Why Americans don't trust government, and why they sometimes do: Trust in government in the United States from the 1960s to the present

I use survey data from the American National Election Studies (NES) and complementary qualitative data to seek answers to two questions: (1) What are the factors that have caused trust in government in the United States to fluctuate from year to year during the last four decades? and (2) How do we explain the overall decline of trust in government in the United States from the relatively high levels of the late 1950s and early 1960s to the relatively low levels of the late 20th century?;I follow Sztompka (1999) in developing a detailed theoretical framework for analyzing the concept of trust in government, arguing that the extent to which citizens trust government depends on the extent to which they perceive government to be meeting instrumental, moral and fiduciary expectations. Using this framework as a guide, I take a detailed, decade-by-decade look at the reasons why aggregate levels of trust in government in the United States fluctuated---and mostly declined---in the late 20th century. I find that, for a changing variety of reasons, most citizens did not perceive government to be meeting their instrumental, moral, and fiduciary expectations during the last 35 years of the 20th century and therefore that aggregate levels of trust in government were relatively low.;I contend that the only time that a majority will perceive that government is meeting these expectations---and therefore the only time that aggregate levels of trust in government will be high---is when there is a widespread consensus about government's most salient policies. Such a consensus existed, by and large, in the late 1950s and early 1960s before breaking down over the issues of civil rights and Vietnam. It did not return for the remainder of the 20th century. The breakdown of this consensus can explain the relatively high aggregate levels of trust in government in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the relatively low aggregate levels of trust thereafter. The consensus suddenly reappeared in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, however, and can explain the correspondingly sudden spike in trust in government.