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This dissertation argues that decreasing public trust in democratic institutions—things like journalism, science, and government—is not primarily a symptom of public ignorance or irrationality, as is often claimed, but rather a response to repeated norm violations by the institutions themselves. The standard account, widely echoed in academic and popular discourse, blames the public for this decline: if only citizens trusted experts more, consumed higher-quality media, and resisted populist temptations, democracy would be safe. Against this view, I argue that the public may be right to be suspicious—and that their suspicions are not only rationally motivated but often epistemically and morally justified.
Across four chapters, I explore how institutional behavior has earned the decline in public trust. The first chapter contends that conspiracy theories often arise when authorities behave in ways that contradict the norms they are presumed by the public to follow—openness to evidence, good-faith engagement, epistemic humility. When epistemic authorities fail to behave in the ways the public expects, people look for an explanation to account for their actual behaviors, and conspiracy theories provide one. The second chapter examines gatekeeping in science, arguing that the behaviors of elite scientists and institutional gatekeepers often undermine public confidence in science, especially when professional incentives reward status-seeking over rigor and integrity. The third chapter focuses on whistleblowing, framing it not as a threat to institutional stability, but as a bellwether of its failure. If institutions were as self-correcting and trustworthy as they claim to be, whistleblowers wouldn't need to exist—nor would they be punished when they emerge. The final chapter introduces the concept of political paradigms, modeled on Thomas Kuhn’s work in the philosophy of science. I argue that American public life is now fractured into incommensurable paradigms, each with different background assumptions, values, and expectations. This fracturing explains why appeals to consensus, civility, or shared facts so often fail: there’s no longer a shared framework to which they even could appeal.
Taken together, these chapters present a unified picture according to which the loss of trust in institutions is not an unfortunate side effect of misinformation, social media, public ignorance, Donald Trump, or any number of other proposed culprits—it’s an (often) rational response to the experiences of everyday citizens. Rebuilding such trust requires more than media literacy campaigns or content moderation. It demands that institutions change how they behave. They must meet the normative expectations they have long claimed to uphold—or else accept the consequences of failing to do so.
