Political Distrust and its Discontents: Exploring the Meaning, Expression and Significance of Political Distrust

Abstract

Political distrust has been the norm, rather than the exception, in many established democracies in recent decades. Despite a wealth of data tracking deteriorating citizen attitudes towards their governments, representatives and political systems in general, there is still a debate regarding the meaning of distrust and its significance for the health of democracies. This article contributes to the discussion by providing qualitative evidence that map the meaning, evaluative dimensions and spill-over process of distrusting political attitudes. It finds, across the three national contexts studied, that citizens express political distrust using similar language and employing the same evaluative structure. Evidence suggests that political distrust is intertwined with the failure of representation and entails a fundamentally ethical dimension. This article concludes with a discussion regarding the implications of these findings for research on diffuse support in democratic systems.

Can Political Trust Help to Explain Elite Policy Support and Public Behaviour in Times of Crisis? Evidence from the United Kingdom at the Height of the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic

“…These two cognitive judgements are not equivalent: the latter does not necessarily present itself in an absence of the former or vice versa. Both beliefs may be held simultaneously to varying degrees and, crucially, both imply very different conclusions about the (trustee...) that become salient in different contexts of cooperation or action (for related discussions, see Bertsou, 2019).…”

Rethinking political distrust

“…Perceptions of untrustworthiness can follow three broad types of evaluations: technical incompetence and failure, conduct that violates shared notions of right and fair, and conduct that is incongruent with the citizens’ best interest. These evaluative components rest on the empirical and theoretical insights, but they have not been synthesized before to explain the concept of political distrust (Bertsou, 2015; Citrin and Stoker, 2018). Firstly, perceptions of untrustworthiness reflect judgements of technical incompetence.…”

“…In deeply divided communities along ethnic, religious, or partisan lines, expressions of political distrust largely entail evaluations of incongruent interests. Examples would include distrust of a government that is run by political parties a citizen opposes, or distrust in a political system that systematically discriminates against the group a citizen belongs to (Bertsou, 2015; Krishnamurthy, 2015). Empirical research findings consistently show that government is distrusted more by citizens who support the opposition, and trust levels switch according to partisan identity once there is a government change (Hetherington and Rudolph, 2015; Citrin and Stoker, 2018).…”

As vias tortuosas da democracia e a crise da representação no Brasil

“…A crise da democracia se expressa, em todo o mundo, como desconfiança na política e pela contestação dos partidos e políticos tradicionais (Bertsou, 2019). No Brasil, as aflições da transição global se somaram aos efeitos negativos de falhas sucessivas de governança, que levaram a um ciclo reiterado de expansões curtas seguidas de estagnação e recessão, além dos históricos déficits sociais refletidos na miséria, na pobreza e na desigualdade estruturais.…”