinion, polarized political trust. By polarized, I mean that those who identify with the party opposite the president express much less trust in government than those who identify with the president’s party. Indeed, outparty partisans express almost no political trust at all. This is important because it is this group of people who have traditionally been the bridge that allows for consensus building in the electorate. Consensus in the electorate, in turn, encourages cooperation across party lines in Congress. Without consensus but with deep distrust of the other party, office holders from the party opposite the president have no incentive to rise above their worst partisan instincts because partisans from their side will tend to blame the president’s party for resultant problems of governance.

Virtually all accounts of political trust in the US regard declining trust over the past half-century to be troubling. We argue that these interpretations are in need of reassessment since they often are rooted in the normatively questionable assumption that higher trust is always desirable. We review traditions in democratic theory and American thought extolling the virtues of skepticism and distrust of government and discuss potential problems in common trust measures and conclusions based on them. Using data from the 2014 General Social Survey, we explore relationships between trust, commitment to being vigilant watchdogs of government, and attitudes and behaviors generally considered desirable for a healthy democracy. Our findings indicate that higher trust is not always accompanied by characteristics of good democratic citizens. In fact, it is those individuals who exhibit lower levels of trust with high levels of vigilance who are most politically engaged. Thus, healthy skepticism of government may contribute to the vitality of democracy.

Abstract: Woodrow Wilson, along with progressive intellectuals and reformers, bears significant responsibility for the decline of trust in government today. Wilson may have eclipsed James Madison in theory and practice, thereby contributing to the decline of trust in government. The criticism today of our politics as “dysfunctional” is, in large part, an echo of Wilson’s criticism of Madison’s Constitution. Today’s concerns about accountability, permanent politics, gridlock, special interests and petty partisanship reflect Wilson’s critique. In turn, Wilson has powerfully influenced the practice of our politics by providing the template for generations of political reformers. Today’s “dysfunction” is exacerbated by constitutionally inappropriate progressive reforms which have produced unintended consequences because reformers failed to appreciate Madison’s complex constitutional context. A century of progressive reforms have augmented dysfunction and distrust.