The Growing Distrust in American Government … Is It Recoverable?
Many Americans think that the growing distrust in American government and in each other makes it harder to solve key problems. They have a wealth of ideas about what’s gone wrong and how to fix it. But will they put the ideas into needed action?
Distrust in American government.
Trust is an essential elixir for
public life and neighborly relations, and when Americans think about trust
these days, they worry. Two-thirds of adults think other Americans have little
or no confidence in the federal government.
Majorities believe the public’s
confidence in the U.S. government and in each other is shrinking, and most
believe a shortage of trust in government and in other citizens makes it harder
to solve even the smallest of the nation’s key problems.
As a result, many think it is
necessary to clean up the trust environment: 68% say it is very important to
repair the public’s level of confidence in the federal government, and 58% say
the same about improving confidence in fellow Americans. (Pew Research Center)
Moreover, some see fading trust as a
sign of cultural sickness and national decline. Some also tie it to what they
perceive to be increased loneliness and excessive individualism.
About half of Americans (49%) link
the decline in interpersonal trust to a belief that people are not as reliable
as they used to be. Many ascribe shrinking trust to a political culture they
believe is broken and spawns suspicion, even cynicism, about the ability of
others to distinguish fact from fiction.
In a comment typical of the views expressed by many people of different political leanings, ages, and educational backgrounds, one participant in a new Pew Research Center survey said:
“Many people no longer think the
federal government can actually be a force for good or change in their lives.
This kind of apathy and disengagement will lead to an even worse and less representative
government.”
Another addressed the issue of
fading interpersonal trust:
“As a democracy founded on the
principle of E Pluribus Unum, the fact that we are divided and can’t trust
sound facts means we have lost our confidence in each other.”
This research is part of the Center’s extensive and ongoing focus
on issues tied to trust,
facts and democracy and the interplay among them.
Here are some of the Pew Research
Center’s main findings.
Levels of personal trust are associated with race and ethnicity, age, education, and household income
To explore these connections, they asked questions about people’s
general trust or distrust in others, their sense of the exploitative tendencies
or fairness of others, and their assessment of the overall helpfulness or
selfishness of others.
Levels of personal trust tend to be linked with people’s broader
views on institutions and civic life
The disposition of U.S. adults to trust, or not to trust, each
other is connected with their thinking about all manner of issues.
For instance, those who are less trusting in the interpersonal
sphere also tend to be less trusting of institutions
When Americans perceive that trust in the federal government has
been shrinking, they are right
Long-running
surveys show that public confidence in the government fell precipitously
in the 1960s and ’70s, recovered somewhat in the ’80s and early 2000s, and is
near historic lows today.
By and large, Americans think the current low level of trust in
government is justified.
Democrats and Republicans think differently about trust, but both
groups wish it would rise
Although supporters of the country’s two main political parties
hold similar levels of personal trust, Democrats and those who lean Democratic
are more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to express worry about
the state of trust in America.
There is a generation gap in levels of trust
Generation gap,
Young adults are much more pessimistic than older adults about
some trust issues.
For example, young adults are about half as hopeful as their
elders when they are asked how confident they are in the American people to
respect the rights of those who are not like them.
Majorities believe the federal government and news media withhold
important and useful information
People’s confidence in key institutions is associated with their
views about how those institutions handle important information.
About two-thirds (69%) of Americans say the federal government
intentionally withholds important information from the public that it could
safely release, and about six-in-ten (61%) say the news media intentionally
ignores stories that are important to the public.
On a grand scale of national issues, trust-related issues are not
near the top of the list of Americans’ concerns
The Center has asked questions in multiple surveys about how
Americans judge the severity of some key issues.
This poll finds that 41% of adults think the public’s level of confidence in the federal government is a “very big problem,” putting it roughly on par with their assessment of the size of the problems caused by racism and illegal immigration – and above terrorism and sexism.
Confidence in leaders and major institutions is mixed
The public is not skeptical about
all institutions and leaders. In fact, most people have positive views about
most of the groups asked about in this survey.
More than eight-in-ten Americans
(83%) say they have at least a fair amount of confidence in scientists to act
in the best interests of the public, and the same percentage say this about the
military.
Nearly as many express confidence in
school principals and police.
In their own words:
Americans cite a range of causes and consequences of low trust in government
To better gauge, the public’s thinking on these and other issues raised in the survey, groups of respondents were asked to describe, in their own words, their reasoning and concerns about various topics related to trust.
To minimize the burden on any given
participant in the survey, smaller groups of respondents were chosen at random
to offer these open-ended responses. And offer they did.
Why is there less confidence in the federal government today than 20 years ago?
The survey’s respondents who said
that confidence in the federal government has declined over the past 20 years
had a lot to say about why this has happened.
While about three-in-ten declined to answer, those who did provide responses that ranged widely, touching on government performance, the behavior of the president and the parties, the intractability of problems, and polarization among the public and its leaders.
What are the consequences of low levels of trust in the federal
government?
How do Americans think about the impact of low public trust in the federal government? The survey took two different approaches to this question. One was to ask a sample of respondents who said that the level of confidence in the federal government is a very big problem to explain why they thought this.
The other was to pose a direct
question about the impact of low trust on the country’s ability to solve
problems, and then to ask those who said low trust hinders the country to
describe which problems they are thinking about.
