Trust is a complex interpersonal and organizational construct that “occurs when parties holding certain favorable perceptions of each other allow this relationship to reach the expected outcomes.” Trust is, therefore, an efficient means for lowering transaction costs in any social, economic, and political relationship. It is the central concept of not only human contacts, but also institutional interactions that take place in the political arena.
Trust assessed in political terms is commonly referred to as political trust. It happens in two political contexts: when citizens appraise the government and its institutions in general or when constituents appraise their individual political representatives. The qualities underlying these appraisals …show more content…
Aggregate measures of polarization show lower trust in government from 1958 (the first year the trust question was included in the survey conducted by American National Election Study) to 2012 (the most recent survey). There is also a powerful relationship between polarization and economic inequality. Although inequality has a moderate impact by itself on political trust, its indirect link to the issue, through polarization, is much …show more content…
Moreover, in the past few elections, we have seen an increasingly narrow division of seats between the two parties in both chambers. Individual districts are increasingly safer for one party, often the incumbents’ party, with only 35 competitive House districts in 2012, compared to 103 a decade earlier. While the ideological differentiation poses a challenge to ever finding common ground on issues of policy, the narrow partisan division of seats means that any policy victory could lead to a change in control of either chamber. These two characteristics of the temporary Congress make it even harder for policy reconciliation to take
Trust assessed in political terms is commonly referred to as political trust. It happens in two political contexts: when citizens appraise the government and its institutions in general or when constituents appraise their individual political representatives. The qualities underlying these appraisals …show more content…
Aggregate measures of polarization show lower trust in government from 1958 (the first year the trust question was included in the survey conducted by American National Election Study) to 2012 (the most recent survey). There is also a powerful relationship between polarization and economic inequality. Although inequality has a moderate impact by itself on political trust, its indirect link to the issue, through polarization, is much …show more content…
Moreover, in the past few elections, we have seen an increasingly narrow division of seats between the two parties in both chambers. Individual districts are increasingly safer for one party, often the incumbents’ party, with only 35 competitive House districts in 2012, compared to 103 a decade earlier. While the ideological differentiation poses a challenge to ever finding common ground on issues of policy, the narrow partisan division of seats means that any policy victory could lead to a change in control of either chamber. These two characteristics of the temporary Congress make it even harder for policy reconciliation to take