Description:
Growing disenfranchisement with political institutions and policy processes has generated interest in trust in government. For the most part, research has focused on trust in government as a general attitude covering all political institutions. In this book, Scott E. Robinson, James W. Stoutenborough, and Arnold Vedlitz argue that individual agencies develop specific reputations that may contrast with the more general attitudes towards government as a whole.
Review Quotes:
Across the Western world we have witnessed an erosion of trust in public institutions over the past decade. Against this daunting backdrop, Scott E. Robinson, James W. Stoutenborough, and Arnold Vedlitz challenge us to embrace a much more nuanced world view where the reputation of government agencies can diverge from a general path of low trust and decline. They do so in a convincing manner, by introducing experimental and observational data that is explored with clear theoretical predictions derived from public administration, political science, and psychology. - Asmus Leth Olsen, University of Copenhagen