Citizens do not choose sides on issues like busing or abortion whimsically. They have reasons for their preferences – certainly they can give reasons for them. But how is this possible? Citizens as a rule pay little attention to politics, indeed take only a modest interest in it even during election campaigns when their interest in politics is at its height. And since they pay little attention to politics, it is hardly surprising that they know little about it. Many, in fact, are quite ignorant of basic facts of political life – such as the identity of the party that controls Congress or indeed the name of the congressman who represents them. Which, of course, raises a question of some interest: how do citizens figure out what they think about political issues, given how little they commonly know about them?

Are Happy Days for government really here again? Recent polls suggest that the long slide in public confidence in America's political institutions and authorities has finally ended. Ronald Reagan, who came to Washington to bury government rather than praise it, ironically has presided over a restoration of trust in the competence of national leadership. We begin this article by charting the contours of the unanticipated improvement in the public's image of government, assessing the magnitude of the increase in confidence, identifying the social groups whose outlook has changed and specifying the institutions that have gained in popular esteem. Our main purpose, however, is to provide an explanation for the resurgence of trust in government that addresses persistent controversies about the theoretical and empirical status of this concept.

The conservative revival that has taken place on both sides of the Atlantic in recent years has been an intellectual as well as a practical accomplishment. That this remarkable fact has received scant attention from political theorists can be attributed to two main causes. First, and less important, there has been an understandable tendency to focus on personalities and party politics where expediency blurs the sharp outlines of doctrine. As President Reagan confronts the problems of a second-term presidency, as Mrs Thatcher's iron grip on her party seems to weaken and as Chancellor Kohl or Mr Mulroney make their inevitable compromises and evasions, the conservative politician in office is revealed to be not dissimilar to his liberal or socialist predecessor. Now – as Elie Kedourie noted when asking the question ‘Is neo-conservatism viable?’ back in 1982 – this is only to be expected. The constraints of democratic politics will inevitably narrow ideological differences until they appear to be little more than rhetoric. If there has been a conservative revival, its significant and enduring features must be sought elsewhere.

For most of the seventeenth century, natural philosophers in Europe were confronted with two opposing views of the universe: the traditional Ptolemaic view and the emerging Copernican view. The former was slow to give way to the latter because it could be adequately supported by evidence, and its adherents, for reasons of professional status, had a vested interest in maintaining its theoretical integrity. Initially, the Copernican view possessed only the advantage of elegance. After much heated and ‘incommensurable’ discussion, the argument was only resolved finally when the older generation of scientists died out and the growing volume of observational anomalies overwhelmed the capacity of the traditional approach to explain them away.

In recent years the chief emphasis of Soviet legislation on urban administration has been to expand the rights and responsibilities of city governments in planning and co-ordinating economic activities within their territory. Very little has been done, however, to enhance the power of city Soviets so that they might actually carry out these new responsibilities. The same problems that historically have plagued local Soviets continue to undermine their capabilities. Chief among these problems are the following:

1. Insufficient power vis-à-vis the ministries; in most decisions concerning enterprises subordinate to all-union (Moscow-based) or republic-level ministries, the local soviet has little influence. With the exception of Khrushchev's short-lived sovnarkhoz reform, which dismantled most of the central ministries and attempted to expand the power of regional authorities over economic decision-making, the branch principle of management has been dominant ever since the beginning of Stalin's industrialization drive. The most powerful actors are the ministries located in Moscow or in the republic capitals. A large percentage of the money invested in the construction of housing, cultural facilities and the urban infrastructure is not part of the budget of the local soviet. Instead, such facilities are financed out of funds that the ministries allocate to enterprises for these purposes. In the mid-1970s, ministries paid for and supervised the construction of 70 per cent of housing and 65 per cent of new kindergartens and nurseries. The result is that facilities are built according to the interests of the ministries rather than in response to more general, local needs.

The ‘environment’ as a political issue has had a mixed history. Its sudden upsurge in the late 1960s was followed by many ups and downs. It has, however, continued to press itself on to the political agenda in various forms. Most recently, the rise of green parties in Western Europe has demonstrated that the environment is not one of many issues which come and go but has led to more fundamental political change.