The Public Choice Theory in Public Opinion

The World Bank defines corruption as “the abuse of public office for private gain” and while this social phenomenon exists at many levels of institutions, I will be focusing on corruption in the American political system in this analysis. This paper seeks to focus on the impact of one’s distrust in the government and how they perceive the economy and corruption in the government. Therefore I will be testing the subsequent hypothesis of: people who view the government officials to be corrupt, will be more likely to be of the notion that the state of the economy is bad than those who otherwise do not. Factors like the media or social standing of a person comes into play to heavily influence a person’s socially constructed views of the Government. Thus this paper seeks to establish how these social factors work to influence people views, which in turn will lead people to hold that corruption in the government is responsible for the bad state of the economy. Interestingly I found that certain studies argue that corruption is good for the economy