Political Trust in Polarized Times.

Abstract

As political trust levels continue to decline while levels of partisan polarization increase, we contend that more research is needed to explore the interaction between these two central features of contemporary American politics. Political scientists have debated whether explanations of political trust levels are best informed by the public’s assessment of the political system or of evaluations of individual politicians. In times when partisan polarization is a salient feature of the political arena, we contend that both are important. During highly polarized times, party and trust heuristics become heavily intertwined in the sense that people may continue to rely on their default trust evaluations of the political system but party as the source of government action becomes the major determinant of trust. We discuss how these dynamics influence two specific consequence of political trust—policy outcomes and support for democratic processes. We outline a theoretical framework informed by prior research concerning the dynamics of political trust and partisan polarization and their influence on policy outcomes. Finally, we offer empirical evidence obtained from an experiment that supports our contention that when partisan polarization is primed by the information environment, there are important consequences for support for democratic processes.