Five Reasons to Trust the Government and Five Reasons not to Trust the Government

NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.

NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Five Reasons for Public to Trust the Government
Five Reasons Not to Trust the Government
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

The main role of the government is to guide and secure effectiveness of the social units that constitute the public. Political debates mainly influence government undertakings and therefore the strength, effectiveness or efficiency of the political system highly depends on trust and support that the public accords its leaders.

In order to gain the required public trust, the government requires transparency and impunity measures that give people reliance for making decision to either trust or fail to base their confidence on the govrnment. This paper forms a brief summary of some reasons why the public either trust the government or fail to base their reliance on the system.

Five Reasons for Public to Trust the Government

Reforms

One major question that determines the citizens’ trust concerns the expectations for community policies to shape and reform administration. There is lack of specific measures to enhance reforms, but the restructuring efforts range from review of fundamental governance roles to utilization of the public resources.

The reasons why people trust the current Obama’s government as opposed to the former president Bush administration lie upon identification of common interests and goals (Welch et al, 17). Current government system ensures that its citizens are aware of the objectives, plans and reform solutions, therefore the citizens have a stronger trust.

Proper Performance

There are various responsibilities or duties that the current U.S. government ensures, as a measure to correct and perfect performances such as addressing the basic needs of citizens. Basic human necessities are a requirement for enhancing decent livelihood.

Today. citizens’ trust depends upon the common reform objectives such as the current health-sector reforms (Reese, 21). The government is more responsive to societal needs as well as changes and therefore remain as an entity that enforces performance through guidance for citizens to achieve widespread public goals.

Protection

One of the Key roles of the government is to enhance security for its citizens especially against terrorists and local insurgencies. After the September 11 2001 terrorist attack, the U.S government emerged stronger in implementing measures that ensure total avoidance of such repetitive attacks.

The anthrax scares also strengthened the citizen’s trust for the government protection. Major catastrophes such as the hurricane hits causes the government to respond promptly to save lives and this form of protective reactions promotes trust among citizens.

According to Reese, (21), threats that compromise homeland security triggers on the government role of protection and causes a rise on reactions concerning security, for instance the ‘President Bush’s ’attack on Iraq to confiscate weapons of possible attacks led to better trust that the government was ready and able to protect its citizens against such brutal attacks.

Healthcare Provisions

President Obama’s government implemented laws that ensure every citizen has access to basic healthcare requirement regardless of one’s economic abilities (Welch et al, 17). A good example is the ’2014 plan’ to have a law that ensures insurance companies give cover for anyone who has a pre-existing health condition.

Government policies also ensure that health insurance firms do not drop people from coverage due to their sickness or related conditions. According to Galston (1), citizens therefore have better reliance and trust on current form of health policies that the government implements.

Equality

One of the key aspects notable in the Obama’s style of leadership is the similarity between the democrats, republicans, conservatives or liberals who form either side of any political debate. Each of these groups of persons suffers from self-interest and thus the system has little or no distinction of the political sides. There is a form of equality within the political deliberations.

Five Reasons Not to Trust the Government

Accountability

The government officials are answerable for any form of mismanagement and misbehaviours. They are reliable for any of the public assets or entities bestowed under their authority. There is lack of the required measures that indicate presence of accountability for instance, lack of proper measures and standards that ensure good governance. Governance innovations require the government to be in a position of enhancing strategic efforts to find optimal results that restrain problems regarding the internal political, social, and economical factors. Such governance gets support through “transparency, efficiency and participation” (Seasons, 432).

Citizens’ Participation

Some of the aspects that need urgent address in governance include the low intensity of services due to poor participation by the public, who are the main satisfaction indicators. There is urgent need to redesign operation procedures, to come up with proper orientation over courses of action and to enlighten the public over the governance system.

Development faces a major setback due to lack of information sharing procedures, to strengthen cooperation among government departments and the citizens. Majority of the citizens are often unfamiliar with any existing governance system and thus keep literally away from seeking services or fail to inquire the required information.

Participation enhances self-governance and thus costs people less time and cost for the reason that there is easiness over transactions’ speed. The government fails to consider the main stakeholders (citizens), in the decision-making procedures. According to Welch et al (17), a trustworthy government does not make key decisions without involving diverse inputs, especially from the citizens who are aware of the effects or outcome the decisions might have on their lives.

Transparency

One of the main failures and thus a reason citizens fail to trust the government is lack of clarity over transactions. According to Lukensmeyer and Boyd (12), governments consider citizen participation as unnecessary, complex and costly procedure to implement in the governance system. For this reason, governments include electronic techniques in their systems, but fail to engage citizens into consultation and forums.

This is an indication of low citizen participation in governance despite the incredible advancements. The U.S. government has initiative to modernize the government through strategic management of human capital, expanded e-government and integration of public budgeting and performance analysis.

Citizens ought to demand for the decentralization, digitization and automation of government undertakings (Galston, 1). Does the government provide a transparent system that enhances such arrangements? The government fails to practice transparency over regulations, rules and decisions. Due to lack of necessary information concerning governance policies, citizens suffer from poor decisions thus instability of various sectors of a country and compromise on trust.

Poor Budget Allocation

Another key factor that causes the public to lose government trust is budgeting. There is need to involve citizens in budgeting procedures so that the allocations of funds occurs in accordance with credibility of projects. Trust in this case depends greatly on the appropriation of funds to projects through corrupt-free, transparent and programs that lack the anomalies. Budgeting today mainly involve few people and principally has higher attentions to those in authority.

Responsibility

In cases of crisis such as the hurricanes and financial predicaments, the government clearly indicates lack of responsibility through the political blame games. Arguably, there is still massive corruption within the government, which is easily observable through unbalanced budget allocations or through such instances where those in authority engage anomalous questioning and political attacks, such as questioning each other’s responsibility.

Conclusion

The cause of lack of public trust depends on the responsive nature of leaders. Citizens will appreciate a government system that has extreme performances at the least possible cost. Current reforms focus upon provision of faster or better needs and services.

Citizens are tired of more provisions of similar services, thus the reason why the current U.S government worn easily because they advocated for change. The social needs are dynamic, diverse, fragmented and complex. The pace for change is thus steeper and people can only trust a government that is in a position of enforcing dynamic solutions and is able to listen keenly to the diverse demands for innovation and solutions.

Works Cited

Galston, Williams. Americans Still Don’t Trust Government- But They Could Go For A Health Care Plan Modeled Like This. New York, NY: The New Republic Journal. 2009. Print.

Lukensmeyer, Carolyn, and Boyd Ashley. Putting the “public” back in management: seven Principles for planning meaningful citizen engagement. Public Management, 86, 10-15. 2004.

Reese, Charles. Industrial Safety and Health for People-Oriented Services. Florida, FL: CRC Press, 2008. Print.

Seasons, Mark. Monitoring and evaluation in municipal planning: considering the

Realities. Journal of the American Planning Association, 69. P 430-441, 24 November 2009. Web.

Welch, Susan et al. Understanding American Government. Massachusetts, MA: Cangage Learning Press. 2010. Print.

Click Here To Order Now!