The Individual Bases of Political Trust: Trends in New and Established Democracies

The expansion of democracy in the world has been paradoxically accompanied by a decline of political trust. By looking at the trends in political trust in new and stable democracies over the last 20 years, and their possible determinants, we claim that an observable decline in trust reflects the post-honeymoon disillusionment rather than the emergence of a more critical citizenry. However, the first new democracies of the ‘third wave’ show a significant reemergence of political trust after democratic consolidation. Using data from the World Values Survey and the European Values Survey, we develop a multivariate model of political trust. Our findings indicate that political trust is positively related to well-being, social capital, democratic attitudes, political interest, and external efficacy, suggesting that trust responds to government performance. However, political trust is generally hindered by corruption permissiveness, political radicalism and postmaterialism. We identify differences by region and type of society in these relationships, and discuss the methodological problems inherent to the ambiguities in the concept of political trust. During the last 25 years, democracy has been adopted as a political system in many societies previously ruled by non-democratic governments or one-party regimes. Democracy has thus expanded its scope as a form of government in the world. This trend started in southern Europe in the mid-1970s, and was then followed in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. The fall of communism (1989– 1991) broadened this wave of democratization in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics. Today, the number of societies ruled by a democratic government is larger than ever. Paradoxically, our results show that political trust, understood as citizens’ confidence in political institutions, has declined in the new democracies during the last two decades and does not seem to have increased in the established ones either. This paper was originally presented at the 58th Annual Conference of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), Nashville, TN, May 15–18, 2003. The article was first submitted to IJPOR April 13, 2004. The final version was received January 19, 2005. 32 I N T E R N A T I O N A L J O U R N A L O F P U B L I C O P I N I O N R E S E A R C H It has been argued that this decline is part of a unique trend of political skepticism and civic disengagement, which ultimately will affect the quality of ‘global democracy’ (Putnam, 2002). Trust is especially important for democratic governments since they cannot rely on coercion to the same extent as other regimes. During periods of economic turmoil, for instance, democratic stability requires citizens to have sufficient trust in economic and political institutions to accept temporary economic straits in return for the promise of better conditions in some uncertain future. But when one trusts, one forgoes the opportunity to influence decision making on the assumption that there are shared interests between the individual who trusts and the trustee. The same factors that drive the increasing functional importance of trust also constrain the extent to which people can participate in the decisions that affect their lives. Consequently, declining rates of confidence in political institutions may be a reflection of an increasingly sophisticated citizenry, and a desirable democratic outcome (Hardin, 1999; Warren, 1999; Mishler & Rose, 1997). Mishler and Rose concisely summarize this doubleedged element inherent to political trust: ‘Democracy requires trust but also presupposes an active and vigilant citizenry with a healthy skepticism of government and willingness, should the need arise, to suspend trust and assert control over government’ (1997, p. 419). This double-edged element is fundamental to understanding the meaning of the global decline in political trust and its implications for democracy. We contend that the decline reflects different dynamics and has differentiated effects in established democracies on the one hand, and in new ones on the other. While in the former the decline is associated with a significant intergenerational value change that has taken place among post-war cohorts, it is part of a more general post-honeymoon trend in the latter—a trend which also includes a decline in political participation. An erosion of respect for authority that has come with the development of post-materialist cultures has characterized young cohorts in industrialized nations for more than three decades: When people no longer worry about their survival, they do not need to cling unquestioningly to the authorities they hope will ensure their survival. Instead, as material well-being increases, trust in political institutions and elites is likely to decline as publics begin to evaluate their leaders and institutions by more demanding standards (Inglehart, 2003; Offe, 1999; Patterson, 1999). A strengthening of pro-democratic orientations, at the same time, has characterized this intergenerational value change (Dalton, 2002; Klingemann, 1999). Younger generations show greater tolerance toward diversity, in particular, and a stronger internalization of democratic principles, in general. We expect, therefore, these two convergent forces, the shift in value priorities and the increasing attachment toward democracy, to interact strongly with the decline of political trust in established regimes. T R E N D S I N N E W A N D E S T A B L I S H E D D E M O C R A C I E S 33 Fluctuations in trust have, however, been subjected to essentially different dynamics in new democracies. As surveys conducted there at the time of transition as well as several years later show, the enthusiasm for the arrival of democracy seems deflated, reflecting a pattern similar to the honeymoon periods in presidential approval ratings (Inglehart & Catterberg, 2003). In many countries, transition to democracy motivated aspirations of civil, political, and economic rights. As a result of these new demands, higher standards for evaluating governmental performance emerged after regimes had changed. In a significant number of cases, however, basic needs of vast segments of the population have not yet been met—partly due to the distributional effects of dramatic economic transformations. This increased people’s skepticism. We expect the erosion of political trust in new democracies, therefore, to be more closely linked to disillusionment and disaffection rather than to the emergence of a more critical citizenry. The objective of this paper is to analyze individual bases of political trust in society. We use the distinctive dynamics sketched above precisely as a frame to identify some of these determinants both in new and established democracies, studying their differences and commonalities. We first examine trends in political trust over time. Then we build a model of political trust. We use data from several nations included in at least two of the four waves of the World Values Surveys (WVS) and the European Values Surveys (EVS), which were conducted between 1981 and 2000. Finally, concluding remarks round off the empirical findings. MEASURING POLITICAL TRUST Ambiguity seems inherent to the concept of political trust. In fact, one of the main problems in the literature is the unclear differentiation between trust in political institutions and evaluations of government performance, leading to serious operationalization problems. This has been evident since the 1960s (Easton, 1965; Miller, 1974), but there are few efforts for clarification. Instead, much of the recent literature uses political trust and trust in government performance as interchangeable notions (Hibbing & Theiss-Morse, 2001, Nevitte & Kanji, 2002). The U.S. literature, based on the National Election Studies (NES) indices, emphasizes elements of ethics, honesty, and integrity of governmental officials and legislators: (1) ‘How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right . . .?’ (2) ‘Do you think that people in government waste a lot of money we pay in taxes . . .?’ (3) ‘Would you say the government is pretty much run by a few big interests looking out for themselves or that it is run for the benefit of all the people?’ (4) ‘Do you think that quite a few of the people running the government are crooked . . .?’ In our view this operationalization seems to have some endogeneity in it, raising the question of the extent to which components (2), (3), and (4) explain component (1). 34 I N T E R N A T I O N A L J O U R N A L O F P U B L I C O P I N I O N R E S E A R C H In this paper, as mentioned above, we refer to political trust as citizen’s confidence in political institutions, using the question ‘For each of the following organizations, could you tell me how much confidence you have in them?’ Conceptually, therefore, our approach is more similar to the one developed in the comparative literature, but we have incorporated new elements of analysis related to questions of integrity as a component of political trust, in particular, the issue of corruption. Our focus is on political institutions rather than government performance, but it is clear that confidence in such institutions reflects people’s evaluations of the political environment. One of our main findings is that political trust has declined, rather than increased, in newly democratic societies. A possible explanation lies in a natural process of post-honeymoon disaffection among the new democracies’ publics. Without doubt, legislators and bureaucrats, party leaders and union representatives are among the most noticeable political actors in democratic polities, along with the executive representatives: presidents and prime ministers. However, an operationalization of trust in government based on questions about political actors may make the concept more sensitive to government performance. Based on d