Trust in government

Trust concerns expected competence, honesty, and public purpose. It can rise or fall with performance and party control without changing a person's acceptance of the institution's lawful authority.

Measure approval, trust, external efficacy, and legitimacy separately. The institution, governing party, time period, and wording determine how far any survey result can be generalized.

Trust should be measured with a named object. Confidence in courts, Congress, local police, or the incumbent administration may move differently, and dissatisfaction with current performance need not imply rejection of the constitutional system. Analysts should also distinguish trust from approval, efficacy, and legitimacy before using one survey item to characterize citizens' relationship with government. Partisanship can produce a further complication: trust in an institution may rise when one's party gains control even though the institution's formal design has not changed. Comparisons should therefore identify the office, governing party, time period, and wording of the question. A citizen can distrust current congressional performance yet accept election results and the institution's constitutional authority, so the measures should remain separate.

Video lesson: Political Ideology: Crash Course Government and Politics #35