{"title":"Trust in the American political parties and support for public policy: Why Republicans benefit from political distrust","authors":"Matthew L. Bergbower, Levi G. Allen","doi":"10.1080/21515581.2021.2014336","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"While political trust is well researched by political scientists, little attention has been paid to the repercussions of citizens’ lack of trust in the major political parties. Political parties are the institutions responsible for forming governing coalitions and channelling the policy preferences of the majorities that elected them; thus, we hypothesise that distrust in the parties can have some unsavory consequences. Namely that trust can be weaponized by elites and lead to fervent opposition to the other party’s policy proposals. Using a unique dataset from the Pew Research Centre, and leveraging an innovative instrument, we analyze how support for public policy is affected by trusting the parties to govern ethically and honestly. Our results are heterogenous. We find that respondents who trust the Republicans to govern ethically and honestly reward the party with opposition to the Democrats’ policy positions. Conversely, we find no change in support for public policy among those who trust the Democrats to govern ethically and honestly. The theoretical implications of these results speak to the rise of populism in America, a topic we also briefly address in the conclusion.","PeriodicalId":44602,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Trust Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9000,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"4","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Trust Research","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21515581.2021.2014336","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"MANAGEMENT","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 4
Abstract
While political trust is well researched by political scientists, little attention has been paid to the repercussions of citizens’ lack of trust in the major political parties. Political parties are the institutions responsible for forming governing coalitions and channelling the policy preferences of the majorities that elected them; thus, we hypothesise that distrust in the parties can have some unsavory consequences. Namely that trust can be weaponized by elites and lead to fervent opposition to the other party’s policy proposals. Using a unique dataset from the Pew Research Centre, and leveraging an innovative instrument, we analyze how support for public policy is affected by trusting the parties to govern ethically and honestly. Our results are heterogenous. We find that respondents who trust the Republicans to govern ethically and honestly reward the party with opposition to the Democrats’ policy positions. Conversely, we find no change in support for public policy among those who trust the Democrats to govern ethically and honestly. The theoretical implications of these results speak to the rise of populism in America, a topic we also briefly address in the conclusion.
期刊介绍:
As an inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural journal dedicated to advancing a cross-level, context-rich, process-oriented, and practice-relevant journal, JTR provides a focal point for an open dialogue and debate between diverse researchers, thus enhancing the understanding of trust in general and trust-related management in particular, especially in its organizational and social context in the broadest sense. Through both theoretical development and empirical investigation, JTR seeks to open the "black-box" of trust in various contexts.