American presidential elections: trust and the rational voter

This is a book about democracy, both the classical ideal and the con temporary American variation on that theme. It is also a book about trust, rationality, and citizen participation in American presidential elections. These diverse themes are brought together in the central thesis of this work: that trust is an essential component of the rational decisions of voters to participate in elections and is crucial to the candidate preference decision. By "trust" I understand attitudes toward both the political system and its agents-reflecting evaluations of honesty, reliability, compe tence, responsiveness, and related qualities, as well as very broad political values. Although it may vary in importance with the circumstances of particular elections and voters' perceptions of the quality of their government's performance, rational voters' concern with trust has its basis in the alienation of popular sovereignty to representative institutions in the political system.
The voting behavior of American citizens is perhaps the most extensively studied aspect of human activity among contemporary political scientists. Yet there are surprisingly few works in the voting literature that concern themselves to any significant extent with the bonds of faith between the people, their political system, and their political leadership. Indeed, until quite recently the predominant theoretical orientations of voting researchers have offered little room for a serious treatment of this topic. Instead, trust appears as a mere reflection of more fundamental psychological attachments or issue-based judgments. I propose to establish that trust is a primary and essential element of voting behavior, with regard to both the decision to vote or abstain and the choice of candidates, and that casting electoral concerns in terms of trustworthiness is a rational response to the context of national elections.