scholarly journals Political trust, extra-representational participation and the openness of political systems

2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Braun ◽  
Swen Hutter
Keyword(s):  
Political Trust ◽  
Political Systems

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Kevin Vallier
Keyword(s):  
Social Trust ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
General Argument ◽  
Institutional Structures

This introduction reviews the challenges posed by falling social and political trust and increasing political polarization, especially in the United States. In particular, falling trust and increasing political conflict raises the question of whether political life is invariably a struggle for victory between groups with incompatible goals and principles. The introduction frames the problem in terms of the need to determine which institutional structures can sustain social trust between persons with diverse viewpoints and values. It then outlines the general argument of the book, which is that liberal institutions, political systems marked by extensive, equal constitutional rights and liberties, have the unique capacity to sustain social trust in conflicted times.

scholarly journals Distributive and Procedural Justice and Political Trust in Europe

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Schnaudt ◽  
Caroline Hahn ◽  
Elias Heppner
Keyword(s):  
Procedural Justice ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
Democratic Systems ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

Previous research underlines that a political system's adherence to principles of distributive and procedural justice stimulates citizens' political trust. Yet, most of what is known about the relationship between justice and political trust is derived from macro-level indicators of distributive and procedural justice, merely presuming that citizens connect a political system's adherence to justice principles to their trust in political authorities and institutions. Accordingly, we still lack a clear understanding of whether and how individual perceptions and evaluations of distributive and procedural justice influence citizens' political trust and how their impact might be conditioned by a political system's overall adherence to principles of justice. In addition, previous research has implicitly assumed that the link between justice principles and political trust operates identically for all major political authorities and institutions, disregarding the possibility that citizens evaluate representative and regulative authorities and institutions on the basis of different justice criteria. Against this background, the aims of the present study are (1) to investigate the impact of individual evaluations of distributive and procedural justice on citizens' political trust, (2) to analyze to what extent the effects of justice evaluations on political trust depend on political systems' overall adherence to principles of distributive and procedural justice, and (3) to assess whether and in which ways the influence of justice evaluations differs for trust in representative and regulative authorities and institutions. Our empirical analysis covering more than 30,000 respondents from 27 European countries based on data from the European Social Survey (ESS) and the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project demonstrates that (1) more positive evaluations of distributive and procedural justice foster citizens' political trust, that (2) the impact of justice evaluations on political trust is amplified in political systems in which the overall adherence to justice principles is compromised, and that (3) different facets of distributive and procedural justice evaluations exert varying effects on citizens' trust in representative as compared to regulative authorities and institutions. These findings entail important implications with regard to the relation between justice and political trust and the general viability of modern democratic systems.

scholarly journals Trust, Mistrust and Distrust: A Gendered Perspective on Meanings and Measurements

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Bunting ◽  
Jennifer Gaskell ◽  
Gerry Stoker
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Mixed Methods Research ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
Gender Effects ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Empirical Survey ◽  
Qualitative Work ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Survey Responses

Recent work has emphasised the need for greater nuance in qualifying both the presence and absence of political trust in different political systems. The concept of trust may thus be more effectively perceived and analysed as a family with trust, mistrust, and distrust as its members. Expanding to a family of trust means that new ways of capturing these attitudes in empirical survey work may be needed and a way of critically driving that exploration is to investigate how gender influences how they are understood. In this paper, we use insights from focus group discussions on a series of newly designed trust, mistrust and distrust questions to identify: 1) how citizens perceive these different concepts and 2) how gendered these perceptions are. We then draw on new survey data gathered through the TrustGov project to test how the focus group findings impact survey responses and thus identify: 3) which survey questions are more likely to effectively measure the three concepts. We show that the differences highlighted in our qualitative work underscore the need to develop a more systematic mixed methods research agenda on both the expanded family of political trust and gender. We emphasise that global comparative work to capture diverse gender effects across different political systems are the necessary next steps for the field.

Hva kjennetegner velgere med høy lokalpolitisk tillit?

2021 ◽  
pp. 229-252
Author(s):  
Marte Winsvold
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
Municipal Services ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Municipal Administration ◽  
Municipal Council ◽  
Local Election ◽  
Winning Team

Why do some citizens trust in local political actors and institutions while others do not? With data from the Norwegian Local Election Survey 2019, we examine characteristics of citizens with high and low local political trust. The analyses indicate that trust in the different political actors and institutions is closely linked. For example, those who report high trust in the mayor also report high trust in politicians in general, in the municipal council, and in the municipal administration. In other words, people tend to have either high or low trust in the entire local political system. Furthermore, we find that trust in local political systems and actors is associated with a number of individual and contextual factors including the sense of belonging to the municipality, the use of municipal services, and political participation. Trust also seems to be linked to being on the winning team: those who voted for parties that won the election are more trustful than those who voted for parties that that did not win the election.

scholarly journals On their own turf? The level-specificity of political trust in multilevel political systems

Acta Politica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominika Proszowska ◽  
Giedo Jansen ◽  
Bas Denters
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
Multilevel Governance ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Governance System ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Political Orientations ◽  
Rational Evaluation ◽  
Level 2 ◽  
Different Levels

AbstractAlthough the debate on roots of political trust is ongoing, many scholars agree on the relevance of such political factors as political/ideological distance between citizens and incumbents, political responsiveness and perceptions of performance. Less clear is to what extent such trust evaluations are generalized or specific for the three main political arenas in the European multilevel governance system (EU, national, local). With new data from the Netherlands, we demonstrate that trust in local, national and EU governments (1) is largely level-specific (i.e. is based on citizens’ perceptions of incumbents at a particular governance level) (2) and—at all three levels—is explained by level-specific political factors. This shows that political trust is a subjectively rational evaluation and that citizens develop meaningful political orientations vis-à-vis governments at different levels. Therefore, trust spillovers may be less relevant for explaining political trust in multilevel governance than assumed in previous research as executive governments at local, national and EU levels are judged “on their own turf”.

scholarly journals Investigating the Relation of Functioning as A Determinant of Wellbeing to Political and Social Trust in Three Balkan Countries

2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 209-231
Keyword(s):  
Social Trust ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Demographic Variables ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Trust In Institutions ◽  
Balkan Countries ◽  
The Stability

The measurement of wellbeing, political trust in institutions and social trust provide important indicators of the welfare of nations, political legitimacy and the stability of democratic political systems, and a country’s political culture, respectively. In this paper, the relation of functioning as a determinant of wellbeing to political and social trust was investigated using 2012 European Social Survey (ESS) datasets of three Balkan countries: Albania, Bulgaria and Kosovo. This involves first examining the structure of functioning and assess the psychometric properties of the resulting scale (or subscales). Preliminary tests explored the statistically significant relations of functioning to the political and social trust items as well as the socio-demographic variables and the left/right self-placement scale. Only in the case of the Bulgarian dataset, EFA and CFA resulted in a unidimensional valid and reliable scale measuring functioning scale comprised of all the initial eight items. Although the analysis did not result in the same structure of functioning for the three Balkan countries, it did provide a reliable and valid scale in the cases of Bulgaria and Kosovo. This work could be extended to cover all participating countries of this Round of the ESS.

scholarly journals COMPARING THE POLITICAL TRUST AND CIVIC POLITICAL CULTURE OF DEMOCRACY OR AUTHORITARIAN IN ASIAN COUNTRIES

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 320-333
Author(s):  
Hsiu-wen Yang
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Asian Countries ◽  
Transitional Regime ◽  
Full Responsibility ◽  
The People ◽  
The Government

The political trust of the people is essential for the consolidation of the regime, but it has not been discussed whether the democratic or authoritarian system is more consolidated. This article uses the Asian Democracy Dynamics Survey of 2010 to divide 11 countries into the system of democracy, excessive democracy and autocracy, and autocracy according to the Polity IV index. It will test the people’s political trust in these three different political systems, and try to explain the differences from the "cultural perspective" and "citizen classification." The cultural perspective is divided into authoritarianism, traditionalism, collectivism, and Confucian which belongs to the specific political culture in Asia. This paper created the concept of "accepted and rejected" citizenship. Studies have found that the more authoritarian the country, the higher the trust of the people, and it’s not easy to change the original regime. In addition to the traditional view, those who do hold culturally authoritative, collective, and Confucian views have high political trust and trust the government to take full responsibility. People have a higher degree of trust in their government, which is the hidden reason that may cause the authoritarian or transitional regime to fail to transform into a democratic regime.

Size and Political Trust: Evidence from Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and the United Kingdom

10.1068/c0225 ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 793-812 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bas Denters
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Local Government ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Social Trust ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
Elected Officials ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Negative Effect

This paper deals with two questions on the relations between the size of political systems and political trust. First, does citizens' trust in national elected officials differ from their trust in local elected officials? Second, what is the relationship between citizens' trust in elected local government officials and the size of local government units? These questions were answered on the basis of survey data from Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom. We found that trust in local officeholders is typically and often considerably higher than trust in national politicians. Moreover, the evidence from these four countries suggests that size of municipality has a modest negative effect on political trust. Further evidence suggests that this negative effect is the result of a tendency of citizens in small municipalities to be more satisfied with their local government than residents in large units. This further evidence also shows that whatever its origins (intensive personal relations or a dense network of civil organisations) social trust is not vital for an adequate understanding of political trust.

scholarly journals The Role of Trust in Political Systems. A Philosophical Perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-15
Author(s):  
Friedel Weinert
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Future Expectations ◽  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
Essential Condition ◽  
Political Literature ◽  
Inductive Inferences

Abstract The paper analyzes the question of whether trust is an essential condition for the functioning of social and political systems; it approaches the issue from a philosophical perspective. Trust appears in both interpersonal relationships (interpersonal trust) and in societal and political institutions (social and political trust, respectively). In the political literature trust is sometimes characterized as ‘an expectation of continued value’. Although the same literature distinguishes social from political trust, the thesis advanced here is that, logically, all forms of trust must be characterized as an inductive generalization from past experience to future expectations of the continuation of some specifiable utilities (goods, services). As such, trust suffers from Humean reservations about inductive inferences. Trust as an expectation of the continued provision of utilities, on the institutional level, will be characterized as a first-order sort of trust. It can be disappointed without necessarily threatening the continuation of a given institution, especially if there is no alternative service provider. But trust as an expectation of the continued functioning of democratic mechanisms will be characterized as a second-order sort of trust. The paper will argue that the second-order kind of trust is essential for the functioning of democracies.

scholarly journals Rebuilding Trust in Broken Systems? Populist Party Success and Citizens’ Trust in Democratic Institutions

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 45-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marlene Mauk
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Government Performance ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Development Indicators ◽  
Democratic Quality ◽  
Short Run ◽  
Populist Party

What effect does the recent rise of populist parties harnessing an anti-system rhetoric have on political trust? Will citizens become disenchanted with and lose trust in the political system, or could populist party success even stimulate a growth of political trust? Arguing that populist parties may well be conceived as a corrective force giving voice to and addressing citizen concerns about the established political system, this contribution hypothesizes that populist party success will increase political trust among the general public, especially in countries lacking democratic quality, with weak corruption control, and meagre government performance. Empirically, it combines ParlGov data with survey data from the European Social Survey (2002–2016) as well as aggregate data from the Varieties-of-Democracy project and the World Development Indicators to investigate how political trust has changed in relation to the growing success of populist parties and how democratic quality, corruption control, and government performance have moderated this relationship in 23 European democracies. Its main findings indicate that, at least in the short run, political trust increases rather than decreases following populist party success and that this increase in trust is most pronounced in political systems that lack democratic quality, struggle with corruption, and deliver only meager government performance.

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