The Politics of Distrust: Anti-Establishment Orientations and Epistemic Trust in Elite Rhetoric

The political dysfunction of recent years has inspired extensive research into populism, conspiracy thinking, and other attitudes that reflect a deep antipathy toward the established political order. While public opinion research suggests that such anti-establishment orientations are uncorrelated with left-right attitudes, it remains unclear how these sentiments manifest within party politics. This study examines the role of anti-establishment orientations in American politics through a systematic examination of elite rhetoric. Using GPT-3.5, I analyze over 20,000 speeches delivered in the 117th House of Representatives. I find that Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats to make appeals to populist, conspiracist, and Manichean (i.e., good-versus-evil) sentiments. Underlying this asymmetry is a proclivity by Republicans to frame politics as a moral conflict between starkly divided forces. Noting the epistemic dimension of populism and conspiracy thinking, I also examine how elite attitudes toward experts vary according to party, ideology, and anti-establishment rhetoric. I find that expert sentiment is lowest among the most populist and most conservative representatives. Overall, this study provides preliminary evidence that, in addition to ideology, contemporary interparty conflict is shaped by Republicans' asymmetric appeals to anti-establishment, anti-expert sentiments.