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How Trust Matters: The Changing Political Relevance of Political Trust

How Trust Matters: The Changing Political Relevance of Political Trust Americans most often think about government in terms of its ability to grapple with issues of redistribution and race. However, the September 11 terrorist attacks led to a massive increase in media attention to foreign affairs, which caused people to think about the government in terms of defense and foreign policy. We demonstrate that such changes in issue salience alter the policy preferences that political trust shapes. Specifically, we show that trust did not affect attitudes about the race‐targeted programs in 2004 as it usually does, but instead affected a range of foreign policy and national defense preferences. By merging survey data gathered from 1980 through 2004 with data from media content analyses, we show that, more generally, trust's effects on defense and racial policy preferences, respectively, increase as the media focus more attention in these areas and decrease when that attention ebbs. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png American Journal of Political Science Wiley

How Trust Matters: The Changing Political Relevance of Political Trust

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Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
© 2011, Midwest Political Science Association
ISSN
0092-5853
eISSN
1540-5907
DOI
10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00548.x
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Americans most often think about government in terms of its ability to grapple with issues of redistribution and race. However, the September 11 terrorist attacks led to a massive increase in media attention to foreign affairs, which caused people to think about the government in terms of defense and foreign policy. We demonstrate that such changes in issue salience alter the policy preferences that political trust shapes. Specifically, we show that trust did not affect attitudes about the race‐targeted programs in 2004 as it usually does, but instead affected a range of foreign policy and national defense preferences. By merging survey data gathered from 1980 through 2004 with data from media content analyses, we show that, more generally, trust's effects on defense and racial policy preferences, respectively, increase as the media focus more attention in these areas and decrease when that attention ebbs.

Journal

American Journal of Political Science – Wiley

Published: Apr 1, 2012

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