The Vicious Circle of Fear and Indifference

Citizen indifference and lack of participation is the most damaging result of a lack of trust in government officials. One reason is that a vicious circle is created. When government officials are untrustworthy, and especially when they use intimidation to create the sort of fear that severely cuts into citizen participation, there are fewer people to watch over them on behalf of the public. This makes government officials feel more fearless and act more self-serving and more openly intimidating. And so on.

As an article in yesterday's Los Angeles Times points out, even when local politics is intensely fought amongst the few, low voter participation allows individuals to act in their personal interest rather than in the public interest.

"The danger here is that you have a small group running everything for their own benefit, rather than for the public good," said Jack Pitney, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. "The democracy isn't very healthy.... Low turnout is an invitation to misconduct."

One result in Los Angeles County has been city government that is characterized by recall wars and accusations of voter fraud. When small numbers of citizens are involved, a city's players feel no obligation to consider the expense to taxpayers of recall elections and special elections for ballot measures.

Special elections are their favorite tool, especially at times no one is around or paying attention, because these special elections mean very low voter participation and an easy, inexpensive path to victory via a small number of supporters and aggressive approaches to a few others, especially senior citizens.

Another result of this vicious circle is the high salaries of officials in Bell, the subject of an earlier blog post, which were enabled by a ballot measure approved by fewer than 2% of the city's voting age population.

There are other characteristics of these communities that help create this vicious circle, including a large percentage of immigrants, and the lack of a vibrant local press or civic institutions that provide relatively neutral analysis of local candidates and issues. As Professor Steve Erie is quoted as saying, "There is no watchdog function."

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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