Political Science Literature Review Regarding Chanley, Rudolph, and Rahn

a) How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right – just about always, most of the time, or only some of the time?

b) How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right – just about always, most of the time, only some of the time, or hardly ever?

c) How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right – just about always, most of the time, only some of the time, or never?

d) How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right – just about always, most of the time, or only some of the time?

e) Thinking about the government in Washington, how much trust do you have in the federal government to do what is right?

f) How much of the time do you trust the government in Washington to do what is right – would you say just about always, most of the time, or only some of the time?

Hypothesis One: Increases in both presidential and congressional approval results from greater trust in government.

Hypothesis Two: Greater trust in government leads to more favorable presidential and congressional evaluations.

Hypothesis Three: Declining trust will make the public less willing to support increases in federal government spending and activity in domestic politics.

Hypothesis Four: Favorable economic expectations will lead to greater trust in government.

Hypothesis Five: The relationship between levels of crime and levels of distrust in government.

Hypothesis Six: As public concern about international affairs increases, support for governmental authority will increase in the form of greater trust and approval.

Hypothesis Seven: Increasing focus on international issues buoys support for the government so trust in government may decline when international concerns become less salient to the public.

Perceptions of the economy is measured by one’s opinion about how they perceive the economy to be functioning both as a whole and whether it has benefited or hurt them financially. Scandals can be defined as issues that the media address concerning actions that members of Congress took part in that are illegal, unethical, or both. Public concern can be measured by looking at how the public perceives the national government in attempting to solve problems concerning crime and whether Congress functions as a whole. Domestic policy concerns can be defined as major issues that the media has brought to the forefront that concern most Americans such as health care and welfare. Issues concerning most Americans are any domestic issues that cost tax dollars even if the program does not directly benefit all taxpayers such as welfare.

The presidential series is the mean quarterly approval rating generated by Gallup. The congressional approval series is an updated and modified version of a series developed by Durr, Glmour, and Wolbrecht in 1997. An updated version of Stimson’s measure of policy mood is also used for studying public support on a variety of issues. A measure of public evaluations was performed by looking at the University of Michigan’s Survey of Consumer Finances and Survey of Consumer Attitudes and Behavior. To study public concern about crime, a quarterly measure of the proportion of the public who identify crime as the most important problem facing the nation was explored by asking “What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?”.

Vector autoregression (VAR) is the modeling strategy used. The endogenous variables in the model include economic expectations, trust, policy mood, presidential approval, and congressional approval. A matrix of coefficients relates the exogenous variables to the endogenous variables and a vector of disturbance terms is also calculated in the method. Granger causality tests were relied upon to look at the nature and magnitude of the casual connections between our variables.

The coefficient for economic expectations is statistically significant which means levels of trust rise and fall with the economy. More positive evaluations of the economic future lead to an increase in trust in government. Multivariate scrutiny was performed when looking at the relationship between social-cultural factors such as crime and trust in government. F-tests and standard T-tests were used in the findings. Restoring public confidence in the government may come about as a result of avoidance of scandal, skillful handling of the economy, and alleviation of public concern about crime.