Explores the implications for democracy of declining trust in government and between individuals.

Is declining trust in government and in other citizens bad for democracy? Bringing together social science and political theory, this book analyzes the relationship between democracy and trust. Trust can develop where interests converge, but in politics interests conflict. Democracy includes a healthy distrust of the interests of the powerful, and institutionalizes it by providing opportunities for citizens to oversee them. Yet democratic institutions depend on a trust among citizens sufficient for representation, resistance, and alternative forms of governance. Leading scholars explore this paradoxical relationship.

This study examines the relationship between the media and the government in authoritarian regimes and Western democracies, focusing on how political structures affect the level of trust between the public and the news media. Surprisingly, Jan Müller finds that there is a higher level of trust among citizens of authoritarian regimes. To help reassert trust in the media, Müller argues that in democratic societies, a differentiated media system with interventions of the state to ensure plurality--in the form of public service media, for example--leads to trust in the news media.

"Examines the potential for distrust in an environment of ethnocultural diversity arising from increasing rates of immigration, and its implications for a democratic society. Incorporates democratic theory, multiculturalism theory, and migration theory"--Provided by publisher.

Some analysts have called distrust the biggest governmental crisis of our time. It is unquestionably a huge problem, undermining confidence in our elected institutions, shrinking social capital, slowing innovation, and raising existential questions for democratic government itself. What’s behind the rising distrust in democracies around the world and can we do anything about it? In this lively and thought-provoking essay, Donald F. Kettl, a leading scholar of public policy and management, investigates the deep historical roots of distrust in government, exploring its effects on the social contract between citizens and their elected representatives. Most importantly, the book examines the strategies that present-day governments can follow to earn back our trust, so that the officials we elect can govern more effectively on our behalf.

This powerfully argued appraisal of judicial review may change the face of American law. Written for layman and scholar alike, the book addresses one of the most important issues facing Americans today: within what guidelines shall the Supreme Court apply the strictures of the Constitution to the complexities of modern life? Until now legal experts have proposed two basic approaches to the Constitution. The first, “interpretivism,” maintains that we should stick as closely as possible to what is explicit in the document itself. The second, predominant in recent academic theorizing, argues that the courts should be guided by what they see as the fundamental values of American society. John Hart Ely demonstrates that both of these approaches are inherently incomplete and inadequate. Democracy and Distrust sets forth a new and persuasive basis for determining the role of the Supreme Court today. Ely’s proposal is centered on the view that the Court should devote itself to assuring majority governance while protecting minority rights. “The Constitution,” he writes, “has proceeded from the sensible assumption that an effective majority will not unreasonably threaten its own rights, and has sought to assure that such a majority not systematically treat others less well than it treats itself. It has done so by structuring decision processes at all levels in an attempt to ensure, first, that everyone’s interests will be represented when decisions are made, and second, that the application of those decisions will not be manipulated so as to reintroduce in practice the sort of discrimination that is impermissible in theory.” Thus, Ely’s emphasis is on the procedural side of due process, on the preservation of governmental structure rather than on the recognition of elusive social values. At the same time, his approach is free of interpretivism’s rigidity because it is fully responsive to the changing wishes of a popular majority. Consequently, his book will have a profound impact on legal opinion at all levels—from experts in constitutional law, to lawyers with general practices, to concerned citizens watching the bewildering changes in American law.

Banning minarets by referendum in Switzerland, publicly burning Korans in the United States, prohibiting kirpans in public spaces in Canada—these are all examples of the rising backlash against diversity that is spreading across multicultural societies. Trust has always been precarious, and never more so than as a result of increased immigration. The number of religions, races, ethnicities, and cultures living together in democratic communities and governed by shared political institutions is rising. The failure to construct public policy to cope with this diversity—to ensure that trust can withstand the pressure that diversity can pose—is a failure of democracy. The threat to trust originates in the perception that the values and norms that should underpin a public culture are no longer truly shared. Therefore, societies must focus on building trust through a revitalized public culture. In Trust, Democracy, and Multicultural Challenges, Patti Tamara Lenard plots a course for this revitalization. She argues that trust is at the center of effective democratic politics, that increasing ethnocultural diversity as a result of immigration may generate distrust, and therefore that democratic communities must work to generate the conditions under which trust between newcomers and “native” citizens can be built, so that the quality of democracy is sustained.

Can we trust our elected representatives or is public life so corrupted that we can no longer rely on governments to protect our interests or even our civil liberties? Is the current mood of public distrust justified or do we need to re-evaluate our understanding of trust in the global age? In this wide-ranging book, Russell Hardin sets out to dispel the myths surrounding the concept of trust in contemporary society and politics. He examines the growing literature on trust to analyze public concerns about declining levels of trust, both in our fellow citizens and in our governments and their officials. Hardin explores the various manifestations of trust and distrust in public life – from terrorism to the internet, social capital to representative democracy. He shows that while today’s politicians may well be experiencing a decline in public confidence, this is nothing new; distrust in government characterized the work of leading liberal thinkers such as David Hume and James Madison. Their views, he contends, are as relevant today as they were in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and we should not, therefore, be distressed at the apparent distrust of twenty-first century government. On a personal level, Hardin contends that the world in which we live is much more diverse and interconnected than that of our forebears and this will logically result in higher levels of personal trust and distrust between individuals. Written by one of the world's leading authorities on trust, this book will be a valuable resource for students of government and politics, sociology and philosophy.

How popular democracy has paradoxically eroded trust in political systems worldwide, and how to restore confidence in democratic politics In recent decades, democracies across the world have adopted measures to increase popular involvement in political decisions. Parties have turned to primaries and local caucuses to select candidates; ballot initiatives and referenda allow citizens to enact laws directly; many places now use proportional representation, encouraging smaller, more specific parties rather than two dominant ones.Yet voters keep getting angrier.There is a steady erosion of trust in politicians, parties, and democratic institutions, culminating most recently in major populist victories in the United States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. Frances Rosenbluth and Ian Shapiro argue that devolving power to the grass roots is part of the problem. Efforts to decentralize political decision-making have made governments and especially political parties less effective and less able to address constituents’ long-term interests. They argue that to restore confidence in governance, we must restructure our political systems to restore power to the core institution of representative democracy: the political party.

Democracy is a matter of degree, and this book offers mainstream empirical evidence that shows how rich democracies would be better off with a few degrees less of it.