Social Class & Political Trust in the U.S.
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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
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the level of political trust. The point of departure of this approach is that those who are socially deprived and therefore have a low level of self-confidence tend to have low political trust. Hirsch (1971) analyzed the relationship between self-esteem and the level of political trust. He argued that self-esteem was the most important factor in predicting the level of political trust. A similar study was done by Garcia (1973), who investigated the relationship between the degree of self-confidence and political trust among the Hispanic population. Garcia did not find a strong relationship.
Finally, some empirical studies have applied the theory of parental transmission of political attitudes to explain degrees of political support. Jennings and Niemi (1974) argued that the relationship between the level of political trust of the parents and the level of political trust among their children is weak. They argued that the weakness could result from intervening variables. Among these intervening variables, Jennings and Niemi maintained, was the frequency of holding a conversation between the parent and the child at home. Chaffee, McLeod, & Wackman (1973) reached the same conclusion, that the relationship between the polit
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Approximate Word count = 3845
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)
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