The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.
Written by Benjamin Paley
April 15, 2024
You don't need a PhD in public administration to understand that Americans have a hard time trusting their government. According to the Pew Research Center, trust in government is “back to near all-time lows.” This is not unexpected given what is currently happening in Washington DC.
In general, there are two interrelated issues that contribute to high levels of distrust of government. First is the important role of government in our lives. People tend to distrust the government because it plays such an important role in their lives.
Second, there is the issue of interpersonal trust. People don't trust each other and they don't trust the government. One theory is that this interpersonal distrust stems from perceived injustices in the government's cooperation with lobbying groups.
Now the problem is: What are the consequences of a society where people don't trust their government or the institutions it works with? What happens when we no longer do our part, such as by participating? In an attempt to understand the causes of the problem, I turned to the literature.in shakespeare Coriolanusthere is a great story about what happens when people don't trust the government and don't want to cooperate.
Shakespeare had the Roman nobleman Menenius read this fable to a crowd of angry Roman commoners who felt that the Senate was taking all their wealth and hoarding it for themselves. . They don't understand the benefits. Menenius answers this in “The Fable of the Belly.”
In ancient times, human limbs did not work together as friendly as they do now, but each had its own will and method. At some point, the members of the body, while working to support the abdomen and devoting themselves to serving its desires and pleasures, found it disgusting that they were living a life of indolence and luxury. started. So the members began a plot to cut off their abdominal supply for the future. Hands were no longer meant to carry food to the mouth, there was no mouth to receive the food, and no teeth to chew it.
They did not continue this course of starvation and submission for long, but one by one they all began to fail and flag, and their whole bodies began to go numb. The members became convinced that the seemingly bulky and useless belly had important functions of its own. They decided that they could not do without it, just as they could not do without it, and that in order to keep the constitution of the body in a state of health, each should do its part for the common good of all. We decided that we must cooperate in these areas. .
Now, the version of the fable I quoted did not originate from Shakespeare. This comes from one of his many versions of “The Fable of the Belly” and can be easily found online. But all versions teach the same lesson: the dangers of distrust of society. “Fable of the Belly” shows us what happens when mistrust runs out of control. It reminds us that even if the government does not seem to be doing its job, when a society revolts (or strikes), the consequences can be dire for the entire population. .
Like in “Fable of the Belly,” we live in a time when people are revolting. They don't trust the government to do its job. And they don't trust the organizations that the government works with to get that job done.
There is no easy answer to this question. Restoring trust will take time. But now is the time to start rebuilding trust, albeit slowly.
I'll stop doing that.
author: Benjamin Paley graduated with a J.D. from Shepard Broad School of Law in 2022 and a Master of Public Administration from Florida Atlantic University in 2018. You can contact him at: [email protected].
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