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Social Class & Political Trust in the U.S.

Among the large number of writings on political trust and support in Western democracies, the most dramatic were the warnings of actual decline in political trust in Western countries. In the United States, the decline of trust and confidence in the political institutions and in the ruling elite has marked the last three decades (see Ladd, 1979). One writer speculates, "The discontent among the American political class about our unproductive governance may reflect the failure of any faction to win control" (Skene, 1990, p. 1702). Political scientists have responded to the decline of trust and confidence by trying to understand its causes and consequences. Efforts have been made to conceptualize and measure political trust in the United States. However, most of the attention has been given to race, ethnic group, and other cultural factors and how they influence the individual's evaluation of the state and its performance. The influence of social class on the level of political trust has been neglected in the literature on political trust. This study, therefore, argues that the social class of the individual has a significant effect on his/her evaluation of the whole society, including the political structure. In other words, social class influences and explains the different levels of political trust in the United States.

This study examines the relationships between social-class identification and the level of trust in the U.S. government. The study focuses on how those who identify themselves with a particular social class evaluate the performance of the ruling elite and political institutions in the United States. Critical to this investigation is the assessment of the literature on political trust, the theoretical and the methodological settings, and the analysis of the empirical data used in this study.

During the last two decades, most of the theories of political support have been based on the work of Joseph Sc...

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Social Class & Political Trust in the U.S.. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 03:59, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1704671.html