So far in the class we looked, in detail, at the following realities:
1) The changing ethnic and racial composition of the US (chapter 1)
2) Basic American values (chapter 1)
3) The fact that American people experienced a declining sense of trust in their government since 1960s, while since 1980s income and wealth inequalities have grown in American society (chapter 1)
4) The constitutional foundations and basic political institutions of the country (chapter 2)
5) Federalism – the division of power between states and federal government, its changing nature and constitutional principles (chapter 3)
6) Civil liberties (chapter 4) and civil rights (chapter 5)
7) The public opinion (chapter 6) and its changing nature, as well as the concept of political ideology and political socialization
8) The media (chapter 7), their changing nature, information revolution, and media biases/manipulation of public opinion.
9) Political parties and elections
The question that I want you to tackle in this essay is:
Why had Americans lost their previously high sense of trust in the government some 60 years ago, and the trust has not been restored to this day? What can be done to restore people’s trust in government?
Some answers to this question are clearly wrong, so I do not want you to engage them. Clearly, whether Republicans or Democrats are in charge does not matter – low general trust persisted under both parties being in charge – for instance, it was low under Pres. GW Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden. (while, obviously, partisan members of the public trusted their “own” government, but the average trust was low). The rise of the internet and social media DOES NOT explain the trend – low trust started in the 1960s, way before the internet and social media, and it did get worse when the internet became the “thing” in the 1990s (to the contrary, under Pres. Clinton there was some uptick in trust, nothing major, though) or when the social media became the “thing” in 2000s (the trust was low and remained low, neither up nor down). There is NO EVIDENCE that American people today are better informed about their government than in the past (American knowledge of their government has always been low, and remains low). Any explanation which focuses merely on very recent events (Obama, Trump, war on terror) is clearly wrong and insufficient, as the trend goes back to the 1960s. An explanation that blames “growth in government power” is clearly wrong, as the power of federal government grew tremendously precisely between 1930s-60s, the age of high trust in government.
The lines of inquiry that I want you engage are as follows:
1) long-term changing ethnic and racial composition of American public might have something to do with the trend of persistent mistrust
2) The growing economic inequality of Americans is a potential cause
3) change in American values over time
4) basic American institutions (as delineated in the the Constitution) might be increasingly outdated and out of touch with reality. In other words, our system of government is getting outdated and needs to be reformed
5) The trend has something to do with civil rights and liberties (lack of some, etc).
6) The American people are not better informed about the government, but the information they have is increasingly more and more negative, as the media became more adversarial, while the information revolution is compounding this adversarial nature of the media. In other words, it is really not about the technology (social media, etc are not the cause of mistrust), but how the technology feeds negative information to the public. Anyway, the media are partially or wholly to blame.
7) American public opinion is changing and evolving, and some specific changes in its nature create the mistrust.
8) The nature of American elections and the 2-party system our electoral system creates is, today, causing increasing mistrust (be careful with this idea – between 1930s-60s the two party system was accompanied by high trust). This might be linked to increasing polarization between two parties (the greater and greater hatred and mistrust between the two parties and their supporters – but, then, what is the cause of it, and it is clearly a long term cause.
8) American people need to be actually informed about their government – so far, they are not.
Please, focus on at least 2 of the above lines of inquiry, but you can examine all of them if you wish. By all means, choose your favorite and preferred ones.
Depending on what you diagnose as the cause, please, suggest remedies.
We have not yet examined presidency, Congress, domestic and foreign policy, etc. Thus, I would prefer you not to engage in a detailed discussions of these issues, unless you insist, and, then, you are responsible for your own information.
It is very important that you show a good knowledge of the course reading (our textbook) and cite and quote from our course readings in your answer essay. Essays that do not use our course readings or substitute other sources for our course reading (you are free to bring extra sources in addition to our course reading) will be graded down and receive very low/failed grades.
4-5 pages, 2000 words minimum (THE WORD MINIMUM IS THE MORE IMPORTANT ONE – YOUR PAPER MUST BE 2000 WORDS LONG), plus a bibliography or works-cited page. Please, use any consistent bibliographic style of citations that you wish (MLA, APA, Turabian, indeed, any style would work, but YOU HAVE TO PROVIDE A WELL-FORMATTED BIBLIOGRAPHY, lack of a properly formatted bibliography/works cited page will result in a low or failing grade).
