Free Essay: Ability to Trust the Government

Item One

When the last third of the twentieth century was going on, the public trust in the federal government and political institutions eroded. This is visible in the 1960s and the 1970s when the Vietnam War began and proceeded to the 1970s during the Watergate scandal and the economic quagmire they used to experience during those times (Pew Research Center 2019). The government partially gained the trust of the public during the reign of Reagan; unfortunately, when his reign and Bush's were coming to an end, the public skepticism was already returning in bits. After the war came to an end, the drastic gains in the economic status of the late 1990s only presented a small increase in the public evaluation of the government.

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Item Two

There is an apparent correlation between a person’s party membership and their ability to trust the government. The majority of public members who trust the federal government are also party members. Members in the opposition side are always showing little trust in the political party in power. For instance, the present party in power, which entails members of the Republicans, at least 21% trust the government, unlike the 14% held for the Democrat supporters (Pew Research Center 2019). A person’s ideology also has apparent correlations with their trust in government. An individual might trust the party in power to deliver positively to the members of the public, even if they do not belong to that party. They believe in change, in that whatever party can bring the development, they will trust even without shifting from their party. This concept is evident in how the Republicans are seen with high levels of trust in the government when their party is in power than when Democrats are leading.

In contrast, the Democrats' attitudes are consistent regardless of the party controlling the white house. The Democrats are confirmed to be stable in terms of ideology. An individual’s generational status also affects their trust in the government as seen from the data presented by PEW because as we have seen, only 19% of Millennials have been reported to have trust in the government which is also similar to the members of generations before them who are now a bit older (Pew Research Center 2019). This indicates that public trust in government will remain low for a longer duration across generational lines. The issue of race and ethnicity has created many hullaballoos in the government, considering how crucial the matter is. As proof of how this issue is, in the current situation, when Obama and Clinton were in power, more blacks than whites showed their trust in the federal government as well as during the reign of Reagan and George Bush, who were Republicans. There was a lot of support in terms of trust coming from the whites. Unfortunately, during the presidency of Trump, all Hispanic origins, including both white and black non-Hispanics, have presented their distrust in the present government, which was not the same during the presidencies of George and Reagan.

Item Three

This information implies that an individual might have trusted the government and expected it to act rightfully and justified. Still, few dishonest people in the same government are known for their practices, but the government is supposed to benefit everybody. This indicated tremendous public support to the government and politics as a whole. People had hopes in politicians, even if not all of them, for quite a long time. Their idea remained unchanged until the 1960s when it declined terribly because public administration and politics were both heading south. Therefore, public members had no visible results, hence, minimal trust for the government (Pew Research Center2019). In this way, it indicates that public administrations and politics are shaping each other in one way and another. Public administrations and the citizens work in a manner that, since the citizens want results for them to show trust in the government in power, the government, through public administrations, has to make political decisions that will be beneficial to the citizens of the State. This implies that all public administrations have political meanings because political decisions have no value if they are not implemented.

Moreover, the trust people have with politicians did not entirely rely on politics but also on democracy and how it was administered to them by public administration bodies. Once citizens fail to understand how democracies of the government are represented, especially when the same democracy fails them on several occasions in that, the democracies are not implemented to serve them with loyalty successfully, their belief in the government becomes minimum. For instance, during the Vietnam War, the Anti-Vietnam demonstrations that the students presented in pursuit of civil rights showcased critiques of democracy. Overall, citizens always like decisions that are made by public administrations that favor their welfare. In return, the government is sure to get their trust as well as the great support of their democracy.

Additionally, the government has to be responsive when dealing with its citizens to enhance their trust. Regardless of their race or ethnic group, their response rate has to be equal across all State members without considering their gender, age, race, and ethnicity. Accountability is another crucial area that the government scores very little when it comes to public opinion. This is because accountability directs the government accountable for all the actions taking place in the country; this includes both positive and negative. When the government's public administration lacks control over bureaucratic errors, this leads to the attraction of significant negative approaches that taint the government's picture, leading to a lack of trust. Finally, neutral competency helps the government in describing bureaucracies that it uses to advise its officials. This implies that public administrators are supposed to work for the government with a lot of expertise as they strive to do it per the objective standards of the government and not their obligations or loyalties. The achievement of neutral competence to all citizens automatically increases the trust people have in their government. This is because of how the administrations are doing a specific job as representatives of the government.

Item Four

Government representatives such as policymakers are always on the run once they realize that they are going to be held accountable for the consequences of their decisions. However, according to Donald, if the unbroken chain would be controlled from the top policymakers to administrators, the blames would land in the official’s laps and not the policymakers and administrators as the citizens may seem to believe because they are the people who interact with citizens in most cases (Kettle 2018). Public administrators can be held accountable to citizens using numerous mechanisms to ensure their rights and privacy are respected. Firstly, these administrators will be held responsible if they wait for the public members to act as whistleblowers when things are getting wrong. They are quietly silent and waiting for it to calm so that they are not held accountable for the errors (Kettle 2018). In this way, citizens are free to hold their administrators accountable for not speaking out when they knew things were not right. Government officials are also supposed to be held accountable to citizens when they become much obedient to their superiors and elected leaders who send them to the citizens to the extent that they go to the citizens with wrong information and claim it to be right even though they are wrong for citizens to believe. Several ideas and concepts come up from Donald's concept of accountability and the performance of public programs. To mention a few, I have noticed that leaders will always be held responsible by citizens for their deeds which lead to mistrust of government operations. Also, the government will always be judged overall by citizens without considering who is principled or who is eroded, and it will always be judged in general performance. Finally, public performance requires one to be open-minded and with critical thinking skills that will help them to make the best decisions that will lead to an appraisal of the office and its members by the public.

Item Five

The government is always under pressure by public members to enhance the performance of public sectors and contain the growth of expenditures. These are the significant challenges that the government is facing in their bid to make federal decisions. In addition to the challenges, citizens are always demanding to know how the taxpayer’s money has been put into work, making the government account for the money using fine details, which they still don't believe. These challenges make it difficult for the government to give solutions to public problems in many cases because of the distrust that public members have on the government. When it comes to the pressure by public members in the enhancement of the public sector as a whole, the government always claims that it is at the forefront of quality delivery of services to the public members. They never appreciated those efforts apart from even embracing the efforts. General members always complain about their problems, which are insatiable because they never end, which also makes them unique (Kettle 2018). Despite being under pressure to enhance performance, they are also held responsible for over-expenditure of funds by the public who requires help. The government also finds difficulties in giving solutions to these challenges because they have to follow the hierarchy of delegations from higher to lower delegations (Kettle 2018). The models contained in the approaches are also having challenges that the same government has to address before reaching down to the citizens. The main challenge uprising from these theories is that they all assume that public administrations are working by making government employees carry out government programs through bureaucracies of the government itself, which have a sight to the frontlines where services are delivered (Kettle 2018).

Item Six

The policy analysis process examined in this course has improved my capacity in terms of societal challenges because I have learned that different people may give different solutions to similar problems. These indicate that societal challenges need a clear definition before implementing necessary actions; after all, the efforts might get unappreciated by state members who will, in return, demand for the accountability of the expenditures, which they will also refer to as misused because it was used for illegal purposes. Additionally, I have learned that societal challenges should be evaluated and appropriately assessed for better results of the transformation process. With these efforts, public members cannot lose trust in the people that serve them with such transparency and accountability. I have to be transparent enough when dealing with societal challenges and involve them in every step of development. Terms like bureaucracy have enhanced my understanding of bureaucracy. I used to believe that elected leaders make the most critical decisions in all government systems, but I was wrong because not every system works the same way. Apart from the term and concept of bureaucracy, I have also learned that none of the mentioned theories are best in facing these challenges, even though they can still be helpful in one way or another.

References

Kettle, D. (2018). Politics of the Administrative Process. https://www.academia.edu/14271435/OF_THE_ADMINISTRATIVE_PROCESS_Fifth_Edition

Pew Research Center, (2019). Public Trust in Government