ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses two forms of trust that are essential to a well-functioning democratic system: citizens' trust in their government and policymakers' trust in each other. Mistrust among policymakers has contributed to policy failures and heightened accusations that people in government cannot be trusted, and this in turn may have deepened voters' lack of trust in their government. It is thus worth considering ways to rebuild trust among policymakers in our national government to accomplish the same task among American citizens. Even when Americans have mistrusted government as a whole, they held some branches of the national government in relatively high esteem. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson argue that the failure of US Senate to pass immigration reform despite cooperation by members of both parties was due in part to "mutual mistrust" on both sides about their opponent's true motives.