“How Trust Matters: The Changing Political Relevance of Political Trust”
Marc J. Hetherington
Professor
Department of Political Science
Vanderbilt University
marc.j.hetherington@vanderbilt.edu
and
Jason A. Husser
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Political Science
Vanderbilt University
jason.husser@vanderbilt.edu
The authors thank Jon Hurwitz, Tom Rudolph, David Lewis, Suzanne Globetti, Cindy Kam, Liz
Zechmeister, Larry Evans, and John Hudak for their helpful suggestions and assistance.
How Trust Matters: The Changing Political Relevance of Political Trust
Abstract
Americans most often think about government in terms of its ability to grapple with issues of
redistribution and race. However, the September 11 terrorist attacks led to a massive increase in
media attention to foreign affairs, which caused people to think about the government in terms of
defense and foreign policy. We demonstrate that this dramatic change in issue salience altered
the policy preferences that political trust shaped for a time. Specifically, we show that trust did
not affect attitudes about the race-targeted programs as it usually does in 2004, but instead
affected a range of foreign policy and national defense preferences. By merging survey data
gathered from 1980 through 2004 with data from media content analyses, we show that, in
general, trust’s effects on defense and racial policy preferences, respectively, increase as the
media focus more attention in these areas and decrease when that attention ebbs.
1
The scholarly consensus about political trust has evolved over time. For three decades
after trust began to plummet in the late 1960s, scholars found little evidence to suggest that its
decline had a meaningful impact on American public opinion, electoral behavior, or policy
outputs (e.g. Citrin 1974; Citrin and Green 1986). More recently, however, scholars have
demonstrated that declining trust has had a range of effects. Most central to our purposes, less
trust in government has led to decreasing support for government spending on redistributive
policies (Hetherington and Globetti 2002; Rudolph and Evans 2005), a less liberal policy mood
(Chanley, Rudolph, and Rahn 2000), and the implementation of fewer liberal public policies
(Hetherington 2005).
Although we, too, argue that trust matters, we believe that the revisionist understanding is
incomplete. Using individual level data, we show that the parts of government that become
salient at particular points in time can affect how trust matters – or, more precisely, which types
of opinions political trust affects. Using data gathered mostly from the 1980s through 2000,
previous scholarship provides strong evidence that political trust shapes public support for liberal
big government initiatives and a range of race targeted programs, at least among those asked to
make material (Hetherington and Globetti 2002; Hetherington 2005) or ideological sacrifices
(Rudolph and Evans 2005). These findings make theoretical sense because the size of
government was the dominant political cleavage of that period and the racialization of several
programs was central to Americans’ understanding of government (Gilens 1999; Jacoby 1994).
When people conjured an image of the federal government during this period, they
disproportionately thought about welfare recipients, rather than older people, the foreign policy
establishment, or the military (Hetherington 2005, Chapter 2).
2
Because “the government” is large and amorphous, however, the public’s perception of
what it is and what it does can change over time in response to changing stimuli. Most relevant
to our study, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks ushered in a fundamentally different
understanding of government’s main role from that of the 1990s. As evidence, the percentage of
people identifying a foreign policy issue as the country’s most important problem went from the
low single digits in the months before September 11 to nearly 90 percent in the months after.1
That percentage fluctuated mostly between 40 and 60 percent for most of the Bush years. These
data suggest that the public began to think of government less as redistributing scarce resources
and more as protecting the safety and security of Americans.
In this paper, we demonstrate that such changes in issue salience can affect the policy
preferences that political trust shapes. First, we examine data from the recent past to show that,
after the 9/11 attacks, political trust ceased to affect preferences about redistribution and racetargeted programs for a time and began to affect defense and foreign policy preferences. Next,
we merge data from media content analyses with survey data collected between 1980 and 2004
to show that the magnitude of trust’s effect in a policy domain depends on how much attention
the media provide that issue domain. When race and redistribution receive more media coverage,
as was the case in the late 1980s and 1990s, the effect of political trust on race-targeted policy
preferences is at its largest. Similarly, when media attention on defense and foreign policy is
high, as was the case in the mid-1980s and in 2004, trust’s effect on defense spending
preferences is at its largest. When these domains receive less coverage, the magnitude of trust’s
effect on them diminishes in kind.
How and When Political Trust Matters
1
These data were taken from the Gallup Most Important Problem time series over the period in question.
3
We follow the lead of most empirically minded scholars in defining political trust as the
ratio of people’s evaluation of government performance relative to their normative expectations
of how government ought to perform (Stokes 1962; Miller 1974; Coleman 1990; Hetherington
2005). This conceptual definition squares well with findings that suggest changes in trust are
most often a function of changes in perceived performance on important problems like the
economy (Hetherington 1998; Citrin and Green 1986; Weatherford 1984) and the incidence of
scandals (Chanley, Rudolph, and Rahn 2000; Keele 2007), although some longer term factors,
namely social trust, have contributed to fluctuations in political trust as well (Keele 2007).
Trust has important implications for policy preferences insofar as it can act as a valuable
heuristic. Since the actual inner-workings of government are opaque in most areas and since
developing constrained belief systems is too taxing for many (e.g. Converse 1964), trust provides
a simple decision rule. If a person trusts government – the entity that produces and administers
public policies – it follows that he or she would be more likely to support more government
involvement; if not, then less. The need for trust is particularly important theoretically when
people are asked to make sacrifices for programs from which they do not perceive they benefit.
To support more government spending or intervention in these areas, people must trust the
government to think its programs will produce societal benefits and not waste resources (see
Hetherington and Globetti 2002; Hetherington 2005; Rudolph and Evans 2005).
Our work here is complementary but more clearly elucidates the theoretical foundations
of trust’s effects. We, too, view trust in government as a powerful heuristic, yet we argue that
this heuristic can mean different things at different times. To understand how trust matters, it is
critical to understand what parts of government are salient to the public, which, in turn,
influences the specific preferences for government action that trust affects. Since government is
4
vast and performs a wide array of tasks, it is particularly susceptible to framing effects (see e.g.
Gamson and Modigliani 1989; Jacoby 2000; Kellstedt 2000)2. By framing effects we mean
“different presentations of an issue [that] generate different reactions among those who are
exposed” (Jacoby 2000, 751). Depending on the nature of events, the media and political elites
could highlight a nearly limitless range of frames about the federal government – the provider of
welfare state programs like food stamps, the arbiter of conflicts between business and labor, the
root of broad based programs like Social Security, or the engine behind the military’s efforts to
ensure Americans’ safety and security to name just a few.
Theories of information processing suggest that, when people are asked to consider how
much they trust the government, they will draw upon the material that different frames make
accessible in memory (Fazio 1986; Zaller 1992). Elite emphasis on the government as
redistributor of wealth ought to make accessible constructs about “big government” and race
(Gilens 1999), whereas emphasis on the government as protector of Americans’ safety ought to
make accessible constructs about the defense and foreign policy apparatus, and so forth.3 When
people evaluate government, they sample from all these potential considerations, drawing
disproportionately on things that are most accessible (see e.g. Zaller 1992).
Indeed, some existing evidence suggests that elite frames might affect the ingredients that
make up people’s evaluations of government. Using a range of feeling thermometers about
politicians, institutions, and politically relevant groups, Hetherington (2005, Chapter 2) estimated
a model of people’s feelings about “the federal government in Washington” using data from
1996. Feelings about the president, Congress, and the Supreme Court had the largest effects by
2
Providing defense is, for example, much more popular than providing welfare (Gilens 1999).
Although interpersonal contact can short-circuit framing effects if it runs counter to the elite frame (Druckman and
Nelson 2003), we expect such cases will be unlikely when the elite frame is foreign policy, in particular, because
such a frame suggests that a national crisis might well be at hand.
3
5
far. But, controlling for these factors, feelings about people on welfare, labor unions, and big
business – all traditional New Deal, Great Society groups – also had significant effects. These
results are consistent with the notion that traditional New Deal and Great Society considerations
were most salient in people’s understanding of government in the 1990s. Accordingly, and as
our theory predicts, scholars have shown that political trust affects preferences in this policy
domain (Hetherington and Globetti 2002; Rudolph and Evans 2005; Hetherington 2005).
Importantly, these studies focused primarily on the 1980s and 1990s, a time when racetargeted and redistributive programs represented the dominant political cleavage (Carmines and
Stimson 1989). As a result, race and redistribution were consistently salient considerations.
When health care became similarly salient in 1994 with the introduction of the Clinton-style
reform effort, however, political trust profoundly affected preferences in this domain as well
(Hetherington 2005, Chapter 7), which is also consistent with the issue salience hypothesis.
Further suggesting the importance of salience, trust ceased to have this effect on health care
preferences two years later after the issue disappeared from the public agenda.4
Like the brief but intense emergence of health care reform during the Clinton years,
September 11 caused a profound change in issue salience, which ought to affect which
considerations are most available to people when they are asked to evaluate the government.
Evidence suggests it did. When we replicated Hetherington’s feeling thermometer model using
data from 2004, we found that feelings about people on welfare, labor unions, and big business
were no longer statistically significant as they were in 1996. The two variables that exhibit
Specifically, Hetherington (2005) shows that, in 1994, political trust affected people’s perception of Clinton’s
health care reform plan among those who were satisfied with their health insurance coverage. In 1996, trust had no
such effect. Similarly, when the protection of civil liberties became an issue after September 11, political trust
affected whether people were willing to trade civil liberties for enhanced safety and security (Davis and Silver
2004). Although Davis and Silver (2004) do not pursue this point, we suspect that trust’s effect on these preference
would have been quite a lot smaller before September 11 because such issues were absent from the issue agenda.
4
6
substantially stronger effects on evaluations of the federal government in 2004 relative to 1996
are feelings about the military and feelings about liberals, a group that was perceived as
staunchly anti-war by November 2004. 5 Furthermore, it stands to reason that political trust
would come to affect policy preferences connected to the parts of government people are
thinking about when they evaluate it.
The importance about issue salience is not novel to political trust. Scholars have shown
that issue salience conditions the effects that other symbolic attitudes, most notably partisanship
and ideology, have on policy preferences. For example, Carmines and Stimson (1989, Chapter 6)
demonstrate that partisanship’s effect on people’s preferences for New Deal programs decreased
markedly in the 1950s and 1960s, while, at the same time, its effect on preferences for racial
desegregation increased dramatically. During this period, of course, American politics was
experiencing an “issue evolution” in which race was challenging the New Deal dimension as the
dominant issue cleavage. Layman (2001) shows a similar change in the strength of the
relationship between partisanship and preferences on moral issues as they became more salient in
the 1980s and 1990s (see also Hetherington and Weiler 2009). Stenner (2005) reveals similar
changes in the effects of ideology. When economic issues become more salient, the relationship
between ideology and economic policy preferences grows. When morally traditional or
authoritarian issues become more salient, however, ideology is more strongly related to
preferences in these areas. Our thinking about trust in government follows the same arc. If
people are thinking about the government in terms of keeping the country safe from world
terrorism, as was apparently the case in the early 2000s, trust in government ought to affect
5
These results are available from the authors. To provide a flavor of the key findings, the correlation (Pearson r)
between the federal government feeling thermometer and the people on welfare feeling thermometer plummets from
.37 in 1996 to .18 in 2004. Even more remarkable is the drop in the federal government thermometer’s correlation
with the labor unions thermometer, from .41 in 1996 to .07 in 2004. In contrast the correlation between the federal
government and military feeling thermometer jumps from .31 to .39 over this period.
7
preferences connected to that task more strongly than it affects preferences about race or
redistribution.6
Theoretically speaking, the effect of trust on foreign and defense policy preferences,
specifically, ought to be particularly strong when this domain becomes salient. Foreign affairs
are especially remote from most citizens’ personal experience (Lippmann 1922), and most
Americans possess little information about the world abroad (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996).
Lacking personal experience or significant information about foreign policy, preferences about it
are plausibly more uncertain than for other domains (Hurwitz and Peffley 1987, Lavine et al
1996). Such uncertainty ought to make a commodity like political trust particularly important,
given the role that trust can play in overcoming uncertainty (see Yamagishi, Cook, and Watabe
1998). For example, very few Americans would have the access necessary to assess conditions in
Iraq and, in turn, whether the costs of military intervention there have been worth the benefits.
We suspect that the more they trust the government, the more inclined they will be to express
support for the government’s evaluation of conditions abroad along with its favored initiatives.
Conversely, if people do not trust the government, then they ought to be less likely to adopt the
government’s evaluation and its preferred policy course.
Finally, although perceptions of who sacrifices and who benefits play an important
conditional role in the recent studies of political trust’s effects (Hetherington and Globetti 2002;
Hetherington 2005; Rudolph and Evans 2005), this approach maps less well onto the foreign
policy realm than for welfare state policies. All Americans benefit from the government
6
Although a complete treatment is beyond the scope of this paper, examples of salience affecting the relationship
between variables abound in political science. Aldrich, Sullivan, and Borgida (1989) uncover a very strong
relationship between them in the Reagan elections when foreign policy became particularly salient. Similarly
Edwards, Mitchell, and Welch (1995) show that George H.W. Bush was not hurt in 1989 by widespread public
dissatisfaction with his handling of the economy because foreign affairs was more salient to the public. When the
economy became more salient in 1992, those negative perceptions about Bush’s handling of the economy crippled
his approval ratings (see also Krosnick and Brannon 1993). McAvoy (2006) also finds that the effect of foreign
policy, in particular, on presidential approval co-varies over time with the salience of foreign policy issues.
8
protecting its citizens. That said, the effect of political trust still might be conditional regarding
national defense. Davis and Silver (2004) find that the effect of trust on support for civil liberties
after September 11 was contingent on the amount of threat people perceived from terrorism.
Those who perceived less threat needed to trust the government to part with certain civil
liberties. Among those who felt more threat, however, trust had no effect. Indeed, the logic is
complementary to the logic regarding sacrifice in the racial policy and redistributive realm. If
people are overwhelmed with worry that terrorism will strike again, they will not need to trust
government to support government initiatives that are designed to combat it because alternatives
to the government’s role are practically unavailable. This is akin to benefitting from and not
sacrificing for a program. Trust would, however, remain important for those who feel less
threatened.7
Data
We first draw on the 2000-2004 National Election Study (NES 2004a) panel survey to
demonstrate that the causal flow in our nexus of variables runs from political trust to foreign
policy preferences rather than vice versa. Next, we turn to the 2004 NES cross-section (NES
2004b) to show that political trust affected a wide range of foreign and defense policy
preferences when foreign policy concerns became salient. Finally, we use the NES’s Cumulative
data file (NES 2004c) to demonstrate the relationship between issue salience and the effect of
political trust on defense and racial policy preferences over time.
Foreign/Military Policy Preferences
The 2004 NES includes a range of items that allow us to test our hypotheses. In all, we
employ five dependent variables. Two deal specifically with Iraq. Respondents were asked
7
As a practical matter, threat from terrorism is difficult to operationalize with NES data; a question asking how
likely people thought there would be another terrorist attack in the U.S. in the next year was only posed to panel
respondents, not those who participated in the 2004 cross-section. We do, however, leverage these data below.
9
whether the war in Iraq was worth the cost and whether they thought the war reduced the threat
of terrorism. In addition, respondents were asked whether they thought spending on the war on
terror ought to be increased, decreased, or kept about the same and the degree to which they
thought combating international terrorism was an important foreign policy priority. Finally, the
NES asked people to place themselves on a seven point defense spending scale.8
The level of measurement of these dependent variables differs, requiring different
estimation techniques. Assessments of whether the war in Iraq was worth the cost are
dichotomous, so we estimate this model using logistic regression. Preferences about spending on
the war on terrorism, whether the war in Iraq reduced the threat of terrorism, and whether or not
combating international terrorism ought to be a foreign policy priority are measured on three
point ordinal scales. For these variables, we use ordered probit to estimate our models. Lastly,
support for defense spending is measured on a seven point scale, which approximates an interval
scale. Hence we use ordinary least squares to estimate this model.
Explaining Foreign Policy Preferences
Attitudes about foreign policy are a function of more than just political trust. Although
the scholarly conventional wisdom once suggested that foreign policy attitudes were not firmly
held and ostensibly arrived at random (see e.g. Almond 1950; Converse 1964; Gamson and
Modigliani 1989), more recent research suggests that opinions on these matters are structured in
predictable ways (Hurwitz and Peffley 1987) and are reasonably stable over time (Achen 1975).
Political predispositions, and general postures toward force, tend to carry the most weight
in explaining foreign policy preferences. We suspect that the political predispositions ought to be
especially important in the early 21st Century. Jacobson (2005) demonstrates partisanship caused
people to perceive even the basic facts of the war in Iraq differently and reveals a larger partisan
8
For details about question wording and response options, see the supporting materials for the submission.
10
split on the war than any in the history of public opinion polling. We suspect that conservatives
and Republicans will be significantly more supportive of President Bush’s domestic and foreign
efforts to combat terrorism than liberals and Democrats. To tap these variables, we use the
traditional seven-point ideological self-placement and partisanship scales.
Several core values ought to play a role as well, including authoritarianism (Lipset 1959;
Eckhardt and Newcombe 1969; Altemeyer 1996; Merolla and Zechmeister 2009; Hetherington
and Weiler 2009), patriotism (e.g. Rokeach 1973; Hurwitz and Peffley 1990), isolationism (e.g.
McClosky 1958; Hurwitz and Peffley 1987), and moral traditionalism (Peffley and Hurwitz
1992). Those who score higher in authoritarianism, patriotism, and moral traditionalism tend to
take more hawkish foreign policy stands whereas those who score high in isolationism tend to be
less hawkish. In addition, Herrmann, Tetlock and Visser (1999) find that people are more or less
willing to back the use of force under certain circumstances, suggesting that context matters (see
also Peffley and Hurwitz 1992). Political context, however, is difficult to measure when using
cross-sectional data because most people are experiencing the same foreign policy context. We
must, therefore, rely on people’s perceptions of that context. We use the people’s assessment of
the importance of defense spending to tap this concept.9
Finally, scholars have found that a set of demographic variables also affect foreign policy
preferences. Those with more formal education tend to be less supportive of interventionism and
military spending under most, but not all, circumstances (e.g. Gamson and Modigliani 1966;
Bartels 1994). Similarly, women tend to be less supportive of the use of force than men (Shapiro
and Mahajan 1986; Cook and Wilcox 1991; Fite, Genest and Wilcox 1990). Given the
particularly chilly relationship between African-Americans and the Bush administration, we
9
Here it would be ideal to be able to use the degree to which people perceived threat from terrorism to tap differing
reactions to a similar context. Unfortunately, this variable is only available for panel respondents, in which only one
of the dependent variables is available. Table 4 below shows that it is significant in this model.
11
expect that this group will be less supportive of the administration’s preferred policy direction in
2004 than other racial groups, even net of partisanship. In addition to these variables, we also
include measures for age and being a resident of the South.
Results
By calculating a set of bivariate measures of association between political trust and
foreign policy preferences in 2004, we first establish the possibility that trust can influence
preferences in this domain. We find consistently strong relationships. Among those who scored
in the bottom third of the trust distribution, only 25 percent thought Iraq was worth the cost.
Fifty-eight percent of those who scored in the top third thought it was (t=9.55, p<.0001). For the
ordinal and interval scale foreign policy preferences, the correlations with political trust are all
relatively strong for attitudinal data, ranging from a low of .14 (Kendall’s tau-b) for the
importance of a strong military to a high of .23 (Kendall’s tau-b) for the degree to which the Iraq
war reduced the risk of terrorism. In contrast, the relationship between trust and racial (and
racialized) policy preferences – such as aid to blacks, affirmative action, welfare spending, and
the government playing a role in ensuring fair employment practices– was apparently greatly
diminished in 2004 relative to the past.10 The strongest correlation is a mere .06 (Kendall’s Taub). Taken together, these results provide some support for our theory of issue salience.
Establishing Causation
Although the correlations are suggestive, it is possible that foreign policy preferences are
causing political trust, rather than political trust causing foreign policy preferences. Hetherington
and Rudolph (2008) demonstrate that political trust tends to increase as foreign policy becomes
10
Since those who are being asked to make sacrifices need to trust government to support them, we confine the
analysis to white respondents. Not surprisingly, when we replicate the models estimated by Hetherington and
Globetti (2002) using 2004 data, the effect of political trust is statistically insignificant. These results are available
from the authors upon request.
12
more salient, suggesting a causal link running from foreign policy to political trust. Our endeavor
here, however, is importantly different from theirs. We are examining the relationship between
foreign policy preferences and political trust, not the salience of foreign policy. We agree that
people ought to be more trustful, on average, when foreign crises become salient because the
parts of government that handle foreign policy are generally more popular than those that handle
domestic policy. Indeed Hetherington and Rudolph’s findings provide evidence of the framing
effects that animate our theory. But the key point here is that this higher level of trust ought to, in
turn, affect preferences on items in the newly salient issue domain. Of course, this logic also
suggests that, if trust increases as foreign policy becomes more salient, then leaders will receive
more leeway from the public in this domain than they receive in the domestic policy sphere,
which is consistent with decades of scholarly work (see e.g. Brody 1991; Mueller 1973).
Panel data provide the best means to test causal direction. Fortunately, the NES surveyed
the same respondents in 2000, 2002, and 2004. We estimate models in which the dependent
variables are measured in 2004 and the independent variables are measured in 2002, or 2000 if
they are not available in 2002. Unfortunately, only one of the five foreign policy dependent
variables, namely support for the Iraq war, was asked to a full complement of panel respondents,
although there is no reason to expect that the causal dynamics would differ for the other
dependent variables.11 If political trust measured in 2002 significantly affects preferences on the
Iraq war measured in 2004 and the Iraq war preference in 2002 is not significant in the political
11
A half sample of panel respondents also received the war on terrorism spending question. Although political trust
exerts a statistically significant effect in this model, only 350 valid cases are available for the analysis. This is a
particular concern in the analysis that appears in Table 2. When we include this variable along with Iraq war
preferences in the model, the number of cases plummets from 691 to fewer than 350.
13
trust equation as measured in 2004, then it suggests political trust is causally prior to war
preferences.12 The opposite would be true if the pattern was the reverse.
To estimate the Iraq war model, we use the variables described in the model section
above as explanatory variables, employing lagged measures when possible. To estimate the panel
model for political trust, we replicate as closely as possible the models estimated by
Hetherington (1998), also using lagged independent variables when possible. The results of the
first half of the panel analyses appear in Table 1 and conform to expectations. Political trust, as
measured in 2002, is significant in explaining whether people thought the Iraq war was worth the
cost in 2004, suggesting that political trust may be causally prior to foreign policy preferences.13
(Table 1 About Here)
Although this result is encouraging, it is possible that the relationship is more
complicated than we have hypothesized. If we find that a lagged measure of foreign policy
preferences is significant in explaining political trust, it would suggest simultaneity. The results
in Table 2, however, suggest that simultaneity is not a problem. Preferences for war in Iraq as
measured in 2002 fail to achieve statistical significance in explaining political trust as measured
in 2004 with its estimated effect about the same size as its standard error. Based on these results,
12
It is worth noting that the question asked about Iraq in 2002 is different from the one asked in 2004. In 2002, the
NES asked “As you may know, President Bush and his top advisers are discussing the possibility of taking military
action against Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Do you favor or oppose military action against Iraq -- or
is this something you haven't thought about?”. In 2004, it asked “Taking everything into account, do you think the
war in Iraq has been worth the cost or not?.” Because the items are not identical, it does not allow us to estimate a
classic cross-lagged model, in which a lagged measure of the dependent variable appears on the right hand side of
the model in addition to the other variables. Achen (2009) suggests the inclusion of lagged dependent variables on
the right hand side can actually cause more problems than it solves as it relates to causal inference, so we do not
include lagged dependent variables as regressors in any of our models that employ panel data.
13
It is also worth noting that political trust measured in 2000 is not predictive of war preferences in Iraq in 2002
despite the fact that lagged measures of patriotism and isolationism are not available, thus providing more
unexplained variance. This is consistent with our theory that trust, measured before September 11, 2001, is
informed by a different set of considerations than after. Although we do not include the results due to space
considerations, they are available from the authors.
14
we can be confident that trust is causally prior to foreign policy preferences and not vice versa.
This allows us to estimate a wider range of models.
(Table 2 About Here)
Cross-Sectional Models
We next turn to the estimates from the cross-sectional models. Each column in Table 3
contains the estimated effects for a separate model for each of the five foreign policy preferences
catalogued above. Broadly speaking, the results conform to expectations. Political trust
consistently has a positive effect on support for the government’s favored position on foreign
policy. As it relates to preferences about the Iraq War specifically, we can be particularly
confident that trust influences preferences. The estimated effect of trust is more than four times
its standard error for both the Iraq-related dependent variables. In several of the other models, the
estimated effects are more than three times their standard errors.
(Table 3 About Here)
That the other right hand side variables perform as expected increases our confidence in
the results. Party identification plays an important role, particularly in the Iraq related equations.
Consistent with the literature on foreign policy preferences, education has a consistently negative
effect. Similarly, in four of the six models, women are less hawkish than men. Those who score
higher in patriotism, moral traditionalism and those who identify defense spending as important
are, as expected, generally more hawkish.14
14
Although most of the attitudinal variables are significant in most of the models, it is noteworthy that ideological
self-placement and authoritarianism only achieve statistical significance once. Both, however, do consistently carry
the correct sign. Finally, the demographics, other than education and gender, make little difference. Race, age, and
region are rarely statistically significant.
15
We turn to simulations to provide a sense of the substantive impact of political trust both
in absolute and relative terms.15 To simulate the effect of political trust, we fix the other variables
at politically relevant values and allow trust to vary. Specifically, we simulate a non-African
American male who is from the South and is at the sample mean on all other characteristics.
Since the question about whether the war in Iraq is worth the cost provides only two response
options, the interpretation of predicted probabilities from the simulations is straightforward. If
the predicted probability is greater than .5, we classify the simulated respondent as believing Iraq
was worth the cost. If it is less than .5, we classify the simulated respondent as not believing it
was worth the cost.
The simulations reveal that the effect of political trust is substantively important. The
predicted probability that our “typical” respondent answers Iraq was worth the cost was only .33
when we fixed trust at its minimum value; we would classify him as not believing Iraq was
worth the cost. If we increase political trust to its maximum, the predicted probability more than
doubles to .72, a 39 percentage point increase. This is substantively important because, with trust
at its maximum, our “typical” respondent believes Iraq was worth the cost.
Trust’s effect is also impressive in a relative sense. We can replicate this simulation,
fixing trust at its mean and allowing each of the other variables to vary in turn across their
respective ranges. Not surprisingly, partisanship’s effect is largest by far. Moving from its
minimum to its maximum, the probability of seeing Iraq as worth the cost increases from .20 to
.90. The effect of political trust, however, compares favorably with all the other variables in the
model. The first differences for moral traditionalism, education, and isolationism are .33, .31,
and .29, respectively, which are roughly the same for as political trust.
15
Predicted probabilities were calculated in Stata using Long’s (2005) SPost progam.
16
The effect of political trust is substantively very large in understanding whether people
thought the War in Iraq “increased”, “decreased”, or “kept about the same” the threat of
terrorism. Replicating our simulation for this three-category dependent variable, we find that,
with trust fixed at its minimum, the predicted probability of falling into the “increased” category
is .47, the predicted probability of falling into the “stayed the same” category is .38, and the
predicted probability of falling into the “decreased” category is only .15. In short, our simulation
suggests that a very politically distrustful “typical” respondent would think that Iraq increased
the threat from terrorism. But, if someone scored at the trust maximum, the predicted probability
of a very political trustful “typical” respondent falling into the “increased” category is just .19,
while the probability of falling into both the “stayed the same” and “decreased” category was
.41. Put another way, the predicted probability that our typical person sees the war in Iraq as a
net harm decreases by 28 percentage points (from .47 to .19) while the predicted probability that
people see Iraq as a net benefit increases by 26 percentage points (from .15 to .41).
To put this effect into perspective, consider the effect of ideology. Among those who call
themselves extreme liberals, the predicted probability in our simulation that this person would
say Iraq caused an increase in the risk of terrorism is .58, compared with .33 that the threat
remained the same and .09 that the treat decreased. If we fix ideology at “extremely
conservative”, the respective probabilities move to .25, .42, and .33. In other words, extreme
conservatives were 34 percentage points less likely than extreme liberals to see Iraq as harming
the nation’s efforts to combat terrorism, and about 24 percentage points more likely to think that
it helped, roughly the same effect as political trust.
Trust also exerts a particularly strong effect on preferences for spending on the war on
terrorism. When we replicate the above simulations and fix trust at its minimum, the predicted
17
probability of thinking that such spending ought to be decreased is .14, that it ought to remain
about the same is .44, and that it ought to increase is .42. But, if we increase trust to its
maximum, while holding all else constant, the predicted probability of thinking spending ought
to be decreased drops to .05, the probability of thinking it ought to remain the same decreases to
.30, while the predicted probability of supporting an increase in spending surges to .66. In other
words, increasing political trust from its minimum to its maximum increases the probability of
wanting to increase spending on the war on terrorism by just over 20 percentage points, other
things being equal. In this case, the effect of political trust is about the same as the effect of
partisanship. The predicted probability that a strong Democrat thinks spending on the war on
terror ought to increase is .41 in our simulation. For a strong Republican in our simulation, that
predicted probability increases to .56, about a 15 percentage point difference.
The Conditional Effects of Political Trust
The effect of political trust on foreign policy preferences might not be uniform across
individuals. Similar to support for civil liberties (Davis and Silver 2004), trust’s effect may be
contingent on the amount of threat people perceive from terrorism. Those who are overwhelmed
with fear that another terrorist attack is just around the corner might not require much political
trust to support the government’s approach to foreign policy because only government can
protect them whether they trust it or not. For those who feel less threatened, however, trust ought
to be more important. When not paralyzed by fear, people ought to require trust to adopt the
government’s approach.
To test this hypothesis, we must return to the 2000-2004 NES panel study. Unlike the
2004 NES cross-section, it asked how likely people thought another 9-11 style terrorist attack
would occur on U.S. soil in the next year, which is similar to the measure of threat used by Davis
18
and Silver (2004). We coded those who responded “very likely” as feeling an acute threat. We
replicate the analysis that appears in Table 1, but we include this indicator of threat, as measured
in 2004, on the right hand. In addition, we include an interaction between it and political trust as
measured in 2002 as well. The rest of the model remains the same. If our hypothesis is correct,
we should find a positive sign for political trust alone, indicating that trust has the familiar
positive effect among people who do not feel acute threat from terrorism. We should find a
negative sign for the interaction between the two variables, suggesting that the effect of political
trust is smaller among those who do not perceive an acute threat from terrorism.
The results appear in Table 4 and reflect expectations well. The so called main effect for
political trust is positive and significant, and the interaction between threat and political trust is
negatively signed and significant. This, of course, suggests that when people do not feel acutely
threatened, political trust matters in their assessments of the Iraq War. When people do feel
acutely threatened, it does not.16
(Table 4 About Here)
A More Direct Test of the Salience Hypothesis: Defense Spending
Although we believe an increase in the salience of defense issues explains why trust
affects foreign policy preferences in 2004, we have not provided direct evidence that salience
matters. To do so, we turn to the NES Cumulative file, augmenting these data with data from
media content analyses. Over the last few decades, foreign policy issues have sometimes been
very salient and sometimes not. If we find that trust’s effect is significantly larger when the issue
domain was more salient, it would provide firmer evidence that trust’s effects are conditioned by
context. Among potential dependent variables available to test our hypotheses, the NES has
16
The effect relative to zero of political trust among those who feel acutely threatened is not statistically significant
(B=-1.053, s.e.= 1.822).
19
asked only one question about foreign affairs and defense over a long series of years, the seven
point defense spending scale. It has appeared in almost every survey between 1980 and 2004.
To measure the salience of defense and foreign affairs over time, we relied on media
content analysis from Baumgartner and Jones’ Policy Agendas Project (PAP), which is
publically available at www.policyagendas.org. Policy Agendas has developed a database
composed of more than 37,000 news stories randomly sampled from the New York Times News
Index from 1946-2005. Since the defense spending scale was only asked by the NES between
1980 and 2004, we used only these years from the PAP. The PAP classifies each article into one
of 27 policy domains, with coding decisions cross-checked by three coders. Among the
domains, two are germane to foreign policy, one labeled “defense” and the other “international
affairs”. To make the data comparable over time, the PAP calculates the percentage of stories in
domains each year by dividing the number of mentions in specific domains by the total number
of stories coded that year.17
The results of the content analysis follow the expected pattern. News about defense and
international affairs was prevalent both in the mid 1980s and especially after September 11, but
made up a much smaller percentage of coverage in the 1990s and 2000. Not surprisingly, the
maximum percentage of national defense stories (31 percent) occurred in 2004 while the
percentage of national defense stories between 1994 and 2000 never exceeded 17.5 percent.
17
There are a number of different ways to measure salience, but mentions by the mass media offer the best
alternative because the media provide for most people the considerations that will be on the tops of their heads.
Another approach would be whether or not a person identifies an issue as a most important problem. Although the
MIP approach has merit, issues can be salient to people without being identified by them as the MIP. For example,
the percentage of people who identify issues like gay rights and abortion as the most important problem facing the
country is usually in the low single digits. Yet the correlation between people’s preferences on these issues and vote
choice is extraordinarily strong, suggesting that issues can be salient without being considered “most important”
Niemi and Bartels (1985) discuss problems of salience measures endogenous to the survey instrument. Similarly,
Rabinowitz, Prothro, and Jacoby (1982) question the influence of perceived importance of an issue. In contrast,
more media coverage of an issue simply increases the probability that the issue provides an accessible consideration
for people evaluating the political world around them (Edwards et. al. 1995), which is exactly our argument as it
relates to issue salience and political trust.
20
To test whether the effect of political trust is conditional on the salience of national
defense, we merge the yearly results of the content analysis into the NES Cumulative File.
Specifically, each respondent in a given year receives a score for national defense salience
corresponding to the percentage of stories in the domain that year. So, for example, since 31
percent of stories in 2004 were in the defense and international affairs domain, each 2004
respondent receives a score of .31 for national defense salience. Next we create an interactive
term between salience and political trust. Since defense spending is coded from most dovish to
most hawkish, the effect of the interaction should carry a positive sign -- the difference between
the most and least trustful in their support for defense spending ought to increase as the salience
of national defense increases.
To test our hypothesis, we replicate the defense spending model from above, substituting
the NES Cumulative data for the 2004 NES data and adding the trust*salience interaction as well
as the so called main effect for national defense salience. Of the twelve right hand side variables
that we included in the 2004 model, all are available in the Cumulative File except people’s
perceived importance of the defense spending issue, authoritarianism, and patriotism.
Fortunately, the effect of authoritarianism was not large in our 2004 analysis, so its absence
should not affect the results much. Moreover, the salience of defense spending, as measured by
our media content analysis in the over time analysis, actually does a better job measuring context
than our measure of salience, importance of defense spending, in the 2004 cross-section.
Patriotism’s effect was substantial in 2004, but, unfortunately, data limitations force us to
proceed without it. In addition, neither moral traditionalism nor isolationism appears in all the
years that the dependent variable does. Hence we estimate a reduced form model that includes
only the independent variables that are available in all years in addition to models that include
21
these variables, which comes at the cost of missing data and missing years. We employ clustered
standard errors on defense salience to account for the limited variation from the contextual data.
The results of the defense spending analysis appear across three columns in Table 5. The
first column includes results based on an analysis that includes only those explanatory variables
that appear in every election study between 1980, the first year the defense spending question
was asked, and 2004. This excludes both moral traditionalism and isolationism. The second
column includes moral traditionalism, which was missing from the 1980, 1982, and 1984
election studies. Finally, the third column includes both moral traditionalism and isolationism.
The important point here is that, regardless of specification, the results follow the same
substantive pattern. The interaction between trust and the salience of national defense carries a
positive sign and is statistically significant. The so called main effect for political trust carries a
negative sign, which might seem anomalous at first but is in fact meaningless because the
percentage of stories about defense is never zero. And, the so called main effect for the salience
of national defense is positive, which is consistent with previous scholarship (Herrmann, Tetlock
and Visser 1999), although not statistically significant.
Since the reduced form model in column one produces estimates that are substantively
the same as the others, we interpret the conditional effects of trust based on it. When the media
salience of defense issues very high as it was in 2004, the estimated effect of political trust on
defense spending preference is substantial, -.806+5.521(0.31) = 0.906 with a standard error of
0.167 (p<.05).18 In addition, our model also suggests that the effect of political trust on defense
spending preference was substantial in the mid-1980s when the percentage of defense mentions
was also very high (.28 in 1984 and .29 in 1986). In 1984, for example, its estimated effect was .806+5.521(0.28) =0.746 with a standard error of .130 (p<.05). But when salience of defense
18
The standard errors were calculated based on Kam and Franzese (2009).
22
was relatively low, as was the case for most of the 1990s, the effect of political trust is much
smaller. In 1996, for example, when political trust was at its minimum, its estimated effect was .806+5.521(.17) = .114, with a standard error of .206 (p>.05). In short, trust’s effect on defense
spending is statistically significant when the salience of national defense is high, but not when it
is low, suggesting that issue salience matters.
A Second Test of the Salience Hypothesis: Aid to Blacks
We next attempt to replicate this result for the race and redistribution policy domain.
Unfortunately, the PAP content analysis is not particularly helpful for measuring the salience of
race and redistribution. Of the twenty seven categories that PAP coded, two relate to this domain
-- “social welfare” and “civil rights”. The percentage of stories that fall into these two domains
are, however, extraordinarily low. The maximum percentage of stories in these two categories
combined from 1980 to 2004 is only 8.8 percent, and most other years the percentage is under
five percent. Given the role that race and redistribution has played in structuring political
conflict over the last several decades, it is clear that the PAP data do not allow us to tap the
salience of this domain accurately.
Hence we carried out an original content analysis, counting articles that appeared in the
New York Times with certain key words connected to various policy domains. Using Lexis
Nexis, we limited the analysis to articles that appeared in Section A from the National desk, so
that we captured articles that centered on the United States rather than events abroad. We
counted articles that occurred between January 1st and December 31st of federal election years
starting in 1982, the first full year Lexis-Nexis contains holdings, and ending in 2004. So that
our content analysis tracked the PAP approach used above, we also counted articles across a
range of other issue domains, including defense, the economy, race and redistribution, moral
23
issues, the environment, elderly issues, and education. We derived our measure of salience for
race and redistribution by dividing the number of articles containing key words related to this
domain by the total number of articles in all domains.19 For details about the search terms for all
policy domains, see our supporting materials with this submission.
We followed Gilens (1999) to identify search terms for the race and redistribution
domain, using “welfare”, “food stamps”, “big government”, “homeless”, “urban poor”, “public
assistance”, “public housing”, “Medicaid”, and “civil rights”. The percentage of stories falling
into this domain follows the opposite pattern of defense. Race and redistribution stories were
particularly salient in the mid-1990s with welfare reform an important agenda item. In 1994, for
example, one quarter of stories included our search terms. Similarly, 22 percent of stories fell
into the race and redistribution domain in 1996. In 2004, however, only 12 percent did. As
above, we merged these data with data from the NES cumulative file such that each respondent
each year receives the percentage of stories that met the search criteria for the race and
redistribution domain. For example, all 1994 respondents receive a race and redistribution
salience score of .25, all 1996 respondents receive a score of .22 and so forth. We then created
an interaction between political trust and salience of race and redistribution.
As for potential dependent variables, we are fortunate that the NES has consistently asked
one question from this issue domain since 1980, namely aid to blacks. We reverse the NES’s
coding, such that the conservative response (less spending) is coded 1 and the liberal response
(more spending) is coded seven, so the interaction between trust and racial policy salience should
again carry a positive sign. A positive sign on the interaction would suggest that the difference
between the most and least trustful is largest when the salience of racial issues is high.
19
We read a sample of articles returned by these counts, finding that they closely reflected the politics of each issue
domain. Indeed the correlation between our measure of defense and the one from the Public Agendas Project was
about .8, which provides us confidence in the analysis we have carried out for race and redistribution.
24
Since only non-blacks pay the costs for these programs and do not receive direct benefits,
we use only non-African American respondents in our analysis. We include as many of the right
hand side variables as possible from Hetherington’s (2005) model and make substitutes when
possible. Unfortunately, neither support for equality nor racial resentment appears in the NES
Cumulative File, although both have large effects on racial policy preferences. Finding a
suitable proxy for support for equality proved impossible, but we substituted racial resentment
with people’s feeling thermometer score about “Blacks.”20 Of course, the differences between
our model and those from previous scholarship suggest that we must be careful not to overinterpret the estimates. Still, if we find the same pattern of results here as we found for defense
policy salience above, we think that it would represent strong corroborating evidence for the
salience hypothesis.
The results appear in Table 6. Again, they follow the expected pattern. The so called
main effect of trust carries a negative sign, which is again all but meaningless because the
percentage of stories about race is never exactly zero. More important for our purposes, the
interaction between the salience of racial issues and political trust carries a positive sign and is
statistically significant. In 2004, when the percentage of stories about race was at its minimum,
the effect of political trust is only -.567+6.276(.12) = .186 with a standard error of .190 (p>.20).
But, when the salience of race and redistribution is very high as it was in 1996 when welfare
reform was on the top of the agenda, the effect of political trust on preferences about aid to
blacks among non-African Americans is quite large -.567+6.276(.23) = .876 with a standard
error of .140 (p<.05).21 Again, salience appears to condition the effect of political trust.
20
The results hold without the inclusion of blacks feeling thermometer.
It is also noteworthy that our two models, when taken together, suggest trust can have effects on both the defense
and race domains, provided both are sufficiently salient. Salience levels in 1988 for both were near the median in
the respective time series. Based on 1988 salience, the estimated effect for political trust on defense spending was
21
25
Conclusion
To understand how political trust matters in shaping policy preferences and thus policy
outcomes, it is important to understand what parts of government are salient when people are
asked to evaluate it. Not only does trust in government increase when international problems are
salient (Hetherington and Rudolph 2008), our evidence suggests that trust in government has
significant effects on policy preferences in the international domain. After the September 11th
terrorist attacks, trust had a profound effect on a range of preferences directly and indirectly tied
to fighting the war on terror. When race and redistribution all but disappear from the issue
agenda, trust’s effect on how much non-blacks want to aid blacks dries up.
This pattern of findings is important for two reasons. First, trust apparently does not
always affect issue preferences in areas where previous scholarship has found effects if these
areas are no longer salient. Second, the menu of preferences that trust might affect could be
longer than scholars presently believe. Perhaps scholars have not found relationships between
political trust and other preferences because certain issue domains were not particularly salient at
the time of study.
Our findings also have important longitudinal implications. Prior scholarship suggests
that increases in political trust, regardless of the reason, ought to increase support for
redistributive policies (Hetherington 2005), but our results suggest that its effect over time is
more complicated than that. Trust increased markedly after the September 11 terrorist attacks
and maintained a higher baseline for several years after. Such a change would suggest that
support for redistributive policies should have increased markedly as a consequence. But, we
have shown here that trust was no longer related to preferences for redistribution in 2004. Hence
.409 with a standard error of .133 (p<.05), and the effect on aid to blacks was .625 with a standard error of .079
(p<.05).
26
the increase in trust between 2000 and 2004 would not have been responsible for any increase in
support for such preferences that might have occurred.
Although our account has necessarily focused on past changes in issue salience, our
theory could have important implications for the future as well. Although most commentators
thought that the 2008 election would be a referendum on the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy,
the financial crisis that took hold in September that year changed the political calculus
fundamentally. According to data from the 2008 NES, the correlation between political trust and
evaluations of the war in Iraq all but disappear, which makes sense given that the salience of
foreign policy issues plummeted during the period. The first days of Obama administration
emphasized public works projects to stimulate an economy ailing from the banking crisis and
later health care reform took center stage. If these understandings of government stick in the
public consciousness, political trust may affect preferences in these areas instead.
27
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Table 1: Foreign Policy Preferences as a Function of Lagged Political Trust and Other Variables,
2000-2004
Dependent Variable:
Param. Est.
Iraq War Worth Cost
(Std. Errors)
Political Trust02
1.028**
(0.421)
Party ID02
3.315***
(0.368)
Authoritarianism00
0.634
(0.396)
Conservatism02
1.790***
(0.548)
Black
0.237
(0.468)
Age
-0.962*
(0.528)
Female
-0.015
(0.207)
Education
-0.616
(0.398)
Moral Traditionalism00
1.516**
(0.552)
Isolationism02
-0.681**
(0.274)
Patriotism02
1.007**
(0.370)
South
0.517**
(0.219)
Constant
-4.669
(0.670)
N
682
Pseudo R2
0.344
Note: Logistic regression. *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001. One-tailed tests
Source- American National Election Study Panel, 2000-2004.
35
Table 2: Political Trust as a Function of Lagged Foreign Policy Preferences and Other Variables,
2000-2004
Dependent Variable:
Param. Est.
Political Trust
(Std. Errors)
Iraq War Worth Cost
0.022
(0.022)
Thermometer: Bush 2002
0.094
(0.048)
Thermometer: Congress 2002
0.332***
(0.057)
Thermometer: Democrats 2002
0.083*
(0.039)
Thermometer: Republicans 2002
0.121
(0.046)
Moral Traditionalism 2000
-0.049*
(0.043)
Retrospective Evaluation 2002
-0.157
(0.043)
Education
0.109
(0.031)
Age
0.047*
(0.045)
Black
-0.076
(0.035)
Female
-0.005*
(0.017)
Constant
0.011
(0.067)
N
Adjusted R2
Note: OLS regression. *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001.
Source- American National Election Study Panel, 2000-2004.
36
696
0.177
Table 3: Foreign Policy Preferences as a Function of Contemporaneous Political Trust and
Other Variables, 2004
War in Iraq
Worth the
Cost?
0-1
Model 1
Param. Est.
(Std. Errors)
1.681***
(0.397)
War in Iraq
Reduced
Terrorism?
1-3
Model 2
Param. Est.
(Std. Errors)
0.816***
(0.172)
Party ID 7
4.240***
(0.412)
Conservatism 7
Dependent
Variable:
Importance of
Strong military
1-5
Model 3
Param. Est.
(Std. Errors)
0.566**
(0.183)
Spending War
on Terror
1-3
Model 4
Param. Est.
(Std. Errors)
0.609***
(0.172)
1.195***
(0.169)
0.299*
(0.180)
0.387*
(0.171)
0.846***
(0.184)
0.906
(0.646)
0.884**
(0.272)
0.478*
(0.287)
-0.102
(0.271)
0.072
(0.289)
Authoritarianism
0.105
(0.354)
0.281
(0.152)
0.371*
(0.158)
0.179
(0.151)
0.008
(0.159)
Education
-1.553***
(0.443)
-0.449*
(0.181)
-0.387*
(0.187)
-0.442*
(0.180)
-0.900***
(0.193)
South
0.200
(0.196)
0.058
(0.083)
0.056
(0.089)
0.032
(0.083)
0.178*
(0.090)
Age
-0.774
(0.407)
-0.150
(0.169)
-0.128
(0.174)
0.923***
(0.168)
0.165
(0.182)
Female
-0.179
(0.183)
-0.055
(0.078)
-0.181*
(0.082)
-0.291***
(0.078)
-0.283***
(0.082)
Black
-0.123
(0.294)
-0.005
(0.123)
0.040
(0.126)
-0.040
(0.121)
-0.071
(0.135)
Patriotism
0.783
(0.631)
0.387
(0.255)
1.670***
(0.248)
1.238***
(0.246)
2.084***
(0.268)
Moral
Traditionalism
1.867**
(0.650)
0.512
(0.273)
1.309***
(0.283)
0.419
(0.268)
1.115***
(0.290)
Importance of
Defense Spending
1.081*
(0.520)
-0.036
(0.214)
0.890***
(0.225)
0.752***
(0.214)
1.561***
(0.235)
Isolationism
-1.450***
(0.268)
-0.166
(0.102)
-0.041
(0.105)
-0.264**
(0.101)
-0.264*
(0.113)
Constant/ Cut 1
-5.308***
(0.724)
1.580***
(0.290)
0.341
(0.320)
1.173***
(0.286)
0.877**
(0.311)
Cut 2
-
2.707***
(0.297)
1.888***
(0.296)
2.453***
(0.292)
Cut 3
-
Political Trust
-
3.205***
(0.306)
-
N
950
963
967
962
Adj./ Pseudo R2
0.378
0.136
0.151
0.109
Note: Standard Errors in parenthesis. *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001. One-tailed tests.
Logistic Regression: Models 1. Ordered Probit Regression: Models 2-4. OLS: Model 5.
All Independent Variables on 0-1 scale. Source- American National Election Study, 2004.
37
Spending
Defense
1-7
Model 5
Param. Est.
(Std. Errors)
0.346*
(0.184)
870
0.124
Table 4: The Effect of Political Trust on Iraq War Preferences Conditional on Perceptions of
Threat, 2000-2004
Dependent Variable:
Iraq War Worth Cost
Param. Est.
(Std. Errors)
Political Trust02
1.338**
(0.452)
Threat of Terrorist Attack04
1.129*
(0.559)
Political Trust02 * Threat of
Terrorist Attack04
-2.391*
(1.265)
Party ID02
3.362***
(0.372)
Authoritarianism00
0.576
(0.399)
Conservatism02
1.777**
(0.552)
Black
0.225
(0.473)
Age
-0.996*
(0.529)
Female
-0.005
(0.209)
Education
-0.586
(0.400)
Moral Traditionalism00
1.454**
(0.559)
Isolationism02
-0.684**
(0.276)
Patriotism02
1.001**
(0.373)
South
0.515*
(0.221)
Constant
-4.771***
(0.678)
Pseudo R2
0.346
N
676
Note: Logistic regression. Standard Errors in parenthesis. *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001. Onetailed tests. Source- ANES Panel 2000-2004.
38
Table 5: Defense Spending Preferences as a Function of Political Trust Conditional on Foreign
Policy Salience, 1980-2004
Model 1
Model 2
Model 3
Param. Est.
Param. Est.
Param. Est.
(Std. Errors)
(Std. Errors)
(Std. Errors)
Political Trust
-0.806
(0.529)
-0.212
(0.366)
-0.275
(0.380)
Defense Salience
1.063
(2.774)
1.488
(2.439)
2.317
(2.349)
Trust*Defense Salience
5.521*
(2.066)
3.873*
(1.498)
3.697*
(1.625)
Conservatism
0.211***
(0.010)
0.170***
(0.017)
0.156***
(0.015)
Party ID 7
0.631***
(0.077)
0.603***
(0.067)
0.619***
(0.073)
Female
-0.142**
(0.044)
-0.155**
(0.038)
-0.164**
(0.037)
Education
-0.202***
(0.030)
-0.170***
(0.024)
-0.200***
(0.021)
Age
0.003
(0.002)
0.003*
(0.001)
0.003
(0.001)
South
0.317***
(0.039)
0.356***
(0.028)
0.333***
(0.027)
Black
-0.103*
(0.053)
-0.032
(0.034)
-0.026
(0.036)
0.558***
(0.099)
0.640***
(0.074)
Moral Traditionalism
-
Isolationism
-
-
0.239**
(0.045)
3.344**
(0.818)
2.353**
(0.515)
1.906**
(0.501)
Constant
R2
0.1064
0.1325
0.1485
N
16,086
10,451
9,046
Note: OLS regression. Standard errors clustered on year in parenthesis. *p<.05, **p<.01,
***p<.001. One-tailed tests. Source- ANES Cumulative File, 1948-2004.
39
Table 6: The Effect of Political Trust on Aid to Blacks Preferences Conditional on Racial Issue
Salience, 1982-2004
Dependent Variable:
Param. Est.
Aid to Blacks
(Std. Errors)
Political Trust
-0.567
(0.537)
Race Salience
-0.861
(1.240)
Trust * Race Salience
6.276*
(2.882)
Conservatism
-0.225***
(0.017)
Party ID
-0.614***
(0.056)
Female
0.032
(0.024)
Education
0.175***
(0.029)
Age
-0.001
(0.001)
South
-0.234***
(0.046)
Income
-0.100***
(0.022)
Retrospective Economic Evaluation
-0.016
(0.023)
Blacks Thermometer
0.014***
(0.001)
Constant
3.685***
(0.296)
R2
0.1379
N
12,105
Note: OLS regression. Standard errors clustered on year in parenthesis. *p<.05, **p<.01,
***p<.001. One-tailed tests. Source- ANES Cumulative File, 1948-2004.
40