The origins and consequences of public trust in government - A time seriesanalysis

The study of citizens' trust in the national government has been primarily individual-level, cross-sectional analysis. In the current research, we dev elop a quarterly time series measure of trust in the U.S. national governme nt from 1980 to 1997 and conduct the first multivariate time series examina tion of public trust in government. We find that negative perceptions of th e economy, scandals associated with Congress, and increasing public concern about crime each lead to declining public trust in government. Declining t rust in government in turn leads to less positive evaluations of Congress a nd reduced support for government action to address a range of domestic pol icy concerns. These results provide new evidence of the influence of public concern about crime and the centrality of Congress in understanding public evaluations of the national government and new evidence of how declining l evels of trust in government may influence elections and domestic policy ma king.