Declining civic participation weakens officials’ trustworthiness, not just citizens’ trust

Evidence

Why does television viewing matter? As Putnam (2000, 223) says, “The single most important consequence of the television revolution has been to bring us home.” Staying home more, we participate in various groups less, and therefore we trust government less. … However, the argument might be indirect. Declining civic participation reduces incentives for trustworthiness of government officials, so that citizens, rightly, begin to trust those officials less. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 736

Categorization

• XREF: The turn from TV->less participation->less trust to the indirect claim (less participation reduces officials’ incentives for trustworthiness) directly parallels Hardin’s own view of trust as grounded in the trusted party’s incentives — a corrective to Putnam’s one-way civic-decay story. — connects to: American civil society vibrancy has notably declined over recent decades — Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: America’s Declining…, 6