Political Distrust and Perceived Voice in Government among U.S. Adults

• In Event: Student Forum Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Roundtable 19: Culture and Civic Participation

Abstract

Background: Perceived voice in government, the belief that people like oneself have a say in what the government does is a core dimension of democratic legitimacy and political efficacy. While prior research has documented demographic and socioeconomic disparities in perceived political voice, less is known about how broader orientations toward political institutions, particularly political distrust, is associated with perceptions of voice in contemporary United States.
Methods: Using nationally representative data from the 2024 General Social Survey (n = 1,279), this study examines the association between political distrust and perceived voice in government, net of sociodemographic, socioeconomic, and political characteristics. Political distrust was measured as an additive index capturing low confidence in the executive branch, Congress, and the Supreme Court. Perceived voice in government was assessed using an ordinal measure reflecting agreement that people like oneself have a say in what the government does. Survey-weighted ordinal logistic regression models were estimated to assess these associations, and average marginal effects and predicted probabilities were used to aid interpretation.
Results: Results indicate that higher levels of political distrust are associated with higher perceived voice in government. In unadjusted models, a one-unit increase in political distrust was associated with a 20 percent increase in the odds of reporting higher perceived voice (OR = 1.20, 95% CI: 1.09–1.32). This association remained robust after adjusting for demographic, socioeconomic, and political covariates, with a one-unit increase in distrust corresponding to a 23 percent increase in the odds of higher perceived voice (OR = 1.23, 95% CI: 1.11–1.36). Average marginal effects indicate that political distrust is associated with a shift away from lower perceived voice categories and toward agreement that people like oneself have a say in government.
Conclusion: These findings suggest that political distrust and perceived voice are analytically distinct dimensions of democratic legitimacy. Rather than signaling political withdrawal, distrust may coexist with or reflect a form of critical political subjectivity in which individuals assert symbolic inclusion within institutions they view as unresponsive or untrustworthy. The results underscore the importance of separating trust from voice in sociological analyses of democratic legitimacy under conditions of institutional strain.

Author

• Dukanwojo Beulah Suleman, University of Nebraska-Lincoln