Beyond Polarization and Priming: Public Agenda Diversity and Trust in Government

• In Event: Assessing Mechanisms Explaining Trust in Government

Abstract

While the dynamics in levels of trust in government have been attributed to a number of causes, the decline since the 1950s has generally been attributed to two factors: polarization (Citrin and Stoker, 2018) and the kinds of issues that concern the public (Hetherington and Rudolph, 2008). This study suggests that the growing fragmentation of the public issue agenda (Edy and Meirick, 2018) and the increasingly poor match between the public and Congressional issue agendas (Fiorina and Abrams, 2009) may also contribute to declining trust in government.

First, the growing polarization of both the U.S. government and the U.S. public has implications for public perception of both government performance (how government responds to emergent problems and the kinds of policies it enacts) and government process (the degree of acrimony in policy debates, the perceived cynicism of political actors). Recent work by Citrin and Stoker (2018) documents rising levels of mistrust among out-party partisans, which would contribute to declining trust in government among the public as a whole. Second, changes in the kinds of issues that occupy the public at particular moments in history, together with the asymmetrical effects of when an issue becomes concerning, may impact overall trust in government. Hetherington and Rudolph (2008) show that greater levels of public concern about international affairs are associated with more trust in government, but concern about international affairs has declined since the end of the Cold War. Their work also reveals that while public trust rises with a good economy and declines with a bad one, a bad economy evokes more public concern, creating a lop-sided effect in which a bad economy erodes public trust more than a good economy enhances it, also generating declining levels of public trust in government over time.

Beyond its issue content, the nature of the public agenda may have further implications for trust in government. As the diversity of the public agenda increases and the level of consensus about public priorities decreases (Edy and Meirick, 2018), the government’s policy agenda has become less and less similar to the public’s agenda of concerns (Fiorina and Abrams, 2009). The government’s inability (or unwillingness) to address the concerns of a fragmented public may contribute to public disaffection with a government that seems unresponsive to it.

This study contributes to knowledge about the antecedents of public trust in government and the factors that have shaped the general decline in trust by modeling how polarization, issue priorities, and the fragmentation of the public agenda have impacted public trust in government. It considers not only the direct effects of these variables upon trust but also their indirect effects through the degree of fit between Congress’s agenda and the public’s and through Congressional approval ratings. It uses measures of the public agenda as documented by the Gallup most important problem question and questions about government trust fielded by a number of polling organizations (see Hetherington & Rudolph, 2008) over a period from 1975 through 2014. It is relevant for scholars interested both in public opinion processes and in issues of representation and legitimacy.

References:

Citrin, J. & Stoker, L. (2018). Political Trust in a Cynical Age. Annual Review of Political Science, 21, 46-70.

Edy, J.A. & Meirick, P.C. (2018). The Fragmenting Public Agenda: Capacity, Diversity, and Volatility in Response to the “Most Important Problem” Question. Public Opinion Quarterly. Online advance: doi:10.1093/poq/nfy043

Fiorina, M. & Abrams, S.J. (2009). Disconnect: The breakdown of representation in American politics. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Hetherington, M.J. & Rudolph, T.J. (2008). Priming, Performance, and the Dynamics of Political Trust. Journal of Politics, 70, 498-512.

Authors

• Patrick C. Meirick

• Jill A. Edy, University of Oklahoma