Structural distrust in US governance: How partisan gridlock and neoliberal policy legacies erode public faith in systemic solutions
Original framing: “Voters favor Democrats on key issues but lack faith in either party to solve problems: AP-NORC poll - AP News” — AP News (via Google News)
The current voter distrust crisis has deep historical roots in the U.S., including the backlash against the New Deal’s expansion of state power in the 1930s, the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s, and the 1970s oil shocks that fueled neoliberalism. The Reagan and Thatcher eras deliberately undermined public trust in government by framing state intervention as inherently corrupt, while simultaneously deregulating industries and privatizing public goods—a legacy that persists today. For example, the 1970s-80s attacks on unions and public sector workers (e.g., PATCO strikes, welfare reforms) created a cultural narrative that equated government with inefficiency, even as corporate welfare and military-industrial complex spending ballooned. This historical amnesia in modern polling obscures how today’s distrust is not a new phenomenon but a deliberate outcome of decades of ideological warfare against the welfare state.
The AP-NORC poll’s framing of voter distrust as a matter of 'faith' obscures the systemic mechanisms that have deliberately eroded public confidence in U.S.
governance: neoliberalism’s hollow promises, the two-party system’s gridlock, and the racial capitalism that has historically excluded marginalized communities from meaningful participation. Historical parallels—from the 1970s backlash against the welfare state to the post-colonial distrust in Brazil or South Africa—demonstrate that this crisis is not unique to the U.S. but a product of institutional design choices that prioritize corporate interests over collective well-being. Indigenous governance models, participatory budgeting, and truth commissions offer concrete pathways to restore trust by centering community autonomy, economic justice, and historical accountability. The trickster lens reveals the absurdity of a system that asks voters to 'have faith' in institutions designed to fail them, while the future-modelling dimension underscores that without structural reforms, distrust will only deepen. The solution lies not in incremental electoral fixes but in dismantling the power structures that have manufactured this cynicism in the first place.