Customer Reviews

Why People Don't Trust Government

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This book focuses on the loss of confidence in government in the US from the mid-60s to mid-90s. Various chapters use survey data to show that trust in government has indeed declined, and suggest a variety of contributing factors, including increasing demands on government, historical events in which government acted badly or ineffectively, changes in media coverage of government, and a general decline in respect for authority and institutions of all kinds. While the focus is on the US, some chapters do discuss other countries- some of what has been going on in the US seems to have been happening in other "advanced" nations.
The chapters are uneven. Some are fairly meaty, and bring in a good deal of data and/or dissect a variety of possible explanations for the observed changed in attitudes toward government. Others just seem like speculative exercises. I was left feeling that I was introduced to an interesting set of questions, but presented with too little in the way of detailed inquiry into those questions.

This book rests on an assumption that academics can view and correctly understand why the public mistrusts government. This assumption rests on a willingness to believe that academics can value what the public does, and to the same degree that the public does. This would imply the same issue matter to the public that matter to academics. The chapters of this book all make that assumption, and that is the problem. Academics simply cannot relate to the concerns of joe sixpack. I know, I am an academic, and I will admit that I am in a different paradigm than my neighbor. These authors are in the same boat, but do not recognize that they are, and draw conclusions operating under this veil of darkness. They pose very interesting questions and are very readable, but just somewhat off on what matters to the regular citizens.