Causes of public trust and distrust in government

Trust & Distrust

Five Causes to Trust Government and Five Causes to Distrust Government

Five Causes to Trust Government

Aristotle (NDI) believed, "Man is by nature a political animal." This being the case it is only natural that people should form governments. People put their faith in governments for various reasons.

The Preamble to the Constitution mentions five functions of government. One is to establish justice, which is to say that government is formed to punish evildoers and protect those who do right. Another is to insure domestic tranquility. This means people want their governments to establish legislation and rule of law. Government should provide for the national defense by establishing a standing army or militia to protect the people from all foreign and domestic enemies. Government should promote the general welfare. The common good of all classes of citizens must be promoted by government passage of laws guaranteeing equal opportunity. It is not proper for government to provide money and aid to special interest groups. It is to promote, not provide, and to do so for all people in general, not for special people. Finally, government should secure the blessings of liberty for us and our posterity. This means to govern not only in the here and now, but with the knowledge that decisions made today will affect future generations.

When the government promotes these activities and provides equal access to the opportunities afforded by the system the government creates individual hope and confidence in the ability of the governed to determine their success.

Five Causes to Distrust Government

There is a joke that begins, 'What's the scariest sentence in the English language?' The punch line, 'I'm from the government, I'm here to help.' Derek Thompson (2010), in a recent article in The Atlantic, reported eighty percent of Americans don't trust their government.

Thompson frames the public's distrust of government from an historic perspective. He notes there has been an overall decline in government trust since the mid-1960s. Only once since 1975 has government trust broke 50%. That occurred in the months following 9/11. After the tumultuous assassinations of the 1960s, the Vietnam War, the resignation of President Nixon, and the stagflation of the late 1970s, public trust fell from 80% in 1966 to about 25% in 1981. The Watergate scandal, the regularity of hyper-partisanship, the rise of cable news, and the constant parade of government frustrations that contradict the impracticable campaign promises now expected from candidates has seriously undermined faith in the government.

Faith in government has consistently fallen in downtimes. Distrust in government increased during the recessions of the mid-1970s, early 1980s, early 1990s and late 2000s. The only recession that did not cause a spike in distrust was the early 2000s, but Thompson asserts that the era of unity and patriotism that followed 9/11 accounts for this anomaly.