From the NY Times, on July 4, 2015: The long decline in Trust in Government and Why That Can be Patriotic. An excerpt:

It’s easy to look at Washington and conclude that nothing ever gets done. Trust in government has steadily deteriorated over the past several decades and continues to do so. Questioning the aims and efforts of government is a foundation of American citizenship. It’s how the nation was born. The colonists didn’t trust King George III, and they carefully laid out their reasons for breaking away from his rule in the Declaration of Independence.

But some of the recent decline may have less to do with how the government has disappointed people and more to do with an increasing knowledge of how the government works.

****Trust in all kinds of institutions, from banks to courts, has declined since the 1950s. Justin Wolfers, an economist and Upshot contributor, described it as a function of what we know now that we didn’t know before: There is increasing transparency across all types of institutions today relative to the 1940s and 1950s, he said in an interview in 2011. That very transparency might be the root of declining trust, he concludes.