Rising information about government behavior drives declining trust

Evidence

Declining faith in religion has historically followed increased understanding of the nature of the world. Declining faith in government, its agents, and various others may similarly be the result of increased understanding or, more likely, increased knowledge of the nature of government. For a trivial example, the kinds of information we had about President Bill Clinton went far beyond what was popularly known about any previous president, including some whose actions as president were arguably more scurrilous than Clinton’s. The knowledge we have about many governmental actions is also astonishing in comparison with past times. The civil rights movement may well have been so successful largely because of instant television coverage of the brutality and stupidity of many southern officials (Garrow 1978). The White House tapes drove Richard Nixon out of office when mere testimony probably could not have done so. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 733

Categorization

• XREF: Observability-as-information parallels the blindness novel’s premise: when visibility increases, perceived trustworthiness shifts; when sight vanishes, it collapses entirely. — connects to: Trust in government collapsed from 1966 to 1992 — Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: America’s Declining…, 24