POLICY PREFERENCES AND POLITICAL DISTRUST - A COMPARISON OF NORWAY, SWEDEN AND THE UNITED-STATES

Many modern democracies have experienced a decrease in citizen support for government in recent decades. This article examines attitudes tow ard public policy as a plausible theoretical explanation for this phen omenon. The connection between public policy and support for the polit ical regime has received considerable academic attention in the United States. Yet very Little comparative work has examined whether citizen s' policy preferences are related to a decline in diffuse support acro ss different political systems. This article offers a clearer, more co ncise theoretical specification of the hypothesized relationship betwe en public evaluations of policy outputs and support for the political regime. After specifying the theoretical concerns more succinctly, the article analyzes data from Norway, Sweden and the United States for t he quarter century from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. The analysi s reveals that shifts in evaluations of foreign policy and race-relate d policies help explain change in political trust for all three countr ies despite differences in the political systems. Moral issues, such a s abortion, however, have no impact on political trust in any of the c ountries.